No one will come away unmoved by the book, and no one will be able to put it down. … There is no way of reading Alive without a heightened sense of one’s own life and its value.

The book is not only an extraordinary survival saga, but it has tremendously moving stories involving family, friendship, love, and sacrifice. It is a sort of reverse Lord of the Flies, where the cooperation among the survivors was extremely impressive, and it also contained deeply spiritual and religious elements despite its horrors.

Over the years I’ve read other books on the subject, including several written by the survivors. I’ve watched several documentaries as well. In 1993 an American movie came out on the subject, and although I was looking forward to it immensely I was sharply disappointed. It just didn’t ring true, plus it left out or truncated very important parts of the story, in particular involving the astounding trek by two of the young men who survived the initial crash.

So when I heard recently that there was a newer movie, made in 2023 in the Spanish language, and using previously-unknown Uruguayan and Argentinian actors, I was extremely eager to see it. I had to wait till I was in a certain mood, because the story is a grueling one even to watch, and from the trailer I could see it was very realistically as well as poetically done:

And so I watched the film, and I have mixed feelings about it. I would recommend it, although you need to be prepared for a harrowing journey. Compared to the previous movie it’s better. But compared to the book it simply doesn’t work for me. That surprised me, and I’ve been pondering why I found it ultimately very inferior to the book that some of the survivors thought was already inadequate.

For one thing, I think a book has the ability to give so much more background on the entire situation and the people in it, which deepens the story and its significance. Just to take one example, in the book you learn a great deal about a woman who was one of the initial survivors, Liliana Methol. But in the film she’s almost an afterthought and somewhat of a cipher. There just isn’t enough time to render each person in his or her fullness.

Plus, there are an enormous number of characters, and the actors (who look a great deal like the real life people they are representing) somewhat resemble each other, especially as the movie goes on and many become bearded and all become thinner (the actors were forced to lose weight as the film went on, for the sake of realism). It wasn’t that easy to tell them apart, and I knew a great deal about the characters already.

Films with big casts need to pay particular attention to this potential problem. I think that, for example, The Great Escape (a film favorite of mine although of a very different type), which also had a very big cast, dealt with the numbers more successfully because the protagonists were from different countries, and there were many stars in the cast and that helped the viewers remember who’s who. That movie was also about a half hour longer than Society of the Snow, and although both movies are long they both move along quite quickly because there’s so much to tell. But The Great Escape has more time in which to tell it.

In the book Alive, there’s a great deal of emphasis also on the stories of the families searching for their lost relatives; many did not give up hope, and their tales are especially moving and make the eventual reunions even more poignant and deeply felt. There was virtually none of that in the movie; you merely see reunions with parents and girlfriends which are generic because we don’t have much of the backstory.

There are many exchanges and scenes in the book that seem naturally cinematic, and some are left out of the movie. I don’t know why; it wouldn’t take much to have included them. Instead, there are repetitive scenes of the suffering endured by the survivors and their decline – as well as a tremendous emphasis on the most sensationalistic part of their story, the fact that in order to survive they very reluctantly decided they must eat the bodies of those who had died (and the living made a pact to allow the others to eat them if they died before rescue came), Any movie about this incident must deal with that fact, but I think that after a while this particular movie could have left out some of the redundancy and gone for some more of the background stories.

Most of all, I was surprised that the movie seemed to leave out or gloss over one of the most salient characteristics of the group, which is that they were Catholics and mostly believers, and that their specifically Catholic beliefs helped them endure. That is, many of them explicitly likened their eating the flesh of their dead companions to the Eucharist, although they were well aware of the differences. Instead, in the movie there was a vaguer spirituality that was emphasized. Even the part where, after the survivors returned to civilization and priests told them they would not be condemned by the Church for what they did in extremis – that entire aspect was left out. Instead, there was an almost-throwaway scene in a church at the beginning of the film, with a priest talking about the Host while some of the young men pass notes among them. Unless you already know the plot, you could easily miss its significance.

This omission and de-emphasis seems to me to be a deliberate lessening of the religious message and slant of the entire event, a trend toward the universal rather than the specific. But the specific can have a universal message, and I felt the omission keenly although I’m neither Catholic nor Christian.

