A Good Woman

Thoroughly enjoyable lessons on prejudice and gossip that we caught up with almost 5 years after release.

Just the way a movie ought to be.

The Go Getter

While this road movie probably wouldn't rank among my favorite, potential life changers (I like my life changed regularly, if not frequently, so I allow what some would call fate -and I prefer to call God- greater access to that possibility, even via something as trivial as movies), I liked it because of its positive twist, compared to, for example, Sean Penn's "Into the Wild" with its sobering, if not depressing ending.

But I still wouldn't have bothered featuring it on this blog, hadn't it occurred to me sort of retrospectively that it has one of those metaphor factors in it, that I've discovered a few other times, as in "Serenity" or, of course, "The Miracle Worker," which triggered a torrent of reactions in my mind that still hasn't come to an end...

Some people see ghosts, others see the Devil everywhere; well, I prefer to see God everywhere or in everything, and holy ghosts, for that matter. And I happen to be able to see His fingerprints on this movie, too, although I doubt that the makers of the film intended it any more than Paul McCartney intended writing a song about an Endtime prophetess when he penned "Let It Be."

Inspiration's a funny thing.

Okay, the plot in my mind is this: The kid in the film is a lot like many of us on the road of life, who sort of break free from the System (he quits school), not really feeling much at home in that place to begin with. So, first he runs into the kind of stuff the world has to offer: a fist in the face, false love and counterfeit thrills in drugs, all the while, though, communicating with a voice that he feels "at home with," even though it belongs to someone he's wronged (since he stole her car, and hey, who of us gives God the credit for lending us the vehicle with cruise through life with?), met only with forgiveness on the condition of regular communication with her (sounds to me like the way we can obtain forgiveness via prayer...)

When things look pretty dark & bleak, all of a sudden that embodiment of unconditional love stands right in front of him, ready for more than just comforting words, and while that relationship is not without its ups and downs either (as I'm sure all of our relationships with God aren't, either), there is, lo and behold, a happy ending in sight - and that in spite of disappointments galore from anywhere else, which again confirms my personal experience: only God cuts the cake.

Some folks have great difficulties with any insinuations or attempts to ascribe female attributes to God or the Holy Spirit, but in my opinion they're trapped in some chauvinistic mindset that shaped their ideas of God more on the John Wayne movies they saw in their childhood than Genesis 1:27 and the rest of the Bible, thinking they're doing God a service by going to other countries & shooting off Hottentots, because that's just a real macho thing to do.

Well, you can keep doing that, and keep watching your John Wayne movies, if you wish, I prefer neat little love stories with happy endings. After all, the Good Book doesn't picture our Maker with a gun strapped around his hip, stepping out into the glistening midday sun to bring a swift end to his evil opponent, but in childlike and what some I'm sure might call naive fashion simply states that God is Love.

The Express

Isn't it weird sometimes, how something you don't have anything to do with in real life can nonetheless be a great inspiration to you via the movies?
Take football, for instance, in Texas a religion, as they say in this movie, but zero relevance to my actual life as a musician...
And yet some of the most inspiring movies I've seen over the past year were about football.
Seems like God can use anything.

Even a 23 year old kid to kick some racist ass and change the course of history while he was at it, maybe - just maybe - paving the way for the elections of 2008, nearly 50 years after the incidents of the story this movie tells...

It certainly drives home the feeling of vindication the racially discriminated part of the American population must have felt after Obama licked McCain...

The acting & directing of this movie are both great. You'll have to blame the ending on real life & its sometimes weird ways.

Only Reality's More Bizarre Than "IGOR"

My childhood fascination for cartoon movies is paying off big- time these days, in a way I'd never expected. Because modern cartoons seem to possess a quality that news channels and official media sources seem to have lost decades ago, and thus you can probably learn more about the reality we currently live in from this movie than from being tied to an arm chair and forced to watch Fox News for 72 hours in a row.

Of course, they wouldn't tell you the truth about the fake reality that our evil kings are making us take at face value, forcing us to resort to evil, and especially all sorts of evil inventions, in order to survive.

Nor would they imply that the underdogs and "Igors" of this world (in News lingo also referred to as "rebel forces," "insurgents" or "terrorists") are often a lot smarter than the evil inventors who run this place.

