NOVAE MILITIAE

The web site known as rottentomatoes.com gave the movie Gods and Generals  a 9% "fresh" rating.  In other words, the critics who post thereon hated the movie.  Just hated it.  

Now, I'll admit that the acting in the movie was inconsistent, and that it sometimes lapsed into sentimentality.  But consider the fact that it featured Academy Award winner Robert Duvall as Robert E. Lee (to whom that actor is related) and the noted stage actor Steven Lang who played Stonewall Jackson, whose performance was not too far removed from that of Mel Gibson in Braveheart.   A  review over at lewrockwell.com puts it's finger on the matter:  http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/2005/May2005/0505Dark.html . Justified criticisms of the movie aside, it is clear that the rotten reviewers at rottentomatoes.com hated it because it portrayed the issue in a historically accurate light, which being translated means a sympathetic account of the Southern cause.  They could not bring themselves to consider the movie's strong points, which were aplenty.  They know nothing besides modernism and the soul-destroying capitalism they deride, from which they hypocritically line their pockets.

They could be the mouthpiece of either the "conservative" George Will or the "liberal" Ted Kennedy,  I cannot tell.  (Hint: Will is not a true conservative and Kennedy is not a true liberal.)   What pathetic, miserable, benighted and morally compromised creatures are the soulless apologists of Yankeedom, whether of the liberal or "conservative" variety.  They don't come anywhere close to 9% "fresh" rating.