Crime

The Lovely Bones

Posted on by admin

A murder thriller about the search for a killer in the 1970s, as told through the perspective of his 14 year old murder victim. After Susie Salmon is killed, and time fades with the killer uncaught, Susie’s sister and father hang on to their hope and eventually discover the killer was right on their block. But by the time they realize who he is, the killer escapes and finds a new place to live. The film seeks to bring some kind of justice by having the killer, though uncaught, become the victim of an accident that finds him falling from a great height and being smashed by rocks on the way down – the standard satisfaction for killing villains in movies. Ultimate justice in an impersonal universe.

The story wrestles with the devastating effect on a family that such unresolved pain can create. Marriages often break up over these kind of things, and Susie’s parents almost do. The obsession for justice and solution causes the dad to go somewhat crazy in his search for the killer.

Through much of the movie, Susie is portrayed as being in “the in-between” a world of changing dream-like environments of nature, from flowing wheat fields to mountains and lakes. This is a classic ghost story in that Susie cannot go to “her peace” until her murder is solved or until she and her family “let her go.” It faces the reality that “everybody dies,” but posits a universe without personal deity that seems to operate like an impersonal fate, making the best out of bad experiences. Another moment of impersonal fate bringing some justice is when Susie, who was killed before she could ever fulfill her desire to be kissed a first time by true love, finally gets her chance to do so. She finds a “psychically sensitive” girl who is dating the boy that had a crush on Susie and Susie enters that girl’s body. The boy then sees Susie’s face in the inhabited girl and kisses her with a deep love and tenderness. Susie finds that moment of grace that was stolen from her before she could ever do so. But again, this is the wish fulfillment thinking of a godless universe of impersonal fate that somehow operates in a personal way.

Not once in the entire story about death and the afterlife is a personal God even brought up as a question, let alone an answer. He is completely ignored as if no one even believes in Him, even in the 70s. Because of this, I think this movie will not connect with most people.

All the other victims of the killer, (about 7 other women and girls) meet in the in-between and laugh and dance in their unity of victimhood. And ultimately they all go to some kind of “heaven” of bliss at the end. So according to this film, we live in a godless universe where all people go to an eternal “heaven” (not sure about serial killers though), but there is no apparent hell or eternal punishment for the evil.

Sherlock Holmes

Posted on by admin

An action detective story reimagining of the famous British sleuth and his companion Watson as they battle the dark forces of Lord Blackwood who seeks to use black magic to take over the British government – or something like that, oh I don’t know, it hardly made sense.

The worldview of this story is naturalism, the belief that there is no supernatural and all effects have a natural cause. It’s thematic warfare is between the powers of reason and science (as embodied in Holmes’ acute power of observation) and the occult/mysticism/religion (as embodied in Blackwood’s occultic powers). Of course, all the black magic used by Blackwood is ultimately figured as sleight of hand tricks by Holmes, thus discrediting the supernatural as mere trickery. Blackwood is hung by the law at the beginning, but raises from the dead (an obvious reference to religion, um, let’s see, which religion has a man raising from the dead again?). He also engages in an occultic Rosicrucian like order that calls upon occultic powers, all of which have perfectly natural scientific explanations. In this story, the supernatural is an illusion, and we live in a closed universe of natural causes. It might have been a bit more interesting and indeed scientific, had there been something that remained beyond Holmes’ “amazing powers of observation” and acuity in describing the universe. I am thinking here of the movie Contact, where the scientist Ellie realizes a little about the limits of science and that love is real yet beyond her empirical measurements, and where the scientist ends up expressing a very real kind of religious faith and experience with science.

One way in which the movie shows the power of the mind is in its depiction of visualization technique. Every time Holmes is about to physically overcome an enemy, we see in his mind’s eye a slow motion version of what he is going to do, much like an athlete will visualize his action beforehand. And then we see the actual action in real speed, which gives a sort of double version of each fight scene, and affirms the power of the mind to actualize reality.

Law Abiding Citizen

Posted on by admin

This is a gritty violent story of prosecuting DA attorney, Nick Rice, played by Jamie Foxx, who only takes cases he knows he can win, and plea bargains the weak cases so he can play the legal system in order to maintain a high record of wins to better his career. In other words, he doesn’t really care about justice, and be bargains with murderers, and then he justifies his actions by an appeal to pragmatism, you get the best deal you can with an imperfect system. Along comes an inventor Clyde, played by Gerard Butler, whose family is killed by scum, and who experiences the injustice of our legal system as one of them gets away for plea bargaining, led by Nick, and against Clyde’s wishes. Well, I don’t know if this is possible, but the point of the movie is to show that our legal system is corrupted by this kind of bargaining with murderers and results in injustice through compromise with evil.

