A group of films, ranging from art-house gems to big blockbusters, that deserve a fresh look.

Moviegoing is at a strange, tenuous moment. With pandemic fears still circulating, and many studios still delaying their films’ release dates, not everyone is comfortable going back to theaters yet. But this is also a time of extraordinary at-home accessibility for cinema, with many thousands of titles available to stream, or digitally rent and buy, every day. So I’ve returned to a topic that sustained me during 2020’s most isolated moments: celebrating underrated and unique movies in need of wider appreciation. The following 26 films cross every genre and range from art-house to blockbuster. They were all unappreciated by critics or audiences on release and deserve a fresh look.

Used Cars (1980, directed by Robert Zemeckis)

Not long before he hit it big with the blockbusters Romancing the Stone and Back to the Future, Robert Zemeckis made this anarchic black comedy about the cutthroat world of used-car sales, starring Kurt Russell as a dealer trying to stay one step ahead of catastrophe. It also features a wonderful dual performance by Jack Warden, who plays both the kindly owner of one dealership and his evil archrival across town. The film was a flop on release, probably because its mix of bleak humor and Looney Tunes–style madcap action was too caustic for audiences. Zemeckis later found the right balance in hits such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but his brilliant, high-speed style of storytelling is already on display here.

Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982, directed by Tommy Lee Wallace)

This entry in the never-ending Halloween horror series took a chance by not featuring the popular serial-killer antagonist Michael Myers, who had anchored previous films. The movie was intended to turn the franchise into an anthology of sorts, an ambitious idea that unfortunately didn’t pan out. Though its box-office underperformance led to Myers’s return in Halloween IV, this installment shouldn’t be overlooked. Season of the Witch is a weird ’80s gem, a mix of folktale and high-tech horror about a company selling haunted children’s masks. Written and directed by Tommy Lee Wallace (a longtime collaborator of Halloween director John Carpenter), the film’s scares touch on ancient witchcraft and computer chips made out of Stonehenge fragments. The movie also takes some trenchant digs at TV advertising and emphasizes an odd and foreboding atmosphere over cheap shocks.

Dune (1984, directed by David Lynch)

Before Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel arrives in theaters this fall, David Lynch’s attempt at the material is worth revisiting, even though it was a critical and box-office calamity. Lynch’s failures are clear: He packed far too much material into one feature, struggled to match the broad scope of Herbert’s world building, and made sometimes baffling narrative leaps to abridge his plot. (Villeneuve has apparently addressed this issue in his version by covering only the first half of the book.) But the 1984 version also has bold and exciting design choices, a hypnotic score by Toto, and brassy performances by a wild ensemble that includes Kyle MacLachlan, Patrick Stewart, and Sting. Lynch has practically disowned the film, but some images in Dune are as unforgettable as those in his best-regarded works.

Ishtar (1987, directed by Elaine May)

Elaine May’s most recent film as a director was such a colossal flop that its name became synonymous with bad movies. Gary Larson, the Far Side cartoonist, once joked that it would be the only option at “Hell’s Video Store.” The criticism was largely undeserved. Ishtar is a complicated, messy work, but it was tarred by bad press about its reportedly egotistical stars, Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman, and its inflated budget. Even Larson later confessed that he’d been entertained by the film. Sure, the latter half gets lost in the convoluted details of the dramatic political caper involving a power struggle in a fictional Middle Eastern country that Chuck (Hoffman) and Lyle (Beatty) are wrapped up in. But the first half, chronicling their travails as an unpopular singing duo in New York, is shaggy comic gold.

Poetic Justice (1993, directed by John Singleton)

After his Oscar-nominated debut Boyz n the Hood, the wunderkind director Singleton had immense hype to live up to. In his follow-up, he tried to tell a softer, less polemical tale of life in his neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles. Whereas Boyz n the Hood followed the lives of three men, Poetic Justice’s protagonist is a woman, Justice (Janet Jackson). Recovering from the tragic death of her boyfriend, she embarks on a spur-of-the-moment road trip with the flirty postal clerk Lucky (Tupac Shakur). Poetic Justice was a solid box-office performer, but critics mostly dismissed it at the time. Still, it’s a worthy entry in Singleton’s oeuvre. The movie has a romantic twist and offers a loving but critical meditation on Black masculinity in the early ’90s from a female perspective.

Clifford (1994, directed by Paul Flaherty)

Released as a star vehicle for the comedian Martin Short, Clifford was widely derided in 1994—not because it’s unfunny, but because it’s so deeply weird. Short, who was in his 40s at the time, plays Clifford, a 10-year-old boy with a penchant for mischief and an intense fixation on a fictional theme park named “Dinosaur World.” Dumped by his exhausted parents on his uncle, Martin (Charles Grodin), for a weekend, Clifford proceeds to ruin his caretaker’s life in an effort to get to Dinosaur World, gleefully sabotaging his career and his love life, and getting him arrested. Short’s performance is wonderfully peculiar, never quite acknowledging the strangeness of his casting. Grodin, a master of playing frustration on-screen, is a perfect foil.

