Not Recommended. This is a movie based on the famous short story about time travel by Ray Bradbury about time travelers who go back into the prehistoric era and step on a butterfly, which changes the entire course of history. I love this premise of the “butterfly effect” and I love time travel movies which are all about changing bad choices in the past to avoid the bad consequences in the present. A worthy premise. But this movie, even though it had a budget of 80 million looked very B-movie with terrible cheesy blue screening and a B-plot rip off of Jurrasic Park but with evolved Baboon-reptile creatures instead of Raptors. There are a lot of deus ex machina moments like the subway collapsing on the sea monster just as it is about to eat Ed Burns, the hero. Oh, it’s not all that bad, it’s just a B-style execution. But worse than that, it is an atheistic evolutionary fairy tale that is deeply dissatisfying. The idea is that when they disrupt something in the past, they don’t affect the future right away, but rather time waves occur bringing instantaneous change every day or so, that climbs up the evolutionary ladder. So, the time travelers kill a butterfly, but when they get back, everything is the same, until a time wave occurs and the vegetation sprouts around the city, taking it over, then some animals start appearing that evolved because they never went extinct supposedly. And of course, it becomes a game of survival until the hero can get back in time to stop the moment where the butterfly was killed. It all just felt like gimmicks and scare tricks rather than an actual intense story. Oh, and the humans turn into fish like amphibian creatures, what a hilarious laugh. But here’s the real goofy kicker: The angry female scientist who rants and raves about scientific responsibility to the greedy capitalist business man who is using the time machine to make money. She is all morally indignant and yells that “If you mess with this time travel, you mess with the whole of evolution,” and she tells the hero, “You have to set things right.” As if there is a right and wrong in evolution?!!? Hello?! There is no right or wrong in evolution, people! There is just change. To make a moral judgment on people meddling with evolution is ludicrous within the evolutionary story. A gazelle thinks it unfair that a crocodile kills and eats it. So, the crocodile thinks Gazelles have no rights. So humans kill off species and devastate rainforests. So do fires and parasites. So what? These atheist evolution stories make all these moral judgments of human behavior as if there is some kind of moral system they are supposed to be following other than their natural drive to destroy, exploit, and eat. Meddling with time travel cannot be wrong upon atheistic evolutionary presuppositions. Evolution is simply the universal fact that everything changes, sometimes slowly, often times through cataclysmic destruction. So a volcano destroys an entire ecosystem. Do these self-righteous self-appointed guardians of evolutionary morality yell and complain to volcanos about their moral responsibility or how about the plague carrying insects that wipe out whole populations or all the animals that make each other go extinct? Then why in HELL are they griping at man when he disrupts the ecosystem? He’s just another animal in the chain of being who adds cataclysmic effects into the equation. How is that wrong or immoral in a universe of matter in motion without morality or right and wrong? There is only survivors and change. So, man kills off a species and then another survives in its stead. So what if man kills everything? The bacteria and viruses will survive and evolve into new organisms cause that‘s just the way it is. So man eats up everything like sharks, I don’t see anyone protesting shark behavior. So humans trample over the environment like a herd of elephants. I don’t see anyone protesting Elephants. If man is no more special than any other animal in the great chain of evolutionary being, then you made your bed of genocidal atrocities, now sleep in it.
