If Hollywood Were Really Brave
<p>The Oscar night of 2006 brought us the unedifying spectacle of<br />
George Clooney (whom I must say I truly admire when he shuts his yap<br />
and <em>acts</em>) celebrating Hollywood&#8217;s bravery for being willing<br />
to make movies like <cite>Brokeback Mountain</cite> and <cite>Good Night<br />
and Good Luck</cite>.</p>
<p>Conservative commentators have already pointed out<br />
how hollow and laughable it is to suppose that left-wing political<br />
correctness is in any way &#8216;brave&#8217; in today&#8217;s Hollywood, so I won&#8217;t<br />
re-plow that ground.  Instead, I&#8217;ll propose eight movies I think<br />
Hollywood would make if it were <em>really</em> brave.</p>
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<h3>The Crescent&#8217;s Edge</h3>
<p>This thinly fictionalized version of Salman Rushdie&#8217;s life on the<br />
run stars Ben Kingsley as a beleaguered leftist intellectual forced to<br />
question his own multiculturalist assumptions as he evades fanatical<br />
mujahedeen who seek to kill him for having defamed the Prophet.</p>
<h3>A Nightmare South of Market</h3>
<p>Ray Liotta stars as an idealistic young doctor determined to halt<br />
the spread of AIDS who crusades against the promiscuity and<br />
needle-drug abuse endemic in San Francisco&#8217;s gay bathhouse scene.<br />
Don&#8217;t miss Gary Oldman&#8217;s cameo as a homosexual Scoutmaster.</p>
<h3>The Thin Green Line</h3>
<p>Bruce Willis and Mel Gibson star in a gritty war film celebrating<br />
U.S. special forces in Afghanistan, the men who took down the barbaric<br />
Taliban regime.  Audiences at Cannes and Sundance were deeply shocked<br />
by its sympathetic portrayal of the modern American military.</p>
<h3>The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress</h3>
<p>This faithful adaptation of Robert Heinlein&#8217;s 1966 SF classic,<br />
starring Nicholas Cage as Manuel Garcia O&#8217;Kelly Davis and Mira Sorvino<br />
as Wyoming Knott, challenges viewers to imagine a libertarian future.<br />
Gripping SFX of meteoroid bombardment contrast with searching questions<br />
about the legitimacy of government as the Lunar nation struggles to be<br />
born.  (Rumor has it that Paul Verhoeven was at one point forcibly<br />
ejected from the set of this film.)</p>
<h3>Never Again</h3>
</p>
<p>In this sprawling family epic, three generations of Israelis fight<br />
to preserve the Middle East&#8217;s only democracy from implacable and<br />
bloodthirsty enemies on every side.  An ensemble cast of unknowns<br />
struggles with war, terrorism, and tragedy in a film that unflinchingly<br />
affirms Jewish identity and doesn&#8217;t fear to confront Nazi and<br />
Pan-Arabist atrocities.</p>
<h3>A Tree Grows In Harlem</h3>
<p>Morgan Freeman and Halle Berry star as a father/daughter team of<br />
neighborhood activists who decide blaming Whitey isn&#8217;t enough and<br />
challenge ghetto blacks to take responsibility for solving their own<br />
problems. Villains (and victims of this film&#8217;s wicked satirical edge) include<br />
recognizable takes on Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Louis Farrakhan,<br />
but the enemy the two must struggle hardest to defeat is the<br />
government bureaucracy set up to &#8216;help&#8217; their people.</p>
<h3>Unintended Conseqences</h3>
<p>Roy Scheider stars as a dedicated sport shooter who vows to seek<br />
justice after his daughter is killed during a no-knock BATF/DEA raid<br />
on their home.  This searing expose of contemporary American<br />
law-enforcement abuses takes on both the madness of the &#8220;War on Drugs&#8221;<br />
and the random but brutal persecution of civilian gun owners.</p>
<h3>The Venona Diaries</h3>
<p>Eric Bana stars as an Iraq-veteran-turned-academic who discovers<br />
that the shadowy networks of influence set up by the KGB during the<br />
Cold War are not only still active on U.S. college campuses but<br />
solidifying an alliance with Islamic terrorists.  Heart-pounding<br />
action ensues as Bana races to head off the act of mass murder that<br />
will seal the Marxist/Islamist alliance in blood.</p>
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<p>When I say &#8216;brave&#8217;, I don&#8217;t mean &#8216;brave&#8217; as in &#8220;it would lose<br />
money&#8221;.  Any of these films could easily be a huge hit with actual,<br />
you know, <em>audiences</em>.  No. I meant &#8216;brave&#8217; as in &#8220;the<br />
self-congratulating limousine-liberal elitists who brought us this<br />
year&#8217;s Oscar nominees would be out for blood if any of <em>these</em><br />
films ever got made&#8221;.  It would be a fearless filmmaker indeed who&#8217;d<br />
court their wrath.</p>
