Andrew Klaven's fine article on the current anti-war movies

He leaves out a few bits though. Like the fact that the anti-war films are always so intense and filled with brutality that you have to enjoy violence or at least relish the depiction of violence in order to watch them. True pacifists would have their stomachs turned by all the rapes and waterboarding and exploding body parts.

Anyone who is truly anti-war has to know what goes on during armed conflict. They hardly need Brian DePalma to tell them about it. He's a horror movie director anyway. He gets off on depictions of sexual violence.

Remember the scene in Body Double where the giant drill goes through the ceiling and then through the beautiful woman. That was a symbolic rape. A big screw.

De Palma's like B'rer Rabbit,"Please don't make me watch soldiers rape a teenage girl, oh no, please don't make me," as he peeks through his fingers, one hand in his pants.

I took my mom to see Born on the Forth of July and she was shaking so bad after the movie, she could hardly drive.

I saw an interview with the governor of Ache Indonesia. He's a former Muslim separatist fighter. He was in prison for a long while and was tortured. He was logged, he said, "and that doesn't mean chopping down trees." The interviewer kept to trying to get him to talk about his mistreatment at the hands of his enemies. The governor just laughed at the Western reporter's obsession with such things. He said, "I do not take it personally, because such things happen during armed conflict." He said his fighters wanted to spring him from jail, but he had made friends with his gurads by then, and didn't want any of them to get killed. Then, the tsunami came and he broke out of jail by himself. They should make a movie about him!