The Glass Shield (1994, directed by Charles Burnett)

The film that should have launched Burnett to wider success, The Glass Shield is a melodrama about police corruption that feels years ahead of its time, full of incisive observations about institutional rot in the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. Burnett is best known for brilliant independent works such as Killer of Sheep (a landmark art film of the 1970s) and To Sleep With Anger (an incredible dark fable of Black family life). Though The Glass Shield was mostly ignored on release, it deserves revisiting. Michael Boatman plays the first Black recruit at the LASD, who finds allyship with the only female deputy (Lori Petty) but struggles to balance his commitment to the job with the racism he witnesses. With clear eyes, Burnett renders the verdict that changing a broken system from within is practically impossible.

Dead Presidents (1995, directed by Albert and Allen Hughes)

One of the few films to touch on the experiences of Black servicemen in the Vietnam War, the Hughes brothers’ follow-up to their shocking debut, Menace II Society, is an unfairly unheralded work. It follows Anthony Curtis (Larenz Tate), a high-school graduate who enlists in the Marines to avoid college. After tours marked by death and atrocities, he returns to the Bronx unable to readjust to normal life and gets embroiled in a plot to rob a bank truck. The Hughes brothers are unflinching storytellers, and the material in Dead Presidents is often graphic and unsettling, but it’s in service of a pointed tale of people left behind by their own country, and the drastic measures they take in response.

Trouble Every Day (2001, directed by Claire Denis)

A bloody, outré work from one of France’s finest auteurs, Trouble Every Day was greeted with revulsion by critics on release, especially because it followed Denis’s highly acclaimed Beau Travail. The only entry in her filmography that explicitly belongs to the horror genre, Trouble Every Day follows a man (Vincent Gallo) who travels to Paris seeking out a doctor (Alex Descas) who is guarding a dark secret—his wife (Béatrice Dalle) is a cannibal. Denis is concerned with how people’s suppressed sexual impulses connect to acts of violence—an idea present in many vampire or werewolf movies—but her film is also deeply human, filled with tender characterization alongside shocking gore.

Psycho (1998, directed by Gus Van Sant)

Van Sant’s big-budget follow-up to the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting completely baffled critics and audiences: a shot-for-shot remake of one of the most famous films of all time, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Given that sequences from the original masterpiece of horror—the shower scene, the attack on the stairs—are burned into the brain of any cinema fan, it was hard to understand Van Sant’s decision to redo the film, in color, with a new cast including Vince Vaughn as the disturbed motel owner Norman Bates and Anne Heche as the doomed Marion Crane. But the weird magic of the film is in the tiny changes Van Sant makes to certain sequences, the strange visual interpolations he weaves in, and the way he reconceives unforgettable images. It’s a blockbuster art project of sorts, a true Hollywood rarity.

Forces of Nature (1999, directed by Bronwen Hughes)

From a decade defined by romantic comedies and A-list actresses such as Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, and Drew Barrymore, Forces of Nature is an odd outlier, a comedy presented as a whirlwind romance that transforms into something quite different. It features Sandra Bullock, who was often drawn to rom-coms with an edge (such as While You Were Sleeping or Practical Magic), and Ben Affleck, who was enjoying his newfound stardom post-Armageddon. But this movie is all about flirtation and temptation, throwing the tempestuous Sarah (Bullock) and the soon-to-be-married Ben (Affleck) together on an impromptu road trip after their flight is canceled. The visual aesthetic is busy and washed-out, straight out of MTV, but the storytelling is mature, taking Sarah and Ben’s relationship in unexpected directions as they wind across the country wondering whether fate is trying to tell them to get together.

But I’m a Cheerleader (1999, directed by Jamie Babbit)

Something of a cult classic now, But I’m a Cheerleader was unfairly jeered on release as a John Waters knockoff. Babbit’s coming-of-age lesbian comedy combines Waters’s kitsch aesthetic with her own ’90s style, telling a knowing and witty story of the 17-year-old Megan (Natasha Lyonne) being sent to a conversion-therapy camp. There isn’t much subtext to But I’m a Cheerleader—the counselors and fellow campers Megan encounters all wear their insecurities openly—but the screenplay crackles with surreality, Babbit’s colorful visual approach is memorable, and Lyonne’s central performance is one of the best of her career.

Jason X (2001, directed by Jim Isaac)

By the 2000s, the major slasher franchises—Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th—had long passed their commercial apex, and some were embarking on reboots and remakes to try to recharge their brand. But Friday the 13th went in a different, far sillier direction with Jason X, the 10th installment in the series revolving around the lumbering killer Jason Voorhees. Although most Friday the 13th movies are set at summer camp, Jason X takes place in the far future, where a cryogenically frozen Jason is awoken to rampage on a spaceship. It’s a goofy yet self-aware film, a quasi-comedy that revels in how far it has strayed from the formula but is filled with nerdy nods for superfans, including an over-the-top cameo from the master filmmaker David Cronenberg.

