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Reviews
North of Nightfall (2018)
Annoying Eco-Harangue Sold As A Bike Film
The idea is good and I think the film makers are banking on your past experience with similar trekking / biking / snowboarding / surfing adventure docs. But this one misses the mark almost completely and actually is irritating.
The bike footage is not very interesting. The idea was to bike on terrain carved out by glaciers. Maybe they thought about riding on the glaciers. But there is a strong sense that after they arrived their wings were clipped by the local eco cops. So not much happens and they have to resort to familiar extreme biking tricks (flips and such) to spice things up. But of course you can do those anywhere, There are a few good moments where they ride some "sick" trails but the ground proves too unstable for much more than that.
What really makes this film not merely uninteresting but actively unpleasant is that things are interrupted repeatedly for the delivery of lectures to you, the viewer, on the ravages of climate change. It's not just a few minutes at the beginning or end, its all through this film. You are reminded how bad you are and how your comfortable, careless lifestyle is destroying preciously wildernesses like this one. Its you who is guilty. Not the folks who are tearing up the tundra with their mountain bikes, their light aircraft and their electrified fences (bears, you see).
The constant eco harangues make this film quite unpleasant and even insulting. Why subject yourself to this? In the end, its deceptive packaging really.
Skip.
The Fountainhead (1949)
Inspiring That It Even Got Made - And Entertaining
One of the best films of the immediate post-war period. To be a leftist in today's world is to reflexively hate on Ayn Rand, so be careful with many of the negative reviews that just repeat the left's endless stereotypes of Rand. In actuality, its a very good movie. It is clearly not intended to be realistic; quite the contrary, Rand imagines an impossibly principled hero - Roark, played by Gary Cooper - who is set up to embody a philosophy. The character is intentionally unrealistic to heighten the central conflict of the film - can you really succeed while remaining unwaveringly true to your own artistic vision?
It ends up being great casting, because such a character takes full advantage of Cooper's stock in trade as an actor.
Patricia Neal never looked more beautiful or radiant, but its her acting that is a marvel here. She has the hardest part to play, not only because her character is clearly based somewhat on Rand herself but because she's a flawed, conflicted character who is left to do the most difficult work of all - finding a way to facilitate Roark's uncompromising vision so that it can be realized.
Its true that the story, which was secondary for Rand to the principles - is a bit melodramatic and over-the-top. But no more so than any number of its contemporaries. And when you compare this film to just about any Hollywood output of the last 20 years, it simply towers above that standard. This was a very unique period in Hollywood history when this kind of film could get made, when the horrors of Stalin (and the USSR's similarities to Nazi Germany) were becoming clear to the world and before the leftists in Hollywood had had time to regroup and cast themselves as victims. Other films of the period and certainly films after this were much less kind to outsiders and rebels. A unique film.