Category: Movies Page 5 of 7

Everyone who has seen the movie Moon raise your hand. Okay, you can both put them down now.

Moon is a remarkably well told story set in a mining operation on the moon. This operation is efficiently overseen by a single human and a seemingly benevolent computer. Together they serve humanity with their isolated and sacrificial labor. The human is praised as a hero.

Sam Rockwell plays the human and does a remarkable job carrying the weight of what we soon discover is a chilling tale.

The best science fiction creates a world in which the implications of scientific and technological advances and possibilities are explored and often critiqued. This film accomplishes that and is worthy of a watch. This is not Star Wars or Star Trek. This is a movie exploring the consequences of ideas.

Like science fiction, fantasy and animation also provide venues for exploring alternate realities. Coraline is the story of a young girl lamenting her family situation. Her parents are busy and unresponsive, and have dragged her away from her friends into an isolated house surrounded by weirdness. She wishes for a different life. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.

There is terror here, terror in a life that becomes ‘all about me’. This is the stuff of nightmares.

I’ve not seen but a few minutes of the highly touted film Avatar. It is said to be visually stunning. I find it hard to imagine that it could surpass the visual beauty of Coraline, a beauty which in this case is actually wed to a good story.

[In fairness to my snide Avatar comments, a friend has promised me a review of Avatar revealing its redemptive themes. Once I receive it, I’ll post it. I can’t wait.]

I like to post comments and notes regarding the movies we see. I’m about twenty movies behind and I have no hope of catching up. However, a few are worth a mention, which I will do over several posts.

Around Christmas time we had a whole living-room full of folks watch It’s a Wonderful Life. This is such a classic film I need say little about it. It’s one of the great ‘feel-good’ movies with classic characters played by classic actors. It was such a delight for us to introduce this film to a whole new generation of movie watchers.

We have always said that the Nicolas Cage movie The Family Man is It’s a Wonderful Life played backwards. Whereas in It’s a Wonderful Life a character is challenged to appreciate the life he has, The Family Man challenges a man with a vision of the good life he missed. Both are Christmas movies, both involve angel characters and imagined realities, and both are worth watching.

In The Family Man, Cage is considering pursuing an adulterous fling. His buddy challenges him to faithfulness with a great line:

“A little flirtation is harmless but you’re dealing with fire here. The fidelity bank and trust is a tough creditor. You make a deposit somewhere else, they close your account – FOREVER.”

Michael Medved, a great fan of The Family Man, did suggest that it is quite unbelievable that someone would wake up in bed with Tea Leoni and run! But so it goes.

There are similarities between the French film Paris, je t’aime and the American film New York, I Love You. Both are collaborative efforts by a stable full of directors and writers. Both are set in major cities. Both deal with the relationships between men and women.

But the similarities end quickly, and end where it really matters: the quality of the content. I could not finish this movie.

I am a huge fan of Paris, je t’aime. But where Paris is sweet, New York is coarse. I am not naïve and prudish. I know that sex is a part of life, of fallen life and redeemed life. I expect that where brokenness and wholeness are experienced, it will be revealed in this most intimate of human relationships. But when sex becomes just a prop, and when nothing is left to one’s imagination, a line is crossed.

Perhaps there was a redeeming moment somewhere late in the film. If there was, I’m willing to hear. But I’m not sure that I will want to wade through what I was seeing to get there.

I confess that my expectations of this film had been dampened by the generally poor reviews it received. Sadly, viewing it confirmed those low expectations.

———-

For a contrast, you might consider checking out films from this list of the most redeeming movies of 2009.

A friend was standing with some other women a few years ago when a car blaring rap music drove by. One of the women in the group made a disparaging remark about the music, and asked my friend if she agreed. My friend responded very wisely:

“I don’t particularly like it, but I really can’t judge it because I don’t understand it.”

She expressed a very healthy and discerning view of cultural products. To critique, we need to at least try to understand. Before we understand, all we can express is taste.

* * * * *

So, what about horror films. In general, I have no ‘taste’ for them. Perhaps that is because with today’s digital technology, so little is left to the imagination and such strong images of evil can therefore be displayed on screen. Perhaps I don’t like being shocked or scared.

Or perhaps I like living in my idealistic little bubble where I’m not reminded of the reality and presence of evil in the real world. Horror images bother me, but so do thoughts of genocide, abortion, or insane asylums. You don’t have to make things up to disturb me. Show them on screen, and I’ll close my eyes.

I could translate my distaste for horror films into a settled judgment against them, as some easily do. But perhaps that is because I have not understood them.

In an intriguing assessment of the horror (and ‘thriller’) movie genre, screenwriter Brian Godawa (To End All Wars) defends them as having genuinely biblical roots. (“The book of Daniel reads like God’s own horror film festival,” he says.)

More pointedly, he probes the worldview of the best horror films. He notes that it is the horror genre which really throws light upon the ill-logic of human rationality freed from its supernatural moorings. This is the genre which exposes a deeply rooted human fear that is not assuaged by rational arguments. It shows what happens when human passion is unchecked by moral boundaries. It forces us to stare into the void and the abyss and to see the emptiness there.