Blood Work (2002, directed by Clint Eastwood)

In between his Best Picture–winning classics Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby, Clint Eastwood churned out eight solid-to-great films—all mid-budget dramas, and all but two based on best-selling novels. One of the least loved is Blood Work, a fun, gritty thriller adapted from a Michael Connelly book. It stars Eastwood as a retired FBI agent recovering from a heart transplant who tries to solve the murder of the woman whose heart he received. It’s an appreciably silly metaphor for Eastwood to sink his teeth into; he was 72 when the film came out, and it’s very much a tale of an over-the-hill legend trying to cling to his fading days of glory. The grandest irony is that Eastwood would go on to make films for another two decades—and has shown no signs of stopping yet.

In Her Shoes (2005, directed by Curtis Hanson)

A terrific sibling dramedy starring Toni Collette, Cameron Diaz, and Shirley MacLaine, In Her Shoes is that Hollywood anomaly—a major film mostly focused on the relationships between well-drawn female characters. Directed by Hanson, who was coming off a major-hit streak with L.A. Confidential, Wonder Boys, and 8 Mile, In Her Shoes is a lightweight that isn’t too concerned with wringing laughs out of the audience, which is why it stuck out on release (as cinemas were still dominated by fratty, gross humor). Collette and Diaz give fantastic performances as sisters with little in common, struggling to heal a rift that opens near the beginning of the film; Hanson and screenwriter Susannah Grant chart their path to reconciliation with care and grace.

The Skeleton Key (2005, directed by Iain Softley)

My favorite kind of horror movie is one that derives most of its scares from the atmosphere of an unusual location. The Skeleton Key, a supernatural thriller starring Kate Hudson and Gena Rowlands, is set on an isolated plantation home in southern Louisiana, and so much of the fun is the detail put into its creepy production design, which evokes a place laden with dark secrets. Hudson plays a former hospice aide who takes a job at the plantation caring for its aging owners, but as she explores their crumbling abode, she discovers its evil history, and Softley builds out a clever mystery with pointed themes that unsettles without resorting to cheap jump scares.

Aeon Flux (2005, directed by Karyn Kusama)

Undoubtedly one of the oddest blockbusters ever produced by a major studio, Kusama’s adaptation of the cult ’90s MTV series was critically derided and somewhat disowned by its director, who said it had been reedited for commercial appeal. If that’s the case, her cut must have been unimaginably bizarre, because the final version is a visually giddy, borderline-incomprehensible sci-fi actioner loaded with intriguing ideas of how our utopian future could go awry. Charlize Theron stars as the raven-haired, ultra-athletic warrior fighting to take down her future government; she eventually uncovers a conspiracy that helps explain both the cloistered world she lives in and the hazy dreams she has of another life in the distant past. Kusama has made better movies, such as Girlfight and The Invitation, but even her biggest flop is overflowing with more cool ideas than most summer tentpole releases.

Déjà Vu (2006, directed by Tony Scott)

In his career, the high-octane master Tony Scott made five terrific thrillers with Denzel Washington. Initially Déjà Vu seems like a fairly routine collaboration, following the ATF agent Douglas Carlin, who’s trying to unravel the mystery of a bomb attack on a New Orleans ferry. Washington is playing the kind of dogged blue-collar character he often inhabits, but Déjà Vu takes a surprising sci-fi turn when he’s introduced to an FBI team that, through magical surveillance technology, has opened a window into the past. As Carlin uses this technology to try to solve the crime, the film becomes a sort of high-tech Vertigo in which Carlin is haunted by the sight of a tragedy he can’t undo. Given that the movie is directed by Scott, it’s also filled with great car chases and explosive action.

Morning Glory (2010, directed by Roger Michell)

The workplace-comedy genre is mostly confined to television at this point, but Michell’s Morning Glory is a recent, overlooked cinematic example that’s filled with stars and propelled by peppy humor. Rachel McAdams plays a harried young producer named Becky Fuller who’s asked to turn around a network’s low-rated morning show; she conspires to hire the grizzled newscaster Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), pairing him with the long-suffering morning host Colleen Peck (Diane Keaton). Though the film sprinkles in romance and zany jokes, it’s focused on the relationship between Fuller and Pomeroy, whose distrust for each other evolves into mutual respect. Ford’s epically grumpy performance makes that eventual connection feel triumphant.