Movies
Grizzly Man
Highly Recommended. A brillianté documentary by Werner Herzog about a loser LA actor turned grizzly bear activist, Timothy Treadwell, who would go up to Alaska every year to spend time with the Grizzly bears of the National Park. This is the most sublime, compassionate, profound and ironic revelation of the complete moronic stupidity of animal rights activists, and by extension other environmental extremists. It is the portrait of a man descending into the depths of self-delusion as he becomes less capable of integrating himself into human social culture, and takes on the self-righteous mantle of “protector” friend and lover of the grizzly bear—all the way up until a Grizzly bear kills and eats him and his girlfriend. It is touching at times, as we see this sad and lonely man wax eloquent about his lack of a love life and inability to relate to women, wishing he were a homosexual to make it easier without any emotional entanglements. Or when we see his ex-girlfriend, a sorry case herself, pine on about how they started Grizzly People together and how much she misses him. Or when Timothy is able to befriend the local foxes, who do in fact become amenable to petting and following him around. It is at times, amusing, as when we see Timothy rant and rave about how he is the only one to protect these bears, and then we find out they are protected on National Park Grounds. Or when we hear local Park Rangers, scientists and mammal and bear experts talk lovingly yet pitying of Timothy’s delusion. Or when we hear Timothy talk about how lonely it is to be the lone man in the wilderness, and then we see him tell his girlfriend to stay out of the camera shot because he is supposed to be alone in the wilderness. Or when we see him do little cutaway segments of him running in the woods with different clothes on so he will have some action footage to cut into. And it is at times, deadly dark, as we see Timothy cuss and rant at the evil Park Services and the government and people, only to realize that this is indeed how hateful animal rights activists are toward their own species, HUMAN BEINGS, in the name of love of animals. Or when we see Timothy’s dangerous ignorance of the nature and the ecosystem by hanging out closely to the bears and getting them used to his presense. By breaking through the distance that the bears have had with humans for thousands of years, Timothy actually endangers both humans and bears because it makes the bears more aggressive toward humans. At times, it is pathetic, as Timothy weeps over the death and destruction of animal life because of his naïve belief in the harmony of all things with the earth. What he completely disregards is what Herzog explains is the “murder, death and chaos” that is the very essence of nature. This kind of idealistic youthful zeal amounts to pure stupidity. And at times it is downright absurd, as animal rights activists are, when Timothy claims some kind of special connection and relationship to the bears while we see close ups of the bears dull expressionless eyes, showing complete disregard and maybe even annoyed tolerance of the pathetic little human annoyance. And through it all, Herzog is subversive in showing the irony and ignorance of Timothy, but mostly through letting Timothy just speak for himself. The ignorance and irony is self-evident. Yet, Herzog is not mean-spirited. Through it all there is a sense of loving concern, respect for good intentions and sincerity. And that’s what makes this so penetrating and honest, and the finest cinematic debunking of the lunacy of animal rights activism ever. These people are sincere, sincerely deluded in thinking themselves saviors of animals with relationships akin to human relationships. The truth is, nature is red in tooth and bear claw. And that gets me to my big gripe about all environmentalism and animal rights activism. They all, usually believe in atheistic evolution. They believe man is not transcendent or special in being created in the image of God, but merely another animal on the evolutionary chain of being. MAN IS JUST ANOTHER ANIMAL. There is no such thing as moral absolutes in an ever-changing universe. Morals are mere social constructions, but they are not actually true in any sense of actual obligation beyond force or power. So if there are no transcendent moral absolutes, and man is just a mere animal, then WHY OH WHY PLEASE TELL ME, DO ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS ALL SCREECH WITH MORAL ANGER AT MAN’S ACTIONS AS IF MAN IS DOING SOMETHING WRONG IN HOW HE TREATS ANIMALS? There is no moral absolute wrong in this worldview! Where does it say in the DNA of the universe that man is supposed to do something other than by his nature? There is no such thing as moral right and wrong absolutes, according to evolution, so you cannot say man is doing WRONG when he treats animals in anyway at all. The Great white shark eats cute little seals, the black widow cannibalizes her mate, the male lion and Grizzly bears, (as