i just watched “a house of dynamite” and it’s the latest in a string of defense, intelligence, and military themed thrillers where my overwhelming reaction is sadness for a lost world, a sense the film is suspended in an alt-timeline. 1/

this film depicts the worst possible events, but its protagonists are basically sane and decent. all the iconography of patriotism, for me often an effective filmic device, i’ve sometimes been quite the nationalist, hits different. like grief. /fin