Killing Them Softly (2012, directed by Andrew Dominik)

One of few movies to have gotten an “F” CinemaScore from audiences, Killing Them Softly is a grim adult drama based on the crime novel Cogan’s Trade by George V. Higgins. Although the film was billed as a thriller about an assassin (Brad Pitt), it spends the most time with criminals who are much less cool. The absence of glitzy thrills may not appeal to as wide of an audience, but the movie’s grittiness makes for a standout viewing experience. Ben Mendelsohn and Scoot McNairy play disheveled lowlifes who rob the wrong poker game, Pitt and James Gandolfini are the dispassionate hit men sent in to clean up the mess, and Ray Liotta is incredible as a nervy Mafia middleman. Set during the 2008 financial crisis and presidential election, Killing Them Softly brilliantly highlights the corruption in both America’s economic system and its criminal enterprises.

Lockout (2012, directed by Stephen Saint Leger and James Mather)

A delightful piece of sci-fi trash from the French production company EuropaCorp, Lockout is essentially Escape From New York set on a space station. In fact, the plot is similar enough that the latter film’s director, John Carpenter, successfully sued for plagiarism in a French court. Still, Saint Leger and Mather’s take on the story is worth watching. The fun, cheap thriller follows an ex-CIA operative (Guy Pearce) trying to rescue the president’s daughter (Maggie Grace) from a space prison in exchange for his freedom, after being jailed for a crime he didn’t commit. Pearce has a joyous time as the wisecracking, cigarette-smoking antihero, and Joe Gilgun gives a great villainous performance as the frightening inmate holding the president’s daughter hostage.

Hotel Transylvania (2012, directed by Genndy Tartakovsky)

In this gag-heavy, horror-themed film, the director Tartakovsky’s skill in rendering physical comedy and its lead actor Adam Sandler’s love for Borscht Belt humor combine to spectacular effect. The Hotel Transylvania franchise has largely been ignored by critics, perhaps because they underestimated its star, Sandler (who plays Count Dracula as a magnanimous hotel owner), and his crew of collaborators, including Kevin James, David Spade, and Andy Samberg. But the series’s first three movies, directed by one of animation’s modern geniuses, bear the same deftness that make Tartakovsky’s other efforts, such as Dexter’s Laboratory and Samurai Jack, so strong. The third, cruise-ship-centric entry is my favorite.

By the Sea (2015, directed by Angelina Jolie)

A seemingly autobiographical project written, directed by, and starring Jolie, By the Sea centers on a couple vacationing in France whose marriage is on the rocks. (​​She has said that it was not based on real life.) The movie, which co-stars Jolie’s husband at the time (Brad Pitt), was initially dismissed as a vanity project. But after Pitt and Jolie’s separation (which they announced just a year after the movie’s release), the film’s tone takes on a new weightiness. Jolie is borrowing from ’60s and ’70s European art cinema—particularly Éric Rohmer—but the sad, angry undercurrent between the characters gives the entire work a fascinating edge.

Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (2018, directed by Aaron Horvath and Peter Rida Michail)

I decided to watch Teen Titans Go! To the Movies on a whim while bored on a plane. I had never seen the children’s cartoon series that it’s inspired by—I really didn’t know much about the Teen Titans at all. It doesn’t matter. The film is the most effective cinematic spoof of the never-ending superhero trend I’ve ever seen. It’s a raucous, in-joke-laden satire of the movie business that makes time for plenty of witty musical numbers and action sequences. The plot follows Batman’s sidekick, Robin, and his teenage hero friends as they try to persuade Hollywood to make a movie about them, but it’s really a sharp critique of how the film world revolves around comic books now. The movie actually got solid reviews on release—but it deserves to be seen as more than just kids’ entertainment.

Plus One (2019, directed by Jeff Chan and Andrew Rhymer)

One of the best romantic comedies in a decade that saw the genre flounder in theaters, Plus One is just waiting to be discovered by a bigger audience. The setup is clean: Longtime friends Alice (Maya Erskine) and Ben (Jack Quaid) agree to be each other’s dates to every single wedding they’re invited to, as a cure for their loneliness. Romance ensues, and then hurt feelings, and complicated conversations, and finally more romance in a winning, acerbic script that carries out every turn with ease. Quaid is a charming cad, but Erskine is the real star, never letting Alice become an easy stereotype of the 20-something sad sack looking to have it all.

The Empty Man (2020, directed by David Prior)

Released at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Empty Man was essentially dumped by its distributor into vacant theaters. Still, the quiet horror film eventually found an audience—a testament to its quality. The superb opening sequence, which could function as a short film in its own right, sets out the spooky particulars of the unseen “Empty Man,” which possesses its victims. Then the movie shifts into a conspiracy thriller, following a former detective whose efforts to unravel a bizarre set of deaths lead him to a cult that calls to mind many of today’s toxic online groups. Prior’s debut film is wild, woolly, and daring, and deserves all the attention it’s received from a small but vocal group of fans.

http://www.maintitles.net/reviews/blue-thunder/

With the release of Rubinstein’s praised WarGames, it was time for me to go back to the roots and rediscover the score I knew his name off. Popular eighties director John Badham had a knack for the synthesized action score. No wonder he searched for the composers who could get the job done. Arthur B. Rubinstein and Hans Zimmer are the two most common used composers by the director. Yet it is weird to discover that in the same year the orchestral WarGames and the synthesized Blue Thunder were created.