Clyde’s response is to snap and plan retribution for 10 years through his inventive mind. He hacks into the system and makes the one killer’s lethal injection execution a torturous event, and captures the other killer and brutally tortures him before killing him. Then Clyde hands himself in and in a poignant moment at his own defense for bail, he quotes legal precedent to convince the judge to let him go without bail. Then when she is persuaded, Clyde chastises her that this is what’s wrong with the system. He clearly should not be allowed to be let free, yet, he just used the rules to manipulate her and she bought it. He heaps insults upon her for her moral idiocy and deliberately loses the appeal and lands in jail. Then, while in jail, has worked out a way to start killing everyone connected to his case, from the judge to each of the lawyers, while he is in prison. Meanwhile, each time, he makes ridiculous demands, such as receiving a steak dinner and an ipod in prison, or he will kill the next person.

When Nick accuses Clyde of sick vengeance, Clyde tells him if he wanted vengeance, he could have killed everyone years ago. No, he is making a point, he is going to bring down the whole justice system to make that point. But what is the point? Well, we learn at the end, when Nick figures out how Clyde is able to do these killings and he turns Clyde’s inventions against him. Nick finally says, he won’t make any more deals with murderers like Clyde, and Clyde says now you finally get it. In other words, the whole moral of the movie is that justice doesn’t make deals with murderers, you’ll just get more mayhem because evil people will only use deals as weakness to exploit and will continue to do evil until they are forcibly stopped. Law Abiding Citizen is not merely a vengeance movie about vigilante violence, it is a moral fable that condemns our legal system. It makes the argument that making deals with murderers only results in more murder, that plea bargaining results in high recidivism rates of criminals being released into society only to rape and kill again and again.

In light of the current geopolitical events in Iran, I suspect the filmmakers may also be making an analogy to making deals with terrorists and fanatical dictators, which only result in perceived weakness by said terrorists as an opportunity to exploit for more power and violence.

Surrogates

Posted on by admin

This is a story of cop Tom Greer (Bruce Willis) in a world where people live their lives through robotic surrogates that they control remotely through virtual computers. The moral of the story is spoken right up front in the narration by the human activist that “We weren’t made to live life through machines, “ and that “what it means to be human is to sacrifice yourself for a higher cause and purpose.” There are people living in surrogate free zones because they want to be more human. It turns out there is a weapon that will kill people through killing their surrogates, never possible before. But the big crime turns out to be the repentant creator of the surrogates attempting to download a virus that will breakdown every surrogate in the world so that people will be forced to life real life again. The movie is really just an amplification of the avatar “social networking” that already goes on online. People live through false identities, they choose to all be younger and prettier avatars than to accept themselves as they really are. They become shadows of themselves, projections of their fantasies rather than reality. They don’t want to face reality. They seek to experience the pleasures of life without having the consequences. But as a main character says, “we must sacrifice certain pleasures to be truly connected.” So the cop and his wife suffer from the loss of their son, and she seeks to stay in the false world, while the cop seeks to redeem their marriage and make the human connection in their real bodies and souls. By the end, when the virus works and all surrogates drop, we see a lot of fat people walking around outside in their pajamas dazed as what they have been missing in the real world, but certainly better for it – because “We were not meant to live life through machines.”

Public Enemies

Posted on by admin

When I saw the title my first thought was, “Why is it plural? A movie about John Dillinger starring the illustrious talented Johnny Depp should clearly be called, ‘Public Enemy.’ Unless of course, Michael Mann is going to make a moral equivalency argument that the government that hunted down Dillinger was just as “criminal” or immoral as Dillinger. Therefore, the real public enemies are Hoover and his FBI gang.” And this is what I believe Mann has tried to do. Dillinger is depicted as a man without a country in that he is a Romantic, a “criminal with a heart of gold”: he doesn’t take individuals’ money at the bank, only bank money; He is a devoted and gentle lover of one woman in a world of sleaze; and he lives for the moment, being fiercely loyal to his friends. He doesn’t look beyond tomorrow, so eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. This existential worldview is depicted in the movie as being anachronistic in a modernizing era as crime syndicates learn to build a regular established illegal income through gambling rather than dangerous one-off bank robbing. Crime has lost its romance of the individual and become big business. Dillinger cannot continue to exist in this world with his fun loving devil may care Robin Hood romanticism. If you don’t change with the times, you will die, survival of the fittest. J. Edgar Hoover is depicted as a fool without any experience, therefore unworthy of his position. And the “good guy” tracking down Dillinger, Melvin Pervis, is depicted as cold and emotionless, a man of science who represents the future of the FBI, as he relies on new scientific techniques of forensics to track down bad guys, thus taking out all the glory of the human intuition. Pervis’ henchmen beat Dillinger’s woman, making them look more cruel than Dillinger. The Untouchables, this is NOT, as the good guys are portrayed as villainous and traitorous as the bad guys, in fact, quite often, simply stupid or neanderthal. So this is also a movie about the death of the romantic notion of Robin Hood redistributive justice in favor of the modern scientific method (forensics) and the big business of criminal syndicates. The real public enemies in this movie, as embodied in the FBI characters as well as crime syndicates are Enlightenment science and “corporatism” that has crushed the individual zest for life.