Well, you'll have to find out who the monster created in this film resembles in your life. But when you find out, be careful who you're going to reveal this discovery to, if you want to enjoy a peaceful and quiet rest of the evening.
Oh, did I mention it? The sarcastic humor in this movie is highly contagious, so junkies, watch out!

Then again, some folks - just as with the "Matrix" or any other movies that are truer than life somehow - never dig it, and for them it's just a pretty odd movie...

Possibly because they've never been an Igor...

Ghost Town

Yet another New York fairy tale, trying to get us to believe that Manhattan is filled with exclusively lovely people and ghosts, except, perhaps, for the dentist Ricky Gervais (the Brit we frowned upon recently, in "A Night At the Museum") mimics so superbly that you can even watch this film twice and still laugh at his antics.

Another one for Enneagram freaks: This dude's a fairly obvious FIVE on his way to redemption via the path of love.

Thoroughly enjoyable.

27 Dresses

Although the backdrop of this movie couldn't be more cliché-ridden: another wedding (or rather, a whole bunch of'em), in the "most wonderful city on earth," inhabited by "the most wonderful people on earth," - as if New York City were the epitome of paradise, instead of just another stinking, over-sized, overcrowded, over-prized and over-rated city, the story has a refreshing twist, and is one of the best in-depth character studies I've seen of late.

Especially those familiar with the Enneagram will be delighted to find the proto-type of a professional TWO, who is being thoroughly dissected by the man who dares to question everything she ever loved and stood for, but whom she also ultimately winds up together with - which, of course, is, where the realism stops again, but then, you never know...

Wrap the whole thing up in the well-flavored humor, pretty decent acting, and try to ignore the seen-it-a-thousand-times-before "N.Y. = Fairyland" backdrop, and you'll find yourself an actually thoroughly enjoyable film.

Elizabethtown

Every now and then something happens that threatens to shake all my "Woe-is-America" convictions and what some people would term anti-American sentiments in its foundations.
Having watched the 2005 flick "Elizabethtown" recently was one of those events.

As much as you want to hate Americans for their stupidity in actually swallowing the garbage their President is saying - or the majority of their paid-off preachers, for that matter - you can't help loving its culture, its music, and the people who show that side of America, even if the only place it actually exists is in its movies.

Charlie Bartlett

I think the first thing one would have to say about this movie is, that it's refreshingly different. Maybe only so because of the performance of the main actor, a kid I'd never heard about, (Anton Yelchin,) or maybe because it was made in Canada...

It only got a lukewarm rating on the Christian movie sites, probably because of it's blatant honesty, that's simply too much for that kind of religious hypocrisy, where it's okay to slaughter thousands in the name of God and President, but sex is a sin...

By the somber review this movie received on Crosswalk, I expected a gory dram, and was pleasantly surprised to find out that it's a witty comedy instead, to be enjoyed thoroughly. Looking forward to seeing more of Anton, although it's unlikely he'll easily find another role like Charlie Bartlett to play...

Reign Over Me

Great character study and more. See more of my input on this one on my regular blog:

http://mcdozersblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/099-love-reign-over-us.html

Love in the Time of Cholera

Love is forever, and if this movie doesn't prove it - since it's based on a novel - then at least it proves that there are other dreamers beside myself who believe it.

Set against the backdrop of one of the most gloriously beautiful countries on God's earth, "Love In the Time of Cholera" tells a slightly different love story, one perhaps too good to be true, and yet in some ways more true to life than the evening news, and definitely truer than the outgrowths of Hollywood's pop culture with its never ending hails to youth, and labeling anything past a certain age as unfit for life.

That's probably what I love most about this movie: it tells the truth about who really are the dead ones and who are the alive, or at least rings home the fact that love - as well as life (truly lived) does not have anything to do with age.

Lions for Lambs

During the first few minutes into "Lions for Lambs" I thought I was watching U.S. government propaganda justifying the "War on Terror" and presenting the official 9/11 fairy-tale as truth. For one thing, I have never met any U.S. troops in real life as educated, well behaved and civilized as in any of those movies (and God knows I've played for a lot!), nor could I imagine an American politician in real life as whitty as the Senator Tom Cruise played in this movie.

Another 15 minutes into the movie I figured this must have been the smartest piece of U.S. propaganda I had ever watched.