Instrumental, electronic synthesized action music can all work in a movie about a modern helicopter, on disc though it doesn’t always do the trick. Blue Thunder has a very good (read very fitting and cool) main theme and occasionally some bright spots. But we must be honest, this score sounds really cheap. It sometimes even drives me nuts. The first track “Main Title / Crook Dusting” perhaps explains it all. The rise of the main theme, and the continuation of the action droning that works wonderfully well in the movie, but on disc it ain’t that pretty.

Further think of Stakeout as you listen to “Nam Flashback” because it carries the same beat and dreary tone. I sometimes wonder if it’s not exactly the same. “Sanity Check” uses a more rhythmic (with added bells) version of the main theme while “Kate’s Theme” is carrying a somber piano note. All you need to hear are “Night Search”, “Sunrise at Pinkville” and “Pinkville Strafing Run” to realize that this score works inside the movie (offering a certain nostalgic look of the movie) but doesn’t give you a truly satisfying feeling on disc. The only thing to remember is the great main theme representing the chopper passing by for the first time.

The more playful (yet that doesn’t make it pretty) “Follow my Leader” and the droning of track 2 in “Murphy’s Nightmare” all lead to “Blue Thunder Ballet”, a track that has the most obnoxious sounds circling around the main theme. “Following the Bad Guys / Thermographics” isn’t better. The unnerving suspenseful sound in “Adios J.A.F.O.” is somewhat enticing, creating an added string sound around the droning that is effectively entertaining.

I’m going to tell you something that is positive. The first minute in “River Chase / Hide and Seek” is probably the best minute of the entire album. The main theme is accompanied by a great action fanfare and it was the one moment besides the theme I always loved. Naturally what follows is more of the same electronic droning we’ve come to expect by now. The final two tracks (bringing the main theme) are solid closers.

But it isn’t enough, this must be said loud and clear. While I appreciate the ideas and the construction of the score, the sound and produced tone of the entire album is not a pretty one. The electronic sound is simply hideous and it makes the average idea sound like a waste of potentially solid music. Rubinstein’s score is surprisingly effective and even entertaining inside the movie, but on disc this doesn’t sound that way at all. The only question is the following, if WarGames received its orchestral rousing affair, why didn’t Blue Thunder? It truly would have made of it a better album.

The last Metroid is in captivity. The galaxy is at peace…

The novel “The Gentle Giants of Ganymede” by James P. Hogan was published for the first time in 1978. It’s the second book of the Giants series following “Inherit the Stars“: these two novels are also included in the omnibus “The Two Moons”.

The spaceship Shapieron is on a mission in the Iscaris system when the star turns nova. The only choice is to leave as soon as possible but one of the on-board systems doesn’t work. The consequence is that once the interstellar propulsion is activated they’ll take a long time to slow down and in this case a long time means millions of years.

After the extraordinary discoveries obout the Lunarians and the subsequent ones on Ganymede that led to the theories about Minerva and the ancient civilizations who lived there, the research in the solar system continue. Things change radically when the presence of a spaceship that turns out to be Ganymean.

“The Gentle Giants of Ganymede” continues the story begun in “Inherit the Stars” and, after the prologue that starts the adventure of the spaceship Shapieron’s crew, this second novel begins with a summary of the first one. For this reason, in theory you can start reading from here but you’d lose a lot of information on the development of the scientific investigation that starts the Giants series.

“Inherit the Stars” was totally focused on the discovery of the Lunarians and the research conducted to solve the mystery of the existence of human beings who were traveling in space 50,000 years ago. In “The Gentle Giants of Ganymede” the tone is a bit different, meaning that it’s also the story of modern humans’ first contact with an alien species.

The encounter with the aliens called Ganymeans is peculiar because the spaceship Shapieron’s crew aren’t conducting a mission of exploration but are trying to return home. They were part of a scientific mission ended in a disaster with the result that outside of the Shapieron during the journey millions of years have passed.

Arrived in the solar system, the Ganymeans find a situation completely different from the one they knew with the Earth inhabited by a civilization alien to them. There are no traces of their species so they find themselves lost in space and time with a spaceship whose interstellar propulsion is malfunctioning and strange aliens as their only possible help.

On this basis, James P. Hogan builds a story that also aims to continue the one began in “Inherit the Stars”. At the end of the first novel, the scientists investigating the Lunarian mystery managed to find answers for the apparent contradictions among the data collected but there were still many questions waiting for answers.

