To commemorate this historic day, I'm going to come out of the closet and admit that I rather liked the near-universally panned Pearl Harbor. Indeed, the more I go back and review Hollywood war dramas that were produced just before and during WWII, the more I appreciate what director Michael Bay (and, yes, producer Jerry Bruckheimer) accomplished with what I described in 2001 as "an unabashedly old-fashioned and irony-free wartime romance infused with gee-whiz pyrotechnics and rah-rah patriotism." (A random thought: I wonder how much more -- or less – Pearl Harbor might have scored at the box-office had it opened a few months later, after 9/11.)In the spirit of openness and honesty, I ask readers and fellow bloggers: Do you have a similarly guilty pleasure in your closet? Do you secretly (or not-so-secretly) embrace a movie scorned by all but you?