The movie caused me to get out my old copy of Alive and start re-reading it. In the introduction, the author writes:

When I returned in October 1973 to show [the survivors] the manuscript of this book, some of them were disappointed by my presentation of their story. They felt that the faith and friendship which inspired them in the cordillera do not emerge from these pages. It was never my intention to underestimate these qualities, but perhaps it would be beyond the skill of any writer to express their own appreciation of what they lived through.

I think that’s an honest assessment; it’s an impossible task. Nevertheless I think that Piers Paul Read came as close to accomplishing it as anyone could. For me, he certainly came closer than any movie could.

The post I watched the movie “Society of the Snow,” about the 1972 Andes plane crash and survival appeared first on The New Neo.

I’ve seen it for years and years and years online: the idea that the Boomer generation has screwed the younger ones. It’s often advanced by 40-somethings or younger, who feel insufficiently flush with cash and that the world hasn’t rewarded them in the manner they think they deserve. The idea that previous generations struggled and that many still struggle (I have friends my age with little savings, for example) is brushed aside. And the opinions of older people are shrugged off with the dismissive, “Okay, Boomer.”

It’s not unusual to wish that the Boomers would die already. Just shuffle off this mortal coil so that the young can get the spoils. And this is usually said with no sense of shame whatsoever.

I’ve seen most of this in the comments sections of blogs and MSM articles, as well as on social media of many kinds. It’s said not with humorous tolerance but powerful hatred and envy. But envy has now become perfectly okay, a kind of badge of virtue with “microlooters” and the like.

Now the New York Times is getting into the act:

The New York Times on old people:

“It is not ageist to ask whether older people should be required to give more to younger Americans… Older Americans favor restrictions on immigration… there is a correlation between age and resistance to policies to halt the overheating of the planet… impose age ceilings on political offices… Older Americans own much of the most desirable real estate… It is not ageist, finally, to impose policies to transfer jobs, houses and wealth down the generational chain.”

Yale law professor Samuel Moyn, whom I interviewed once, always seemed generous and reasonable, even when our politics differed. But unless it’s an elaborate meta-joke, the above column and forthcoming book Gerontocracy in America: How the Old are Hoarding Wealth and Power in America advance some of the most intellectually vicious ideas I’ve ever seen. The Godwin’s Law factor alone is a shocker.

Moyn observes that people of years have accumulated money and influence and contrives to end the “tyranny of the old” by having “the elderly divested of political power, wealth, and property,” because reasons. The title of the Times piece, “Older Americans Are Hoarding America’s Potential,” carries the obscene lefty connotation that no one really owns anything and the elderly, by dint of living too long to begin with, and having a generally shitty quality of life compared to the young, and voting incorrectly/selfishly (hilarious, in the context of open scheming to seize their savings) and wasting resources “playing for time” for “another day, month, or year among loved ones” makes them lousy stewards of what the author unironically calls “our inheritance,” i.e. their homes and bank accounts.

That’s by Matt Taibbi, who is 56 years old. Young to me, but not young.

Moyn’s work doesn’t surprise me at all – there’s a huge market for this sort of thing, based on the ideas I’ve seen widely disseminated online. Taibbi is absolutely correct that this is part of an attack on private property, based on the idea that one can decide who should own what and how much, and act accordingly by confiscating the goods of the supposedly non-virtuous.

NOTE: I’ve written on this topic of inter-generational rage before, but at the moment I can’t find the piece. But this post is somewhat relevant to the topic.

NOTE II: I saw the movie Zorba the Greek in a movie theater when it first came out in 1964. I was young, and I didn’t like it and have never looked at it again. But various scenes have stuck with me, and not in a good way. So, this one comes to mind. Of course, the people confiscating the dead woman’s goods here actually are dirt-poor, and they are of all ages and not just young. The deceased woman wasn’t exactly what you’d call rich, either. So the parallel isn’t very good, although the envy impulse is there. Here’s the scene, and watching it now it seems even more chilling than I recall:

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It was Judith Anderson’s (later Dame Judith Anderson) role as the housekeeper Mrs. Danvers that especially creeped me out. The movie was made in 1940, and although Anderson had been acting for ages, the role made her far more famous and earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Here she is with the shy and nameless second wife of Maximilian de Winter (Laurence Olivier) played perfectly by Joan Fontaine:

Anderson almost overacts but keeps it under tight control. There are oodles of subtexts there, and her extremely polite malevolence is palpable.