illustrated in this movie) kill their own young to be able maintain their power or fornicate more with the females, AND HUMANS MAKE OTHER ANIMALS GO EXTINCT. So what? That’s all part of nature. The second you place some kind of moral obligation on man to behave a certain way towards animals, you have just denied evolution and said that man is higher than other animals because he is obligated to some absolute moral standard that all other animals are not obligated unto. If evolution is true and man is just another animal, then man does by nature what he does, JUST LIKE EVERY OTHER ANIMAL does by nature what they do. You cannot criticize man’s behavior, you can only observe, just as scientists observe the behavior of grizzly bears and great white sharks. Moral judgments and criticisms of human behavior have no place in the evolutionary metanarrative. Now, it just so happens that God has revealed in his Word moral obligations, one of which is to not abuse animals and to be responsible stewards of creation. So with every breath that an animal rights activist or environmental activist spews hatred at God, but then proclaims some sort of moral obligation about proper treatment of animals, he is denying evolution and stealing from Christianity, while at the same moment outwardly denying Christianity. We have a word for this: Hypocrisy. Oh, and another one: Depravity. (Romans 1:17-24)
The Cave
Not really Recommended. Alien under the earth. The movie is half decent as a survival genre story goes. I was rather surprised. It was an tale of atheistic evolution. The explorers go deep into the mountain caves of some Slavic country only to be hunted by predators that have evolved from humans previously trapped in there 30 years prior. And the source of the rapid evolution is a parasite that infects the hero, so we see him turning into one of the creatures as he helps them try to escape. Earlier, we see Byzantine murals of demons that fought the knights, only to discover that of course, in good naturalistic faith, the demons are merely the superstitious interpretation of the unknown scientific evolutionary process of this parasite. As far as the action goes, though, the story is well paced and scary, a decent survival movie.
The Brothers Grimm
Partially recommended. This Terry Gilliam creation has a fictional version of the brothers who created the famous somewhat gruesome fairytales, as charlatans who exploit the superstitions of medieval peasants to make money. So, they manufacture a fake witch with middle ages technology and then vanquish her, knowing that since witches don’t really exist, there won’t be any real trouble and it will appear that they stopped it all. UNTIL THEY MEET REAL SUPERNATURAL magic and witchcraft and haunted woods. One brother is a “true believer” whose belief in magic beans ruined his destitute family’s life, and the other brother is the consummate materialist who quotes the infamous Hobbesian dictum, “life is short, brutish struggle and then you die.” He is certain “there is a rational explanation for everything.” This is a great set up for the materialist brother by the end to humble his pride and acknowledge not merely the existence of the supernatural, but also the reality of the things that go with it, like love and honor and courage. And he learns it from his naïve brother who keeps seeking the magic and its origins. So their redemption lies in being forced to save a small community haunted by monsters. Their charlatanism is cured and they find true love as well as save a group of about 12 children. They have some great subtle lines that recall famous fairy tales but worked within the story, like “Who’s the fairest of them all” and “huff and puff”. The whole point of this story is the Romantic notion that the onset of rationalism and science stole the mystery out of life, and that has blinded the eyes of the modernist who cannot see the evan vitale, the magic, the supernatural of life. A rather noble sentiment, coming as it does, from one of the atheist Monty Python gang. But then again, his view is more likely to be that of Bruno Bettleheim and the Jungian belief in the archetypes of the collective unconscious. And fairy tales tap into that collective unconscious and unite us in humanity rather than in God and his image. But alas, I do not think that Jungian analysis is the last word in the interpretation of fairy tales. In the tale, the witch must have the blood of others to maintain her eternal life or she returns to her corpse self. Well, that is clearly a substitutionary atonement theme that also reinforces the belief that evil people will consume or kill others in order to benefit their own future and hopes. Kinda sounds like abortion, euthanasia, and stem cell research doesn’t it? Consume and kill the young, the old, the less fit and helpless in order to advance your own interests and survival. So the story, like a dark version of Shrek, begins as a deconstruction of fairy tales, but ends up a rather traditional fairy tale.