In “The Gentle Giants of Ganymede” the meeting with the Ganymeans spacship Shapieron allows to get more information on the Earth’s prehistory and the ancient events that affect the solar system. At the same time the new investigation leads to more questions because the Ganymeans don’t know what happened in the last millions years.

From this point of view, “The Gentle Giants of Ganymede” is a variant of the first novel in the sense that the investigation about the Lunarians started thanks to the discovery of a 50,000 year-old skeleton on the moon but continues in the second novel, also including the Ganymeans.

Humans and Ganymeans work together by putting together information and resources to fill the holes in the reconstruction of the last twenty million years of the solar system’s history. However, it’s no longer just about an investigation into the past but also the search for a future by the Shapieron’s crew.

In “Inherit the Stars” the very limited character development wasn’t a problem because the novel was focused on the scientific investigation. In “The Gentle Giants of Ganymede” this flaw is more serious because the characters are more important. If James P. Hogan could’ve adequately described the sense of alienation of the Shapieron’s crew, lost in space and time, I think this novel would’ve been extraordinary. Unfortunately, the author didn’t do it.

Concerning the characters, James P. Hogan focuses on the differences between humans and Ganymeans rather than on individual personalities. In the end, the most developed character seems ZORAC, the spaceship Shapieron’s computer. Today we’d call it an artificial intelligence and its presence is crucial in the novel because it acts as a translator between humans and Ganymeans and gives humans a lot of information about its builders.

The story of the Shapieron’s crew and the interpersonal contacts between humans and Ganymeans give the story a bit of pace, however, it tends to be slow. I think that in the end the archaeological science fiction elements are the best part of “The Gentle Giants of Ganymede” and still make it a good novel. If you liked the first book of the Giants series I think you’ll appreciate this one too.

I have played Metroid Dread this week and it’s a really good game, but IT MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL! Here’s why!

The Albigensian Crusade, or Cathar Crusade (1209–1229), was a twenty year military campaign initiated by the Roman Catholic Church to eliminate the heresy of the Cathars of Languedoc.

When Innocent III’s diplomatic and evangelical attempts to roll back Catharism met with limited success, he declared a crusade against Languedoc, offering lands belonging to the schismatics to any French nobleman willing to take up arms to defeat them. The violence led to France’s acquisition of lands with closer cultural and linguistic ties to Catalonia than France. An estimated one million people died during the crusade.

The Albigensian Crusade also had a role in the creation and institutionalization of both the Medieval Inquisition and the Dominican Order, which was created to combat this heresy. Although they succeeded in virtually wiping out the Cathar heresy, the crusade and the Inquisition that followed it represent a major blemish on the Catholic Church’s human rights record.

Origin

The Cathars were especially numerous in what is now western Mediterranean France, then part of the Crown of Aragon. They were also called Albigensians; this is either because of the movement’s presence in and around the city of Albi, or because of the 1176 Church Council held near Albi, which declared the Cathar doctrine heretical. Political control in Languedoc was divided among many local lords and town councils. Before the crusade, there was little fighting in the area, which had a fairly sophisticated polity.

The Roman Catholic Church had long dealt vigorously with strands of Christianity that it considered heretical. However, before the twelfth century, such groups in medieval Europe were organized in small numbers, around wayward preachers or small localized sects. The Cathars of Languedoc represented an alarmingly popular mass movement, a phenomenon that the Church had not countenanced for centuries. In the twelfth century, much of what is now Southern France was converting to Catharism, and the belief was spreading to other areas as well. The Cathars, along with other religious sects of the period such as the Waldensians, appeared in the cities and towns of newly urbanized areas. Although Cathar ideas had not originated in Languedoc, it was there that their theology found its most spectacular success.

On becoming Pope in 1198, Innocent III resolved to deal with the Cathars. He first tried peaceful conversion, but the preachers sent out to return the schismatics to the Roman communion met with little success. Even Saint Dominic succeeded in converting only a handful. The Cathar leadership was protected by powerful nobles, and also by some bishops, who resented papal authority in their sees. In 1204, the Pope suspended the authority of some of those bishops, appointing papal legates to act in his name. In 1206, he sought support for wider action against the Cathars from the nobles of Languedoc. Noblemen who supported Catharism were excommunicated.

The powerful count Raymond VI of Toulouse refused to assist and was excommunicated in May 1207. The pope called upon the French king, Philippe II, to act against those nobles who permitted Catharism, but Philippe declined to act. Count Raymond met with the papal legate, Pierre de Castelnau, in January 1208, and after an angry meeting, Castelnau was murdered the following day. The pope reacted to the murder by issuing a bull declaring a crusade against Languedoc, offering the land of the heretics as a reward for those who participated. This offer of land drew the northern French nobility into conflict with the nobles of the south.