Compare to a modern remake from 2020:

The video is entitled, “Kristin Scott Thomas is terrifying as Mrs. Danvers in REBECCA (2020) movie clip.” Oh, really? Terrifying? They wish. To me, she just comes across as a Mean Girl.

But perhaps it’s unfair to compare anyone to Anderson in the role. I happen to think it’s not just the actresses that makes the difference, but the passage of time and taste: black-and-white versus color, and a certain conviction and gravitas about how to portray evil. And of course, Hitchcock.

The post On portraying Mrs. Danvers appeared first on The New Neo.

Norris, who had just turned 86 earlier this month, is best remembered for his martial arts and action movie roles in the 1980s as well as for his role on the TV show “Walker, Texas Ranger,” which was one of my mother’s favorite shows. He served in the Air Force, which was where he learned karate and became a karate teacher. That’s how he met people like Steve McQueen, who encouraged him to get into the movies. He had a critical role in Bruce Lee’s “Way of the Dragon,” and his career was off and running.

I confess that Norris’ films and TV work weren’t the genre I generally watch, and so I’m not really familiar with him although I certainly knew who he was. But I thought I’d put up this thread for those of you who were fans of his – he certainly had many.

RIP.

The post RIP Chuck Norris appeared first on The New Neo.

I say I watched the show, but most of the time I was also reading and I would look up periodically when something interested me. So my attention was admittedly spotty. Nevertheless, I saw enough to take in the self-satisfied self-congratulatory virtue-signaling, the almost entirely unfunny jokes and bits, the “we women are soooo strong!” message, the occasional hackneyed leftist political remark, and of course the dresses.

Most of the political stuff was very well-covered in this post, if you care to read about it.

A guy named Javier Bardem caught my attention with “No to war – Free Palestine!” Quite the oxymoron. This mental and moral giant has been accusing Israel of genocide since at least 2014, according to his Wiki entry. He’s Spanish, by the way, and here’s another of his brilliant quotes from this year’s Oscar festivities:

“I’m wearing a pin that I used in 2003 with the Iraq war, which was an illegal war,” Bardem told reporters on the red carpet, “and we are here, 23 years after, with another illegal war, created by Trump and Netanyahu with another lie.”

The only film I’ve seen this year – other than a half-hour of the execrable aforementioned One Battle After Another – is the animated musical movie K-Pop Demon Hunters, which I saw twice because my grandchildren love it. It’s kind of cute and that made it tolerable, by the way, but maybe I’m biased because of them. They know all the songs by heart and periodically sing them, especially the one that was nominated for the Oscar, which it won. After a big production number, a group of people – most or all of whom were Korean, because the song is K-pop genre – came onstage for their thank-yous. The occasion was apparently “historic” because this is the very first K-pop song to win.

So what did the “diversity is our strength – and our requirement” Oscars do? Cut them off prematurely, after having let others drone on and on, and after some seemingly endless “comedy” bits such as a tribute to the 15-year anniversary of the movie Bridesmaids. They had time for all of that, but cut off the Korean guy who stepped up with a little piece of paper after the comely female singer-songwriter had said her not-so-very-long acceptance speech. The group was left standing there, confused, while the orchestral bye-bye music played and the mic power dimmed.

I guess Koreans don’t stand very high in the intersectional hierarchy.