Four Brothers
Not Recommended. Four adopted brothers return to their home town to get revenge on their adopted mother’s killers. What appears to be a random robbery killing turns out to be an execution, and the four brothers, all troublemakers with criminal pasts, rise to the occasion without fear in order to accomplish some “street justice.” Well, this isn’t justice at all. It’s pure revenge to the last drop. I am disappointed with John Singleton. He started his career with a very responsible Boyz in the Hood that did not shrink from the realities of ghetto culture, but posited a responsibility of self-determination to rise above it, transcend one’s bad circumstances. Unfortunately, Four Brothers actually reinforces the ghetto hate culture of guns, violence and revenge. The mother is an older lady who says the only redeeming thing in the movie to a young lad caught stealing: “I believe you’re worth more. But you’ve got to believe you’re worth more.” (about the only link to Singleton’s responsible past) And then he proceeds to decimate the morality behind that little profundity with heros who are relentless cold blooded killers who mock and abuse women. Cinematically, it was just pure ludicrous action as these guys carry around guns openly like the old west (And this wasn’t South Central either. It was a SUBURB of Detroit), engage in car chases where there no cars on the streets, have shootouts in broad daylight where absolutely no one is around and no one calls the cops. All right, I can accept a certain amount of suspended disbelief, and even a certain amount of exaggeration for a movie, but this one went way too far. And then Mark Wahlberg waves a gun around, breaking up a basketball game to ask people if they know about their mother’s killer. And it is just ridiculous that there are no consequences for his criminal display. But the worst aspect of this story is that this is the kind of stuff that breeds a ghetto culture of violence in kids. It perpetuates the belief that you must take “justice” into our own hands in revenge. Sure, there is some self-defense in the movie, but the overwhelming spirit is definitely Vigilante violence and revenge that goes way beyond finding justice for a mother’s killer.
March of the Penguins
Highly Recommended. This little documentary about the mating and child-rearing of Antarctic Emperor Penguins is the finest proof for the existence of God that I’ve seen on film in a long time. As Morgan Freeman, the narrator in the American version says, this is more than a story of survival, it’s a story of love. The organization and ecological integration of these weather beaten little fellows as they develop their families, their searching for mates, their audible recognition of loved ones, their curious little ways are so warm and entertaining and even lovable that the story goes by faster than a romantic comedy. And there is story, a whole lot of it. And you just sit back and chuckle and care for God’s little creatures at the same time that you are in awe and wonder of such a beautiful creation, so fearfully and wonderfully made by our Creator.
The Upside of Anger
Not really recommended. This is a movie about a woman, Joan Allen, and her four daughters whose father walks out on them for a secretary, and the woman is left to deal with her anger, while she falls for a washed up Baseball star played by Kevin Costner as he courts her with beer can firmly in hand, as both are drunks. The characters are eminently interesting, (except for their drunkenness), good acting and dialogue and great human drama. But the problem I have is it’s modernism in relationships as well as it’s basic lack of story. It is a family drama without much plot, so it would lose my interest. Oh, there’s some story with a daughter getting an ulcer from worrying about her lack of acceptance by the mom, and Costner pursuing Allen a little, and a subplot of an older guy dating one of the younger daughters. In an illuminating moment, the mother scolds the guy for such age abuse of dating a young girl. BUT SHE DOES NOTHING TO STOP IT. And when she catches them in bed, she just gets all flustered, BUT DOES NOTHING TO STOP IT. And worse, off, the filmmaker never portrays this as a weakness that is overcome or even realized. It is just part of life. One good moment is when the older guy responds to the mom that older women his age are not worth it because they aren’t grateful, but are selfishly obsessed with themselves and their agendas. Some good insights, but mostly piece-meal. Another problem is that the Costner character provides no real redemption and is himself a loser whose only quality is to recognize that when he is “With her and her girls, he knows everything is great and how it’s supposed to be.” Whoopy do. Like that is a great insight into love? Almost, but not quite. Rather than the motivation to be better people, this story’s understanding of love is a feeling of happiness or comfort or “fittedness.” This is a story that has great potential for meaningful significance, but never quite achieves it, yet captures some good human drama and conflict. The problem with this is the problem I have with so-called “realism.” Realism, with it’s modern elevation of dysfunction without redemption is used as a disguise for nihilism or humanistic cynicism. When a discovery is made and Joan realizes that she was wrong about everything she thought about her husband, the pseudo-wise young daughter narrates that the upside of anger is how it brought out who her mother really was or some kind of psychobabble, when in fact, her mother was a complete failure who did not learn her lesson and really just hurt others and herself because of her bitterness and anger, AND IT WAS ALL NECESSARILY WRONG because it was founded on a fallacy. So, really it should show how worthless and negative anger is in destroying or hurting lives, especially, when it is often wrong in its assumptions anyway. An opportunity for a profound insight into the nature of anger and how to be redeemed from it, was in my opinion, profoundly missed. GREAT acting though, too bad.