Though I’m not likely to add Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity to my Netflix queue, I find his defense compelling. It does not change my taste, but it helps form my judgment.

No doubt the genre is abused, and no doubt many who flock to these films do so only to be shocked, appalled, and perhaps desensitized. And yes, even a good thing taken in excess becomes a bad thing.

But Godawa has helped me to understand, and understanding plants the seed of appreciation. Perhaps that which may be produced out of rage or hate or loss or fear, even this, can serve the purposes of God.

(Someday I will explain why I think a thoughtful and well executed horror film may do less damage to the viewer than any episode of VeggieTales. But that’s for another day.)

The family/sci-fi/fantasy adventure City of Ember is set in a civilization which had existed underground for over 200 years, founded when life on the surface of the earth could no longer be sustained. The builders had designed the city to last no more than 200 years, assuming that to be sufficient time for the surface to restore viability. But after the lapse of 200 years, through negligence, corruption, and mistaken ideology, life on the surface had been forgotten, and it was assumed that there was no way out of Ember. At the same time, the planned obsolescence built into Ember was beginning to take its toll.

Ember is a deteriorating society in a seemingly closed universe longing for rescue. The metaphoric possibilities in such a scenario are colossal. Who will rescue the trapped and doomed residents of Ember? Who will rescue us?

Don’t think that I sit watching a movie ruminating the whole time about it’s world view implications. I really can and do enjoy a good story well told, and enjoyed this one last Sunday night.

To whom can we turn for rescue? Two institutions are shown to be impotent in the hour of Ember’s need. Government is corrupt and religion is irrelevant. The burden of deliverance rests then upon the individual, individuals with vision and confidence.

This is the typical American myth, isn’t it? That if something needs doing, we need to do it ourselves.

I think there is a great deal of truth underlying this myth. Deliverance often comes down to a person or a group of people with vision sufficient to see beyond a crisis and courage to take the right steps to move toward a solution. Governmental and religious institutions are often ill suited to do what needs doing.

An example: On Monday, America acknowledges the leadership and courage that Dr. Martin Luther King brought to the struggle of Black American’s to achieve some modicum of freedom long promised. He is one example and one need not look hard to see others.

One cannot know fully what was in the mind of the makers of this film. Typically the exploration of such a myth places all the glory upon the human instrument of deliverance. My vision is broader. I believe that like Esther God raises up men and women for times such as these. And at times these whom God raises up step to the fore self-consciously in the service of the one who has raised them up.

Even in Ember, two courageous teens, who pioneer a way out of destruction, cannot do so without a challenge, encouragement, and word of instruction from those who built the city. Someone from outside reaches in to guide them in their deliverance. Their universe is not so closed after all.

Neither is ours.

These days I don’t have time to do my own thinking, evaluating, writing, about movies. And I wouldn’t want to comment on something I have not seen, and which, admittedly, I have little desire to see.

But I find it interesting who is these days doing our world view evaluation of this movie. Twice recently the NY Times has reflected on this film in a way that Christians should find interesting: here and here.

Helpful stuff.

The trailers have not enticed me, so I’m not in line to see it. Even a $230,000,000 budget only makes me think that special effects will get in the way of story. This review seems balanced and mildly critical, and consistent with what I’ve read elsewhere. I’m curious what others think.

I’m so far behind in reviewing the movies we have seen that I’ll never catch up. So, let me make a few notes here in lieu of more extensive evaluations.

Spurred on by a great “Black Friday” deal from Amazon.com, I bought a copy of Disney’s 101 Dalmatians. (The same impulse landed me a copy of Spaceballs for $2, an impulse I’m almost afraid to confess!) I feel a particular attachment to this movie due to its having been released at a time when I would have been in its target audience. My parents gave me an LP of the music and story line which I can remember playing over and over again. It was a delight, therefore, to introduce this to my son and share it with my wife. I had not realized until I watched the special features how innovative this was and how it represented a technological step forward and trade off from past animated classics. A wonderful movie, though.

Another vestige from our 60s childhood is one my wife picked up from Wal-mart in their discount bin: Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol. Back in the days before DVR and before DVD and before VHS, to watch a piece of video entertainment, one had to find when it would be on TV and make a concerted effort to be there in front of the television the moment it started. At Christmas, the networks had a stable of ‘specials’ they would air year after year. This was one of those specials, featuring a cartoon character named Mr. Magoo who was nearly blind. I remember watching this as a child, and I must have loved it as a child. And sense I loved it as a child and my wife loved it as a child, we had to foist it upon our children, at least those we could corral long enough to watch it. I confess, watching it now as an adult, I see though it is generally faithful to Dickens original, it hardly has the charm of A Charlie Brown Christmas or even Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Far, far better was a 1951 classic A Christmas Carol. It is a feature film length adaptation starring Alistair Sim, an endearing British actor some of us were introduced to in a film called Green for Danger (a classic whodunit, very much worth watching).

You know the story. But know also that the value of this film is in Sim’s portrayal of the transformed Scrooge. I think this is a picture of the joy and freedom that should attend the Christian who comes to understand the Gospel. Would that it were so.