As for fashion, I’ll just comment on Demi Moore’s get-up, shown here:

I am puzzled by the fact that many people are saying this was a peacock dress. Are they at all familiar with peacocks? Different color, different feather type as well. No, this was a rooster dress:

And lest you think I’m picking on Demi Moore, I’m not. I suppose over the years I may have seen a few of her movies, but the only one I remember is Ghost. It’s one of my favorite films, and although Moore’s role was less attention-getting than that or Swayze or of Whoopi – she was basically the grieving woman who lost her man and was being stalked by a killer – Moore did a remarkable job. Dewy-eyed and vulnerable, she was impressive in scenes like this one. If you haven’t seen the movie, it may look over-the-top, but in context it’s extremely moving, and a goodly part of that emotional wallop is due to Demi:

The post I actually watched the Oscars last night appeared first on The New Neo.

But after a half hour of the movie we both left.

Simply put, it was the worst movie I’ve ever seen, bar none. Let me count the ways in which it was bad – no, maybe that’s impossible, because it was awful in every way. Its terribleness was absolutely astonishing.

Since then, I’ve searched online for people who agree with me on this. There are many, but they seem to be outnumbered by those who loved the movie (at least, online). The movie’s box office hasn’t recouped its cost, and it’s considered a flop in that sense, although it’s gotten rave reviews from critics, and a slew of awards and nominations:

At the 31st Critics’ Choice Awards, it won three awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It was also nominated for nine awards at the 83rd Golden Globes, receiving the most nominations of any film that year and winning four, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. The film also became the most-nominated film in the history of the Screen Actors Guild at the 32nd Actor Awards, with a record-breaking seven nominations. At the 79th British Academy Film Awards, it led the nominations with fourteen overall, winning six, including Best Film and Best Director. Additionally, the film received thirteen nominations at the 98th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and four acting nominations (for del Toro, DiCaprio, Penn, and Taylor), the second-most of any film that year.

Let me repeat that it wasn’t just that I didn’t care for the film. It was that it was deeply offensive, stupid, chaotic, ugly, and boring all at once. It made me and my friend recoil in a combination of revulsion plus embarrassment that anyone would write such a thing, film such a thing, direct such a thing, act in such a thing. It was repellent within the first five minutes, with a sexual scene so outlandish and distasteful and preposterous that it seemed the goal was to offend everything and everybody.

Before I saw the film I had looked it up and learned the very general outline of the plot although no details. I knew it was about 60s-style revolutionaries but set much later in time, and that after the first forty minutes or so it advanced about sixteen years into the future – which would bring it more or less to today’s present. But when I saw the opening minutes I couldn’t figure out what the makeup department was going to do when these characters are supposed to be sixteen years older, because they already looked long in the tooth (DiCaprio is now fifty-one – a bit old for a revolutionary – and Sean Penn is sixty-five, past retirement age for a colonel, which is the role he plays). I didn’t end up sticking around to see the part of the film where they’re supposed to become sixteen years older, but I’ve read that the movie makes no attempt whatsoever to age them.

I guess that’s one way to deal with it. But it’s a very minor quibble indeed in a movie so very bad.

Prior to seeing the movie I had also read that one of the main characters, a black female revolutionary, was scripted in a demeaning and cliched way that was aggressively hyper-sexualized. I figured this was just one of those overreactions by the politically woke. Well, I’m here to say that it was not an overreaction. If anything, the criticism was an understatement.

The acting seemed ludicrous to me although it’s been highly-praised – over the top except for DiCaprio, who looked to be on tranquilizers (at least during the portion I watched), and cartoonish and cliched, and yet without a satiric edge that would make that approach all right. I read that the film is supposed to be some sort of satire, some sort of comedy, but there wasn’t even a hint of that perspective in the part I saw.

It was as though the denizens of the future world of Idiocracy had made a movie.

One of the things that struck me almost as soon as the Sean Penn character appeared was that he was supposed to make the viewer recall the Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper character in Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. And sure enough – at least, according to Google’s AI – “The character Colonel Steven J. ‘Lockjaw’ (played by Sean Penn in the 2025 film One Battle After Another) is described as a deliberate homage to Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove.”

That doesn’t even begin to redeem the film. All of the characters are offputting and deeply unlikable, whether they’re on the political left or right, although of course this being today’s Hollywood the ones on the right are even more evil and awful (and white) than the ones on the left. But who on earth wants to watch a two hour and forty minute movie with such characters and such action?

And it stands an excellent chance of getting the Oscar for Best Picture. Consider yourselves warned.