Skeleton Key
Not Recommended. The story of a Northerner do-gooder nurse (Kate Hudson) who is hired to do some at-home hospice in New Orleans for an elderly stroke victim (John Hurt). When she discovers there are some dark dealings surrounding the “magic” oriented Hoodoo (As opposed to Voodoo) and a dark spiritual past for the house itself, she runs into water way over her head. This is a very well done supernatural type thriller. Very good suspense and surprises. Excellent acting by John Hurt as the elderly man stricken by magic, not a stroke, and by Gena Rowlands as the creepy old wife. And as supernatural thrillers go, it’s all there. My problem with it is that it is a negative ending that has evil win through revenge, which spoils the heart and soul of it. Let me explain, and thereby ruin the movie for you. It turns out that two Hoodoo black servants in the deep past of the house, were lynched for their magical Hoodoo ways by the white people who owned the house. But somehow, they managed to work their Hoodoo (I just can’t keep from smiling at how goofy the word sounds), and engage in a ritual where they can conjure up the ability to have their spirits move into another’s body and take over, so they can have another life. Well, after all the surprise twists, it turns out that this Hoodoo couple is continuing to snatch people’s bodies, and the latest is our young Kate. There is just nothing very redeeming about the story and evil wins in a way that does not seem instructive or tragic. Just because a movie is done well doesn’t make it worthy of viewing if it’s content is without redemption or truth.
Broken Flowers
Not Recommended. This is a story with a powerful moral theme that I think is hindered by an immoral element that destroys the very morality of the story itself. A great premise of Bill Murray, a lonely lifeless eternal womanizing bachelor, who receives a letter in the mail telling him he has sired a son that is now 19 years old by one of his past conquests. But the mother does not tell him who she is, so he is left wondering. He is pushed into a plan by his next door neighbor, a family man, with a loving wife and kids, to seek out his ex-girlfriends and try to figure out which one it is. So Murray goes on a cross country trip to visit each of several woman who he may have dated around 19 years ago. As he visits each one, we see each of them, living wasted lives, that it is implied HE has been of some cause. Sharon Stone, plays a white trash woman who sleeps with anything that moves, and has no real heart connection, not even with her daughter, who is a small version slut of her mom. Jessica Lange has become a lesbian kooky new age “animal communicator” who thinks she is a Dr. Dolittle with animals. Another one has become a lonely consumer lifestyle suburban desperate housewife married to a loving but empty real estate salesman. And another has become a rural crude white trash biker’s chick. And the beautiful dramatic aspect of this filmmaking is how Jim Jarmusch, the writer/director communicates the emptiness of each of these women’s lives, and indeed, Murray’s life as well, almost entirely through looks and visuals. Almost NOTHING is spoken of their misery or despair. You can see it in their eyes and reactions to him. They have all had their lives sucked out of them, and he has no life left in him. No emotion, no heart or zeal for reality. He’s a living personification of Hugh Hefner. And then, he becomes haunted by this search for a son. Every young man he sees in each town, looks as if he could be his son. When Murray gets back home, having failed to figure out which one it was, he discovers a drifter that he assumes is his son, but when he reaches out to the kid assuming he is his father, the kid runs and we see he isn’t. And Murray is left literally, on a crossroad, with nothing, and having not found his son. He is unredeemed. He is entirely alone and without any connection. It is, in fact, a tragedy. The kid had asked Murray for some philosophical advice and Murray told him, “The past is gone, the future isn’t here yet. So this is all there is, the present.” And you can’t help but think that this existential worldview is the driving force of such selfishness. Living for the moment is part and parcel of the destruction of human connection and relationship. It is supreme selfishness that destroys life in yourself and in others. It’s a beautiful testament to the despair and emptiness of a promiscuous life. A life that can find no intimacy, and therefore no human connection. A life that begins with “fun” and sexual