Not having a dachshund nearby, Nathan and I were faced with a dilemma. Between Mr. Shawn Levy’s four hour director’s cut of Real Steel, the shot for shot remake of The Thing, which is also a prequel and a very boring Vietnam documentary on the life of William Colby The Man Noboby Knew, we were faced with (gulp) choice. Like pretty much everybody, I don’t like responsibility. They created a whole system of government to take care of this problem, goddammit! This is why we vote for the lesser of two evils: so they can decide among the lesser of three evils.

Sadly Obama was nowhere around to save us, Obama, save us, so it was up to me. Why do I hate taking responsibility? Well, it’s your fault, actually (see what I did there?). If the movie, restaurant, social program or war turns out to be a bad idea, you’re going to blame me. This isn’t fair, since it would mean I knew that the girlfriend, tax rebate, television show, or war was a bad idea before I did it anyway, which would in turn mean that I was both all-knowing, and extremely stupid. Ah, I see. That is what you were thinking.

So what do I do? I let the randomizer on my phone make the decision for me. Of course being omniscient, I also know what it’s going to say, but the illusion helps me from being harassed at parties. Incidentally, you’re going to die in 2034. Of future disease.

When the little blue screen popped up:

Come on, I don’t have time to write in the entire title of the movie.

frankly, I was a little disappointed. I had just flown 9000 miles to Los Angeles for the express purpose of seeing a movie with Nathan, and now, thanks to the randomizer, it was going to be an art film that really had no business being released. The whole point of seeing going to the movies with Nathan in the first place is to have a conversation to keep you entertained during the kind of movies that Nathan and I go to see. Yes, it’s irritating, but we’re the pinch on the arm that keeps you distracted from the pain of the missing limb that is say, Green Hornet, or Dragonball Evolution.

You’re welcome.

Feeling that pang of dread that maybe we should go two out of three on the randomizer, I, again, with my all knowingness, realized that I already knew what it would say, or rather I knew that I wouldn’t do it, knowing what it would say, which was another movie that I would have more fun at. Being all powerful is more complicated that you might initially realize. I should have trusted my own god-like powers. That’s technically incorrect. My own god powers. The Man Nobody Knew had a great deal more inanity, characters acting baffled by their own dialog and comic horror than any film from Mr. Shawn Levy. Well not Cheaper By The Dozen, but you get the idea.

TMNK is a documentary about the life of Mr. William Colby, who presided over the CIA during the Vietnam war, as well as the various revelatory bits during the Ford administration. The problem being that it is a documentary made by his son, which gives it one of two directions to go: a kid with an axe to grind, or a home movie. Thank God (me) that he went for the latter. Why, you might ask, would I want to see a home movie, and a 1 hour 45 minute one at that? That’s easy: home movies are dull, pedantic and small. How else would you want to treat the subject of Vietnam?

Having been trapped in an arthouse cinema, we were forced to watch various arthouse trailers, one of which was for an awful looking film attempting to comically recreate Sarkozy’s rise to power. It was the trailer cutter’s job to find all the funny bits, and they, well, succeeded. Ahem. I soon realized that TMNK was what that film should have been: an epic failure to notice what the hell was going on in real life. In interviewing his mom, who admits ‘We had to face that we bore some small responsibility’, the narrator, Colby’s son, explains that the fact that his father’s absence during the war ‘was tough on my mother. She was a good woman.’

Also, one million people died.

Look! A ‘$’!

And yes, I did say that, very loudly, in the cinema. The audience of four did not object, which I take as a sign to keep on doing it. You’re welcome.

I suspect that there have been many films of this nature, what can only be called the subconscious documentary, films which reveal more about the filmmaker than the subject matter, and thereby really reveal more about the subject matter. His insider access, which includes Mr. Donald Rumsfeld, Mr. Edwark Luttwak and Mr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, is impressive, but more to the point, embarrassing: they simply speak of their various brilliant strategies, the mistakes that those damned Kennedy brothers made, and all the brilliant tactics employed by Mr. Colby et. al., to well, you know, win Vietnam.

Sorry. You may not have heard. If you see this film, and have not read a book in the last twenty years, you will genuinely come away with the impression that Vietnam is planted firmly in the US success column. Way to go! This is the Inglorious Basterds documentary, whose (admittedly subconscious) point is very clear: I am not the only one who likes to avoid responsibility.

Hey, it was the 1960s. If only they had the randomizer:

…

Ah, well.