By Debbie Schlussel

Sorry for the belated movie reviews, as I was a little sick on Friday afternoon and didn’t finish them in time to put them up before the Jewish Sabbath. But you didn’t miss much, as January is one of the two pet cemeteries for crappy movies (the other is August). You can always hear my movie reviews first thing every Friday morning on “The Mike Church Show” on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 after 7:05 am Eastern and on “The Pat Campbell Show” on KFAQ 1170 AM Tulsa at 7:35 am Eastern. I do my movie reviews on both, as well as some discussion of current political issues and pop culture topics on both shows. So here’s what’s new at theaters, this weekend:

* “Taken 3“: This wasn’t screened for critics, but I braved the Michigan snowstorm Thursday night to see it for myself and review it here. And it wasn’t half bad. It’s the relative best of the bunch this week, with a strong emphasis on “relative.” It’s not a great movie, but it’s okay, entertaining, not boring at all, and full of non-stop action. I could say I’m sick and tired of the hackneyed Russian mobster and evil White businessman as villain narratives coming out of Hollywood and front and center in this movie, but the previous two “Taken” movies had Muslims (however subtle) as the villains, and so I give this movie a pass on that. As I’ve noted on this site, Neeson has since become a fan of Islam like his insane former mother-in-law, Al-Qaeda and Arafat whore Vanessa Redgrave. The first “Taken” movie is still the best (read my review), but this one is okay.

The story: former CIA agent Liam Neeson’s wife (Famke Janssen) is murdered, and Neeson is framed in the crime. He spends the rest of the movie outsmarting Southern California police, figuring out who did it and why, and trying to get the murderer(s). Lots of stunts that aren’t believable, but you get the same in the typical James Bond movie. And as I said, it’s entertaining and a decent escapist way to spend two hours at the movies.

Neeson and Maggie Grace (who plays his daughter) swear that this is the “final” Taken, but this movie sets up for “Taken 4,” so don’t bet on it. Hollywood lies and its stars always fall back on easy fat paychecks.

ONE-AND-A-HALF REAGANS

Watch the trailer . . .

* “Selma“: It’s time for “Grievance Theater at the Theater” #1 of the year and #554,187 (or more) coming out of Hollywood. I struggled to stay awake during this long, boring two hour innacuracy about Freedom Summer, President Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the march at Selma. It greatly distorts the role of Annie Lee Cooper, Oprah’s character, methinks in order to give us multiple ugly side profiles and front-and-center looks at Ms. Winfrey’s angry visage. The movie shows Cooper in virtually every scene, including in court and in the Selma march, when there is no evidence Cooper participated in anything, except trying to register to vote. And, though the movie shows many events in Freedom Summer–the summer during which Blacks tried to register to vote and organized protests (and many Whites helped them in this endeavor), the movie completely skips the murders of Jews Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner. who tried to register Blacks to vote.

How do you make a whole two-hour long movie about one civil rights march? Well, you make things up, and that’s mostly what this movie is, whether it’s about Cooper or about President Johnson, making it look like he opposed civil rights, when supporting the Civil Rights Act was one of his hallmarks. A lot of conversations the veracity of which we’ll never know are the main content of this movie. That and a lot of scenes of ugly White cops beating Black people. Yes, that happened, but it seems interesting that this movie comes out now as a seeming justification for Blacks to attack and kill White cops today. It gives excuses for today’s misplaced and unjustified anger against White police officers (and Asian and Hispanic officers). Also, the movie is a repetitive jumble of infighting between various violent and non-violent Black groups. Like I said, it’s a bore.

While the end of the movie, featuring real life footage of the march on Selma, was touching, what wasn’t touching were the captions telling us what became of all of King’s allies and organizers in the march. For instance, Andrew Young is portrayed as a hero, when in fact he was a Jew-hating, anti-Israel, pro-Arafat piece of crap who was an apologist (and still is) of Islamic terrorism every step of the way. Yay, civil rights! And this radical, Jew-hating, Islam-apologism befell many of King’s acolytes. James Bevel is played by Muslim rapper Common in the movie, but the film never tells you much about him. He was an odd duck. While disowning Black radicalism and campaigning for Ronald Reagan, he was also a friend of the Nation of Islam, helping Louis Farrakhan to organize the anti-Semitic, anti-American, racist “Million Man March.” He was convicted of molesting his daughter–one of the many he fathered with many different women–and died in prison. Again, this is what they marched at Selma for?