Military campaigns

The military campaigns of the Albigensian Crusade can be divided into several periods. The first, from 1209 to 1215, was a series of great successes for the crusaders in Languedoc. However, in the next phase, between 1215 and 1225, the captured lands were largely lost in a series of revolts and military reverses. The situation turned again following the intervention of the French king, Louis VIII, who joined the crusade in 1226. Although he died in November of that year, the struggle continued under King Louis IX. The area was reconquered by 1229, and the leading nobles made peace. After 1233, the Inquisition, under the leadership of the Domincan Order, was central to crushing what remained of Catharism. Resistance and occasional revolts continued, but Catharism’s days were numbered. Military action ceased in 1255.

In the end, the Albigensian Crusade is estimated to have killed 1 million people, not only Cathars but a significant portion of the general population of southern France.

Initial success 1209 to 1215

By mid 1209, after the murder of Innocent’s legate and the issuing of the pope’s bull declaring the crusade against the Cathars, around 10,000 crusaders had gathered in Lyon, before marching south. In June, Raymond of Toulouse, recognizing the disaster at hand, finally promised to act against the Cathars, and his excommunication was lifted. The crusaders turned towards Montpellier and the lands of Raymond-Roger de Trencavel, aiming for the Cathar communities around Albi and Carcassonne. Like Raymond of Toulouse, Raymond-Roger sought an accommodation with the crusaders, but he was refused a meeting and raced back to Carcassonne to prepare his defenses.

In July, the crusaders captured the small village of Servian and headed for Béziers, arriving on July 21. They surrounded the city, called the Catholics within to come out, and demanded that the Cathars surrender. Both groups refused to comply. The city fell the following day when an abortive sortie by the defenders was pursued back through the open city gates. The entire population, regardless of faith, was slaughtered, and the city was burned to the ground. Contemporary sources give estimates of the number of dead ranging between 7,000 to 20,000. The latter figure appears in the papal legate Arnaud-Amaury’s own report to the pope, in which he admits that no one was spared.

According to the Cistercian writer, Caesar of Heisterbach, one of the leaders of the crusader army, Arnaud-Amaury, when asked by a crusader how to distinguish the Cathars from the Catholics, answered: “Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius”—”Kill them [all]! Surely the Lord discerns which [ones] are his.” On the other hand, the legate’s own statement, in a letter to the Pope in August 1209 (col.139), states:

While discussions were still going on with the barons about the release of those in the city who were deemed to be Catholics, the servants and other persons, of low degree and unarmed, attacked the city without waiting for orders from their leaders. To our amazement, crying “to arms, to arms!” within the space of two or three hours they crossed the ditches and the walls and Béziers was taken. Our men spared no one, irrespective of rank, sex, or age, and put to the sword almost 20,000 people. After this great slaughter the whole city was despoiled and burnt.

The news of the disaster at Béziers quickly spread and afterwards many settlements surrendered without a fight.

The next major target was Carcassonne. The city was well fortified, but vulnerable, and overflowing with refugees. The crusaders arrived on August 1, 1209. The siege did not last long. By August 7, the crusaders had cut the city’s water supply. Raymond-Roger sought negotiations but was taken prisoner while under truce, and Carcasonne surrendered on August 15. Its people were not killed, but were forced to leave the town—naked, according to Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, “in their shifts and breeches” according to another source. Simon de Montfort now took charge of the crusader army, and was granted control of the area encompassing Carcassonne, Albi, and Béziers. After the fall of Carcassonne, other towns surrendered without a fight. Albi, Castelnaudary, Castres, Fanjeaux, Limoux, Lombers and Montréal all fell quickly during the autumn. However, some of the towns that had surrendered later revolted.

The next battle centered around Lastours and the adjacent castle of Cabaret. Attacked in December 1209, Pierre-Roger de Cabaret repulsed the assault. Fighting largely halted over the winter, but fresh crusaders arrived. In March 1210, Bram was captured after a short siege. In June, the well-fortified city of Minerve was besieged. It withstood a heavy bombardment, but in late June the main well was destroyed, and on July 22, the city surrendered. The Cathars of the city were given the opportunity to return to Catholicism. Most did so, but the 140 who refused were burned at the stake. In August, the crusade proceeded to the stronghold of Termes. Despite counter-attacks by the forces of Pierre-Roger de Cabaret, the siege held solid, and in December, the town fell. It was the last action of the year.

By the time operations resumed in 1211, the harsh actions of the crusaders had alienated several important lords, including Raymond de Toulouse, who had been excommunicated again. The crusaders returned in force to Lastours in March, and Pierre-Roger de Cabaret soon agreed to surrender. In May, the castle of Lord Aimery of Montréal, south of Carcassonne, was retaken; he and his senior knights were hanged, and several hundred Cathars were burned. Cassès and Montferrand both fell easily in early June, and the crusaders headed for Toulouse. The town was besieged, but for once the attackers were short of supplies and men, and so Simon de Montfort withdrew before the end of the month. Emboldened, Raymond de Toulouse led a force to attack Montfort’s forces at Castelnaudary in September. Castelnaudary fell and the forces of Raymond went on to liberate over 30 towns before the campaign ground to a halt at Lastours in the autumn. The following year much, of the province of Toulouse was recaptured by Catholic forces.

