Celluloid Heroes

So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.

After the bitter disappointment of Episode I, The Phantom Menace, and the almost-but-not-quite-there glimpses of hope in Episode II, Attack of the Clones, the third time was finally the charm for Star Wars fans. They finally got the prequel they deserved with Episode III.

Despite the diminished expectations created by the first two prequels, the third installment still had a lot to live up to. This was the episode that would have to deliver all that the fans had been expecting from the sequels, namely the story about how Anakin Skywalker turned to evil and became Darth Vader and of the birth of the twins Luke and Leia who would be the heroes of the second, er, first, I mean, the other Star Wars trilogy.

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It’s a terrible thing to hate your mother. But I didn’t always hate her. When I was a child, I only kind of disliked her.

The Manchurian Candidate has always seemed like it was in a class by itself among cold war political thrillers. Maybe it was just the mystique that came with being unavailable for so many years, but maybe it was the simply fact that this is a damn good movie. Smart and laced with liberal doses of McCarthy Era satire, The Manchurian Candidate still stands as the pinnacle of John Frankenheimer’s directing career.

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