Yes, it is fact and history that Black Americans were denied the right to vote and subject to brutal, murderous violence. And they deserved and do deserve every civil right afforded to any other American. But that age is in the past. Today’s age is one of racist affirmative action in their favor, ObamaPhones, ObamaCare, record high levels of welfare and entitlements, most Black kids born out of wedlock, unparalleled Black racism against Whites, especially police, and the era of a Black President elected out of racism and White guilt, who has made even more of a mess of America than ever.

I’m still waiting for that movie. But we’ll all be waiting a long time for that one.

FOUR MARXES PLUS FOUR OBAMAS PLUS FOUR AL SHARPTONS PLUS FOUR JESSE JACKSONS

Watch the trailer . . .

* “Inherent Vice“: Absolutely awful. A long, boring, complete waste of time. It’s as if someone on psychedelic drugs wrote the world’s dumbest, most nonsensical shaggy dog story that takes place in the ’70s, and got a bunch of A-list and B-list stars to take a paycut to act in it for “art’s sake.” That’s what this is–a boring, non-sensical, uninteresting shaggy dog story in which nothing ever really happens. Oh, and then, throw in a little depraved sexual stuff, including a “massage”/sex parlor, called the “P-ssy eaters club.” Classy.

The “story”: Joaquin Phoenix plays a drug-addled private detective in Los Angeles in the ’70s. He’s looking for his ex-girlfriend, who has disappeared, as well as some rich, married guy she’s sleeping with who was supposedly the target of a murder plot by the rich guy’s wife. In fact, nobody is missing and nothing ever happened. The end.

2.5 hours of total crap. You were forewarned: Inherent Vice = Inherently Stupid.

FOUR MARXES

Watch the trailer . . .

* “Force Majeure“: Mainstream (a/k/a liberal) movie critics are raving over this horrible Swedish movie (with English subtitles). I hated this feminist propaganda telling us that men are weak cowards and cheaters. Should’ve been called, “Men Are Cowards, Wimps & Evil.” That’s the message here.

The story: a Swedish family is on skiing vacation in the mountains. One day, they are eating lunch at the ski resort’s outdoor restaurant when an avalanche happens and appears to be coming their way. The father/husband looks for his iPhone, grabs it, and runs away instead of making sure his wife and two young kids are safe. The whole rest of their vacation is spent with the wife bitching, moaning, whining, and crying to anyone who will listen–friends, acquaintances, total strangers–that her husband is a coward and her description of how he abandoned the family in the face of impending disaster. In the end, the husband goes into a childlike tantrum and cries inconsolably like a girl, admitting what a horrible husband, father, and all-around person he is, and thus he’s completed his Oprah-dictated repentance.

But just to make sure you know that men are evil, before the crying session, one of the husband’s friends comes to visit. In his early ’40s, the friend has left his wife for his young, 20-something, blonde girlfriend. And when he sticks up for the “cowardly” husband, his girlfriend tells him that he’s just as much of a jerk and a coward because he left his wife and has a younger girlfriend (she apparently has no blameworthy role or part in that).

What a waste of my life.

FOUR BETTY FRIEDANS PLUS FOUR MICHELLE LAVAUGHN ROBINSON HUSSEIN OBAMA IDI AMIN DADAS

Watch the trailer . . .

* “Predestination“: Long, boring, slow, and, most of all, incredibly warped and depraved. This movie, starring Ethan Hawke, is about a time-traveling secret agent, who travels to the past to stop criminals and crimes. He’s trying to find the “Fizzle Bomber,” and is assigned to go to the past to meet and help a woman and reunite her with her baby. It turns out the woman was turned into a man by doctors who discovered she was a hermaphrodite and turned her into a man after she gave birth to a daughter. It then turns out that the daughter was conceived with herself–that the man she had sex with was herself sex-changed into a man, who time travels back, and then that the kid is also her. And the same person is basically almost every character in this warped, sickening, and incredibly pointless waste of time parading as a movie. Um, no thank you.

The movie is also now available on Video on Demand. If you demand this, you’re not demanding at all. Just horrible.

FOUR MARXES

Watch the trailer . . .