In 1213, forces led by King Peter II of Aragon, came to the aid of Toulouse against the crusaders. The force besieged Muret, but in September a sortie from the castle led to the death of King Peter, and his army fled. It was a serious blow for the resistance, and in 1214, the situation became worse: Raymond was forced to flee to England, and his lands were given by the Pope Innocent II to the victorious King Philippe II, who had by then joined the conflict. In November, the always active Simon de Montfort entered Périgord and easily captured the castles of Domme and Montfort. He also occupied Castlenaud and destroyed the fortifications of Beynac. In 1215, Castelnaud was recaptured by Montfort, and the crusaders entered Toulouse. Toulouse itself was then gifted to Montfort. In April 1216, he ceded his lands to Philippe.

Revolts and reverses 1216 to 1225

The resistance was far from finished, however. Raymond, together with his son, returned to the region in April, 1216 and soon raised a substantial force from disaffected towns. Beaucaire was besieged in May and fell after a three month siege. The efforts of Montfort to relieve the town were repulsed. Montfort then had to put down an uprising in Toulouse before heading west to capture Bigorre, but he was repulsed at Lourdes in December 1216. In September 1217, while Montfort was occupied in the Foix region, Raymond re-took Toulouse. Montfort hurried back, but his forces were insufficient to recapture the town before campaigning halted. Montfort renewed the siege in the spring of 1218. He was killed during this fighting in June.

Innocent III had died in July 1216. With his champion Montfort now dead, the crusade was left in temporary disarray. The command passed to the more cautious Philippe II, whose interests in putting down heresy lacked the zeal of Montfort. The crusaders took Belcaire and besieged Marmande in late 1218 under Amaury de Montfort, son of the late Simon. Marmande fell on June 3, 1219, but attempts to retake the major prize of Toulouse failed, and a number of Montfort strongholds also fell. In 1220, Castelnaudary was retaken from Montfort’s forces. Amaury de Montfort besieged the town in July 1220, but it withstood an eight-month trial.

In 1221, the success of Raymond and his son continued: Montréal and Fanjeaux were re-taken, and many Catholics were forced to flee. In 1222, Raymond died and was succeeded by his son, also named Raymond. In 1223, Philippe II died and was succeeded by Louis VIII. In 1224, Amaury de Montfort abandoned Carcassonne. The son of Raymond-Roger de Trencavel returned from exile to reclaim the area. Montfort offered his claim to the lands of Languedoc to Louis VIII, who accepted.

French royal intervention

In November 1225, the young Raymond, like his father, was excommunicated. Louis VIII himself headed the new crusade into the area in June 1226. Fortified towns and castles surrendered without resistance. However, Avignon, nominally under the rule of the German emperor, did resist, and it took a three-month siege to finally force its surrender that September.

Louis VIII died in November and was succeeded by the child king Louis IX. But Queen regent Blanche of Castile allowed the crusade to continue under Humbert de Beaujeu. Labécède fell in 1227, and Vareilles and Toulouse in 1228. However, Queen Blanche offered Raymond a treaty: Recognizing him as ruler of Toulouse in exchange for his fighting against Cathars, returning all Church property, turning over his castles, and destroying the defenses of Toulouse. Raymond agreed and signed the treaty at Meaux in April 1229. He was then seized, whipped, and briefly imprisoned.

Inquisition and final military actions

The Languedoc now was firmly under the control of the King of France, and the policy of dealing with the Cathars primarily through military means shifted toward wiping them out through persuasion and torture. The Inquisition was established in Toulouse in November 1229. Under Pope Gregory IX, the Inquisition, under the leadership of the new Dominican Order, was given great power to suppress the heresy.

A campaign started in 1233, burning vehement and relapsed Cathars wherever they were found, even exhuming some bodies for burning. Many still resisted, taking refuge in fortresses at Fenouillèdes and Montségur, or inciting small uprisings. In 1235, the Inquisition was forced out of Albi, Narbonne, and Toulouse. Raymond-Roger de Trencavel led a military campaign in 1240. He was defeated at Carcassonne in October, then besieged at Montréal. He soon surrendered and was exiled in Aragon. In 1242, Raymond of Toulouse attempted to revolt in conjunction with an English invasion, but the English were quickly repulsed and his support evaporated. He was subsequently pardoned by the French king.

The Cathar strongholds fell one by one. Montségur withstood a nine-month siege before being taken in March 1244. The final holdout, a small, isolated, overlooked fort at Quéribus, quickly fell in August 1255. The last known Cathar burning occurred in 1321.