Just for fun, though, here’s one of my very favorite scenes from Dr. Strangelove. It features the Jack D. Ripper character, played by Sterling Hayden. He’s good, but it’s the brilliant Peter Sellers who shines here in one of his three roles in the film, that of RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake. The ever-growing panic in Sellers’ eyes combined with his efforts at exquisite British politeness in the face of the utterly mad and terribly dangerous Ripper never fails to get me with its edgy humor:

[NOTE: Here are some people who agree with me about the film.]

The post One movie after another appeared first on The New Neo.

I learned a few things from reading Duvall’s Wiki entry just now. He was married four times, the last time to an Argentinian woman about forty years younger than he. He also was adept at the tango. For some reason, that last fact surprise me:

In 2005, Duvall married his fourth wife, Luciana Pedraza, granddaughter of Argentine aviation pioneer Susana Ferrari Billinghurst. He met Pedraza in Argentina, recalling, “The flower shop was closed, so I went to the bakery. If the flower shop had been open, I never would’ve met her.” Both were born on January 5, though Duvall was 41 years older. They had been together since 1997. He produced, directed, and acted with her in Assassination Tango (2002), much of which was filmed in Buenos Aires. Duvall was known as a skilled Argentine tango dancer and maintained tango studios in both Argentina and the United States.

RIP.

[ADDENDUM: Please see this post on my own attempts to learn to tango.]

The post RIP Robert Duvall, 95 appeared first on The New Neo.

I haven’t seen a single movie that came out in 2025. If you have any nominations for the “best” list, be my guest.

But I was thinking – what are my ten favorite movies of all time? That’s a difficult task, but a lot more fun. So here they are, in no particular order:

(1) Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968). Saw it in a movie theater when it came out; wide-screen. Immediately loved it and still do today. An inspired idea to cast actual teenagers in the lead roles, but it wouldn’t have worked so well if these particular teenagers hadn’t been excellent actors and physically beautiful. I cried all the way through it and still do.

(2) Groundhog Day (1993). Funny, poignant, and ultimately philosophical. I’ve written about this film many times on the blog.

(3) The Lives of Others (2006). Brilliant reflection on life in East Germany under surveillance and the constant threat of surveillance.

(4) Wuthering Heights (1939). It’s schmaltzy, it doesn’t follow the book much and softens the Heathcliff character a great deal, but Olivier is young and riveting and the music gives me chills.

(5) The Wizard of Oz (1939). Magical, then and now. As a child, I felt the change to Oz and color film was the best thing ever, and Ray Bolger’s dancing wasn’t far behind. Did I appreciate Judy Garland’s phenomenal singing? Probably not. But I do now.

(6) The Great Escape (1963). Saw it in a movie theater when it first came out. I was old enough to understand and appreciate it (including the male pulchritude on display) but young enough to be shocked at the ending.

(7) Ballad of a Soldier (1959). A Russian movie, it came to this country during the Khrushchev “thaw.” A relative took me to see it – in black-and-white and with English subtitles – in a Manhattan movie “art” theater. It remains extraordinarily touching. Another one that makes me cry and cry.

(8) The Sixth Sense (1999). Yes, it’s probably gimmicky. But what a twist! Best twist ever.

(9) Some Like It Hot (1959). Another film I saw in a movie theater when first released, and I was almost undoubtedly too young for it. But it’s one of the funniest movies of all time, and I got the humor – for the most part.

(10) Marriage Italian Style (1964) (note: not Divorce Italian Style). Loren and Mastroianni. Do not – I repeat, do not – get the dubbed version; only the subtitled version. Loren is at her funniest and yet most moving. Mastroianni does what he does best: playing the charming heel. All wrapped up in a satisfying plot.

I can easily think of others to add, perhaps just as worthy. But that’s my first take, and I’ll leave it.

Note what’s left out: Citizen Kane and The Godfather, both of which leave me cold. Gone With the Wind, which has its pluses but just isn’t a favorite for me. 2001 definitely might have made it, but probably belongs somewhere in the top twenty instead. Same with Rebecca, Jane Eyre, and Splendor In the Grass. Nothing in the Star Wars genre would ever make the cut; I saw the original in an LA movie theater with the sound cranked up to painful heights, and otherwise it bored me tremendously. I have a distinct fondness for Scorsese’s After Hours, but again it probably should be in my top twenty rather than top ten.