The Path to 9/11

Posted on by admin

Espionage Miniseries. The story of how 9-11 came about based on the 9-11 Commission report. Directed by David Cunningham, the director of my movie, “To End All Wars.” This is going to be on TV, but it is so astonishingly powerful, that I had to blog about it. It completes the incredible “trilogy” of 9-11 movies that I would say every American should see. The others being “United 93” and “World Trade Center.”

“The Path to 9-11” shows the political realities that the other two neglect. Shot like the series 24 in handheld very shakey style, this 6 hour extravaganza is a miracle any Hollywood Network would actually make it. Why? Because it shows George Tenet of the CIA, and Sandy Berger of National Security and Bill Clinton are all directly responsible for Osama Bin Laden being alive and carrying out 9-11. (It reveals Clinton’s sexual immorality being a distraction from his ability to lead, in missing the opportunity to actually catch or kill Bin Laden. It shows that Clinton and his administration had the opportunity to catch Bin Laden and he did not give the order to do so (This is a compilation of several events). This is why Clinton has sought to persuade ABC to re-edit the program. It shows that the US Embassy head in Yemen (played brilliantly by Patricia Heaton) was so concerned about “offending” Islam and following their social customs with sensitivity training that she quashed the investigations after the USS Cole bombing. It shows that “racial profiling” was responsible for missing the terrorists. It shows that the little people like a Canadian border guard and an airplane pilot educator were heros because they ignored the rules against racial profiling and caught Moussaui and another terrorist. It shows that the Clinton administration, including Madeline Albright, betrayed the “only true friend” we had, the head of the Northern Alliance, and failed to support him when he needed our help the most. It portrays Richard Clarke as a hero who kept telling everyone this was going to happen and we should attack the terrorists and take them out, and no one listened. And it is not one sided in it’s critique either, for it shows the capture of Ramze Youssef and Moussaui, so it shows the positive movements of the Clinton administration as well. But it also critiques the Bush administration in showing that embarrassing moment for Bush at the elementary school during the attacks, and how the military was confused and incompetent in scrambling their jets. And it also shows Condi Rice “demoting” Clarke into a lesser job, when he was the one guy who was pointing out the danger and what they should do. So it is not a politically biased movie.

There is a beautiful moment which highlights the difference between Islam and Christianity. As firefighters are carrying people out of the WTC towers, a priest, dressed in firefighting garb is heard to be praying for the men who are heroically rescuing others as well as for the victims to keep them safe. This God of mercy and grace and self sacrifice juxtaposed against the previous 5 hours of Muslims praying to their god of war and rationalizing hatred and murder. EVERY AMERICAN MUST SEE THIS FILM. Thank you, David Cunningham and the writer, Cyrus Nowrasteh, for your courageous storytelling.

P.S. I just heard that ABC is re-editing the film in response to Clinton’s demand to make him look better. And that some US Senator has threatened to pull ABC’s license if they don’t pull the show. Wow, censorship. Where is the ACLU? That’s what I want to know. Now, let’s see, do you think ABC can be relied upon to tell the truth about anything when it capitulates to politicians like this? And then this lying Sandy Berger, who is a criminal who stole classified documents from National Security Archives and stuffed them in his pants to steal them — and this criminal scumbag is complaining about truthful portrayal? Jeesh. And by the way, the scene that Clinton is griping about, is a dramatization of the fact that the Administration failed to take several opportunities to catch Bin Laden (As documented in the 9/11 Commission Report, page 136-137).

