City Island

My biblical guiding theme for the year is Luke 12:2: "There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known," and there is probably hardly a movie that brings out this point better than "City Island."

In a world where cover-ups and lies galore all contribute to the great confusion surrounding us, it's a ray of hope to know that eventually, as truly as there is a God, the truth will come out, and all secrets, and the way things really happened (as opposed to the "official" fairy-tale) will be revealed.

So, if honesty's your policy, you'll enjoy this movie the way we did, and you can join us looking forward to the day the above Promise will be fulfilled.

Weather Girl

We all know it - in theory: money and success don't really make you happy, and security is only an illusion, but how many of us really live according to that knowledge? Most of us keep chasing paper as if it was the holy grail, and we settle for the "safe" option as soon as it comes along.
After all, it's been drilled into us: we owe it to society.

"Weather Girl" is another reminder of life's lesson we constantly forget, that there are, indeed, more important things than money and our elusive security (as in: a "good" job, a wealthy husband - if you're a woman - etc.), such as friends, real love and honesty.

If you're anywhere near as idealistic as we are - my better half and I - when it comes to these things (and I ought to know: she stuck with a "loser" for love's sake), then you'll like this movie as much as we did.

It promotes a fresh and strange openness and honesty that strikes you as totally not-of-this world.

Long live not-of-this-world!

The Time Traveler's Wife

While there is no deeper spiritual lesson to be found in this movie apart from the sheer beauty of people who for some reason are open to the supernatural, it is so well made and emotional that I've just got to feature it in this list among my favorites.
It's simply thoroughly enjoyable.

Over Her Dead Body

I like ghost movies. Perhaps because they're one of the few places where life after death is being dealt with in a way that people aren't scared of. And so, I definitely like this one, which may not change anybody's life, but at least guarantees some decent, fairly wholesome entertainment (including a surprising twist on the obligatory usual show of political correctness toward the gay issue...).

Chaos Theory

I guess I wasn't ready for the implying message of this movie when I first saw it some years ago. Probably I was still too stuck on the fatalistic, Hollywood cliche revolving the "falling in love" and "soul mate" myths, and would have seriously doubted the veracity of the statement made toward the end of the film that one can pretty much determine to love anyone. It's not a magical thing that happens as destined by the fates or it won't. We have the power to make it happen.
"Coincidentally," on the very day I watched this film for the second time last week, during one of the usual crises life brings that make you wholeheartedly agree with the father of the bride when he tells the groom in the movie, "Life's a mess!" and that make you concoct your own "chaos theories," I had read this Washington Post article about a new book by psychologist and author Robert Epstein who has proven in his own life the message to be true which I (like probably a lot of fellow Hollywood junkies) had previously not been ready to accept.

Life is a mess; life is a mystery; but the good thing is, we still have some say in the matter.