The post The ten best movies of 2025 appeared first on The New Neo.

Family friends told The Times that Rob and Nick Reiner got into an argument Saturday evening at a party at Conan O’Brien’s home and that many people noticed Nick acting strangely at the party.

Nick Reiner, who had struggled with addiction for years, was living in a guesthouse on his parents’ property, family friends told The Times, and his mother had become increasingly concerned about his mental health in recent weeks.

The family friends, who did not want to be identified because of the nature of the crime, said that the Reiners’ daughter found her parents Sunday afternoon.

What a terrible terrible situation for the daughter – not just finding the carnage, but losing nearly her entire family (there is one other surviving brother as well as a stepsister) in one fell swoop.

Also:

By 2015, he had gotten clean, working with his father on “Being Charlie,” a semi-autobiographical film about addiction and recovery. Rob Reiner directed and Nick co-wrote the film about a successful actor with political ambitions and a son addicted to drugs.

At the time of the premiere, The Times reported that Rob Reiner and his wife at their worst moments “wondered if there was an end in sight, and whether it would be the tragic one that a voice in the back of their heads kept telling them was coming.”

It’s the tragic one – very tragic. RIP.

Friends were not all that surprised:

Rob Reiner’s son Nick was notorious for being violent, and those around him “instantly knew’’ he was the one who allegedly murdered his parents, friends, and neighbors, told The Post on Monday.

“This is not the first time their son has been violent,’’ a longtime neighbor of the victims said of Nick Reiner, 32, who is charged with fatally slitting the throats of his parents in the family’s Los Angeles mansion. …

A former classmate of Nick’s told The Post that the suspect — who had been in and out of rehab since age 15 — has “always been troubled’’ and that she “instantly knew it was him’’ when she heard the news.

Depressing. So many families have a child lost to drugs, and the struggle can seem endless. Fortunately, they don’t all end up this way.

[NOTE: And yes, Trump chimed in with an offensive take on the event. Although he called the murders “a very sad thing” and wished that they “rest in peace,” he also took the occasion to rail against Reiner’s TDS (which the man definitely had) and to suggest it somehow contributed to his murder. This seems absurd and stupid, although it’s not the first time and probably not the last that it’s true of some of Trump’s utterances.]

The post The Reiner murders appeared first on The New Neo.

Originally conceived by George Orwell as a satirical allegory for the Russian Revolution and the subsequent struggles of the USSR under the rule of Joseph Stalin, Animal Farm’s political ire is redirected in this lively CG-animated adaptation directed by Andy Serkis. Rather than Stalinism, Serkis takes aim at greed, rapacious consumerism and corporate corruption and malfeasance. There’s also a timely dig at populist political movements.

I’ll fix that for you: “Originally a satirical allegory for the evils and lies of Communism, the Russian Revolution, and the subsequent struggles of the USSR under the rule of Joseph Stalin, Animal Farm’s political ire is perverted in this lively CG-animated adaptation directed by Andy Serkis. Rather than Stalinism, Serkis takes aim at its opposite, capitalism, emphasizing the greed, consumerism and corporate corruption that can accompany it. There’s also a dig at populist political movements such as Trump’s.”

More from the review:

But while it may struggle to satisfy diehard Orwell purists, the film still takes a political stance and delivers an emphatic message celebrating equality and the power of the collective – albeit one which permits us a little more hope than was present in Orwell’s 1945 novella.

I’ll fix that for you: “But while it should outrage those who’ve read the Orwell original, the film still takes a political stance and delivers an emphatic message celebrating equality and the power of the collective, things the original work mocked as propagandist lies that the left always betrays. This gives present-day leftists a little more hope than was present in Orwell’s 1945 novella.”

ADDENDUM: there’s an odd contradiction in Orwell, because he was a lifelong socialist and yet he criticized Communism, which is a form of socialism. I wrote about that in this post.

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