The Illusionist

Posted on by admin

Romantic Mystery. In turn-of-the-century Vienna, a magician uses his skills to win the heart of a woman above his class status. Paul Giametti plays the police captain who tells the story and is torn between his loyalty to a corrupt prince and justice. I found this story engrossing. Although one could tell that all the illusions were simply camera tricks, not true magical skill, which sort of made it harder to believe. On the other hand, it was still a great story of love and the pressure of social standing.

V For Vendetta

Posted on by admin

Sci-Fi espionage. Anti-Christ bigoted hate-speech. A futuristic dystopic England that is ruled over by maniacal Christian fanatics is undone by an anarchic terrorist. (The Public Relations mouthpiece uses God talk in his speeches, the symbol of the state is a double cross, and the government posters all say, “Unity through faith,” an obvious reference to “One nation under God” Some government agents quote Proverbs, “Spare the rod, spoil the child” to justify beating the hero with a police baton). It is entirely beyond rational explanation how people like these storytellers, the Wachowskis, can be so blind as to see the world the exact opposite of the way it is. It is on the level of insanity. Or rather, shall we say, they are themselves trapped in the Matrix.

Do these Wachowskis have any clue that it is Muslim countries that would chop off the Wachowski brothers’ heads for their alternate sexual lifestyles? They are worrying about some non-existant Christian government in a fever-brained hallucination of the future oppressing gays when actual existing MUSLIM governments are actually oppressing and killing gays and Christians right now! My God, these kids must have gone to public school.

Actual Muslim totalitarian regimes of genocidal maniacs right now all through the earth killing Christians and outlawing the Bible, and the Ws are “sending the alarm” to watch out for Christian regimes THAT DO NOT EXIST as if they would make Islam and the Koran illegal? This cannot be mere stupidity that causes this kind of upside down view. It can only be pure hatred and bigotry. It boggles the mind, But then, when you are Nietzschean, as these blokes are, you give up your mind for a Dionysian blood bath of hatred and the will to power – all in the name of freedom. Interesting, that their hero Nietzsche’s views actually led to the very totalitarian Nazism that they warn about in Christianity.

Interesting that the V hero says “words are more powerful than truncheons” and that in words lie the power of truth, but according the THEIR Nietzsche, there is no truth to words but mere will to power, the very thing they accuse others of. To Nietzsche, there is no absolute truth behind words, only perspective mastering words to enslave others. V says that enough people blowing up buildings can change the world. So the Ws are actually supporters of terrorism and murder.

There were a few moments of truth, such as the comments that “people should not fear their governments, governments should fear their people,” and “ideas are bullet proof.” And guess who said comments like that in real life history, W bros? Those lunatic Bible believing religious fanatics who founded our country on Christian ideas that provided your freedom to spout hate speech.

The DaVinci Code

Posted on by admin

Thriller. A cryptologist and a symbologist stumble upon a conspiracy by nefarious Catholics to cover up an alleged secret that God is a woman and Christians are cold blooded murderers who want to keep people from having fun, especially women.

All right, here’s the scoop. I did some research and found out that the director of the movie, Ron Howard, the writer, Akiva Goldsman, and the producer, Brian Grazer are all part of a vast conspiracy called “I IN GAME,” which just happens to be an anagram of “Imagine” Entertainment. Check it out for yourself. Really. Religious scholars say that this secret order is an atheist bloodline of soldiers who have a long line of connections and aberrations through history going back to the Ku Klux Klan, White Supremacists, the Nazis, slave holders in the antebellum South, Hezbollah and Al Queda, as well as all the way back to the Baal worshippers of ancient Canaan, who sacrificed their children in the fire. And it’s all right there in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic Gospels. Somewhere in the Tripartate Tractate or the Trimorphic Protenoia, and other serious sounding scroll titles.

There are some who believe that at the same time as he was playing 6 year old Opie Taylor on TV, Ron Howard may have had a part in the assassination of JFK—most likely as a messenger boy for the mafia, CIA and Cubans Against Castro, though some believe he may have actually been the unseen trigger man in the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. There is a “Hanks” family tree that goes back to some slaveholders before the Civil War who beat their slaves and raped them.