Thankfully, it turned out to be no Neocon propaganda, after all, just a pretty good screen monument to the times we're living in, some sort of "golden finger" on the pulse of our times. The type that carries a message, which, sadly, will require a miracle for any significant amount of people to grasp, but part of the message was that it doesn't matter if it's just a single person who gets it, as long as that person does something about it for a change.

As someone who grew up on the '71 album "Who's Next" by "The Who," THE album by that band that's worth listening to, I was particularly thrilled about the little historic gem woven into this film when Meryl Streep (posing as awakening journalist Janine Roth) quotes one of my favorite songs from the album. A line that has come to my mind repeatedly in my life, whenever I see one regime or administration replaced by another, only to change absolutely nothing, especially not for the better: "Meet the new boss; the same as the old boss!" - Taken from the classical piece of rock music "Won't Get Fooled Again."

Except that the title couldn't be further from the truth. If there's anything that hits you about the general public per se, it's that they've been fooled over and over and over again since the song came out.

The bad guys in the movie are the politicians, sharing the blame with the news media, and the ray of hope is supposedly the beacon of education. What American producers like Robert Redford lack the guts to realize, of course, is that the sacred golden cow of education is just as much a hoax as politics and the media, and what's worse, movie makers who paint a reality a far cry from what's really happening. As long as people around the world can keep their Hollywood scope of things, the world isn't desperate enough yet for anyone to actually do something else besides watch movies and talk, even though this one was at least an effort to be a voice for the truth, even if the trumpet is sounding a signal that won't be understood by many, much less spur more than a handful to action, or even more than that special, chosen one...

In The Time of the Butterflies

Everybody has heard about the big bad guys like Hitler and Stalin, and maybe a few others. This movie tells the story of one more of the probably countless other little Hitlers most of us have never heard about and some of his victims. It makes you wonder where the people who stood up against them in spite of the odds took the courage. But they did. Somehow God must have given it to them, and in the end, the good side finally won. It has always been like that, and it will always be like that, even during the time of the greatest Hitler this world will have ever seen.

The greatest challenge, as this movie brings out, is always to wake up the sleeping masses who don't want to know what's going wrong. It's always been like that, and from the look of it, it always will...

Freedom Writers

Ooops, almost forgot about this one! Great and a must see for anyone dealing with young people!

Surf's Up

Of all the penguin movies that have come out over the past few years, I guess this one’s my favorite. Light entertainment only, though, no big life-changing experience.
(Of course, the story is about as true as Alice in Wonderland...)

But wait... there IS a lesson to be learned from the story: Every now & then you've got to forget about the "contest" or (rat race) of life and whether you're going to be a loser or a winner, and just enjoy the ride for the fun of it...
Once you get the hang of the fun of things (like doing your job for God), regardless of whether you're going to win the trophy (or crown), you actually start becoming good at it, and that's when you start becoming good at life itself.

The Great Debaters

Shows what the Afro-American population was up against in large parts of their country until not too long ago… Brilliant, if you like intelligent scripts.

Checking Out

An aged Jew in N.Y. (Peter Falk, alias Columbo) decides it’s time for him to “check out,” but upon realizing that folks around him don’t agree, finds out what a dumb and selfish idea that was.

Run Fat Boy Run

The moral of this British comedy: “The hare never made it, but the tortoise did.”

Resurrecting the Champ

No, this is not yet another boxing movie, but a movie about honesty vs. twisting the truth for personal advantage.

Charlie Wilson’s War

Shows what one man can do when he’s got the determination to do it. From an era when American foreign politics weren’t the bloody mess yet that they’ve become since.

Akeelah and the Bee

Great re-encounter with Laurence Fishburne (“Morpheus” from the “Matrix”) as tutor of a girl who participates in a spelling contest.

Michael Clayton

One of the better movies we've seen of late, and definitely one of the best roles George Clooney played in recent years.

P.S. I Love You

Ignoring some of the negative ratings this movie got on some Christian sites like Crosswalk, we went ahead and watched it anyway, and were not disappointed. Plus, the movie reveals one of the big secrets of all times about what it is that women really want...

The Bucket List

Yeah, that one was nice… What things would you do if you knew you were going to kick the bucket soon?

Dan in Real Life

One of the better comedies of what’s come out lately. Enjoyable.

The Last Mimzy

We really liked that one… apparently based on the whole “Alice in Wonderland” mystic, but cute & somewhat edifying. Again, it’s sometimes the seemingly useless little sister, not the smart alec big brother, who holds the key to the universe…