“I In Game” is a phrase that means, “I am in the game of world conquest.” It seeks to achieve this by spreading hatred for Christians so that people will rise up and imprison them and create a new Colloseum to throw religious believers to the lions, jut like Nero did in the First Century. Which is not the least bit ironic since Goldman’s Jewish ancestors did that very thing to Christians, by betraying them to the Romans. It’s all true and I found it out from scholarly respected books like “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Some documents recently discovered show that Howard, Goldsman, and Grazer, and even Tom Hanks and Ian McKellen have been members of this organization for many years, and the fact that there is no documentation to prove it only shows how secret they are. Even though both Howard and Hanks appear to have good marriages, it is entirely possible that they actually beat their wives regularly and their entire family covers it up. If you doubt this, just ask them, “have you stopped beating your wife?” and see what answer they give. Besides, he has worked very closely with Russell Crowe on A Beautiful Mind and Cinderella Man, who has been arrested for his violent behavior.

But the oldest secret Academy that may be connected to Dan Brown himself (the original author of The Da Vinci Code) is one uncovered by journalist Bill Federer (He writes about it on WorldNetDaily.com under the article “Dan Brown and the “Voltaire Code.”). He reveals that the famous God-hater Voltaire started this secret academy around 1728. Timothy Dwight, president of Yale from 1795-1817 gave an address in New Haven on July 4, 1798 wherein he uncovered this conspiracy of “Voltaire’s Code.” His address is available in Encyclopedia Britannica’s Annals of American, Vol. 4. In it he exposes Voltaire’s plans to “fabricate books of all kinds against Christianity, especially such as excite doubt and generate contempt and derision.” Dwight reveals the astonishing fact that these false books that Voltaire proposed “were formed, altered, forged, imputed as posthumous to deceased writers of reputation and sent abroad with the weight of their names.” The Gospel of Mary Magdalene? The Gospel of Judas? Obviously counterfeits imputed with false authority in order to attack Christianity. Now, The Da Vinci Code, another in a long line of such conspiracy propaganda.

Ron Howard, as most Enquiring minds already know (reported trustworthily on the internet, Dec. 6, 2001) left his kid behind at a donut shop. What they didn’t tell you was the rumors that he may have been wanting to get rid of this child so he can divorce his wife and marry a mistress. This may be just legend, but it fits the picture perfectly, doesn’t it? Grazer of course, most likely has a string of venereal diseased “girlfriends,” but some reporters disagree. According to some sources who remain unnamed and therefore unverifiable, Ian McKellen once met a guy at a Hollywood event that was an alleged member of a militant gay group that has burned down churches and may have been the financing source of the Roman Catholic circle of predatory homosexual priests. The goal: to topple the Roman Catholic Church by infiltrating it with its secret members.

Now wait, you tell me. This is hate-filled racist propaganda, lies, legends and rumors. Oh, you mean like saying that the essence of Christianity is oppression, misogyny, lies, murder, rape and power? You mean like saying as Langdon does that wherever the “one true God” has been preached, “There has been killing in his name,” as if the heart of monotheism is murder? So, all of a sudden now, history needs to be verified beyond conspiracy theorizing and bigotry? What’s sauce for the goose of Da Vinci Code is sauce for the gander of I IN GAME. I’ll just say what Dan Brown says—my story here is only fiction. But every detail is based on facts. Try to nail me down on that one. But isn’t it slander to attack someone’s character like that when it is not true? Answer: Slander is only acceptable when it is against Christianity. Hate is only allowed against Catholics, Evangelicals and Republicans. Intolerance is only acceptable against the politically incorrect. I’ll just answer with the wise words of Hanks’ character, Langdon, “The only thing that matters is what you believe.” So if I believe it, who cares if it isn’t true. It’s true for me.
So, now you know how it feels.

G.K. Chesterton once allegedly said, “He who does not believe in God will believe in anything.”
And those same conspiracy theorists gripe that Christians believe in fairy tales? Sheesh.
p.s. the best line in the film, uttered by Teabing: “You can’t trust the French.”

Mission Impossible 3

Posted on by admin

Action Adventure. Tom Cruise must rescue his new wife from the clutches of an evil criminal who wants some secret weapon that Cruise has. Well, in terms of action, it delivers, but so what. Most of these James Bond movies have a cliché criminal who wants to take over the world with some elaborate plot. This one, you don’t even know what it is about. The McGuffin that Cruise is trying to retrieve has some biohazard markings on it, but we never know what it is. All we find out is the conspiracy theorizing that an Executive branch representative is trying to sell the biohazard thing, which is basically a WMD to some country that will then allow the US to invade it in the name of WMDs and establish democracy, because “that’s what we do best,” the Judas betrayer says. So this is a not-so-subtle political agenda by the storytellers that the US is empire building in the name of democracy. Anyway, it had some good stuff about courage and loyalty and trust under high pressure. But ultimately forgettable to me because it lacked the real humanity that can make an action movie so much more.