experiences, but ends in complete isolation and insignificance. A touch of irony is thrown in, when the family man neighbor says he is helping Murray find his ex-girlfriends because he believes Murray “understands women.” In other words, the grass is greener syndrome makes the people who do know the normalcy of intimacy with a wife and family actually mistakenly assume that men who are able to bed so many women must know women. They do and they don’t. They know how to use and manipulate them, but not how to know them intimately. Promiscuous womanizers don’t really know the meaning of love and therefore the beauty and comfort of normalcy in marriage and relationships. It is the “boring” lifelong commitment that finds intimacy and true human connection. The trouble is that we too easily take it for granted, and this movie makes that point. The reason why I cannot recommend it though is because there is a full frontal nudity shot of a girl who is supposed to be a teen slut hitting on Murray. Murray runs from it, but the damage is done cinematically. I don’t have a problem with the concept of such temptation or depravity in a movie, but the filmmaker shows full frontal nudity for a girl that is supposed to be a teenager (though, obviously, the actress could not legally be a teen). So, in effect, the filmmaker imitates child pornography in the making of his movie, which effectively destroys the moral import of the rest of the movie. There are limits to the appropriate depiction of sin, and this movie, by imitating child pornography, stepped over that line. I think it is more autobiographical of the dark fantasies of filmmakers, like Jarmusch, than it is a does of “reality,” as they might claim.
My Date with Drew
Recommended. This delightful little cheapo documentary about a Joe Average guy seeking to win a date with Drew Barrymore in 30 days, with a $1100 budget is hilarious, touching and inspiring. It’s made with a consumer camera that was “borrowed” from Circuit City, that is, purchased and returned within the 30 day return policy, since the kids were poor filmmakers in LA. So it’s totally bad quality visually, but it’s great, and why? Because IT’S A GREAT STORY. And that is what I love about the independent market today, because of the availability of digital cameras, independent filmmakers are no longer oppressed by the unavailability of the tools of their trade because of price. It is revitalizing the lost art of Hollywood, a good story. As the box office continues to slump and we are deluged with inflated budget loser movies and an endless deluge of bad 70s TV series remakes into movies (some of which are very good, like Bewitched), this movie, and others like it (Primer) give a refreshing affirmation of good storytelling – BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO. All these no-budget movies have is their story, they have no money and no connections, so they rely totally on story, which is really the secret of the best Hollywood movies anyway. So, hip hip hooray. Do you think the out of touch Hollywood Execs will figure this out someday? Anyway, this is a male juvenile excursion into celebrity worship, which I normally would be repulsed by, but I really think the whole thing is done with tongue in cheek levity. It’s all about the American Dream: that an ordinary man, through ingenuity, hard work and a little providence, can do the extraordinary, in this case, win a date with the movie star he had a crush on as a little kid. In fact, the kitsche scene at the end where Drew encourages Brian, the non-stalking stalker, that she was intrigued by his pursuit of his dream and the desire to transcend his experience in life and make something more of himself, is a little cornball cheesiness, but I was personally inspired and teared up because of it. IT WORKED. The only dark side that struck me was knowing that in an age of “reality TV” God only knows how much of this movie was artificially created in order to appear “real,” yet fit the structure of a good story, like turning points and climax etc. It seems there are no standards of morality for postmodern media, so why wouldn’t they fake the documentary? The very pathos and comedy of it all comes from seeing this as “really happening,” If it turns out the movie is a conceit, this would point up to the destructive power of movies to deceive, much like a Michael Moore film. That does not bode well for us. But that aside, the moment where Brian gets the phone call from Drew’s partner that she wants to see him, it is a brilliant one minute shot of absolute silence as he listens to his cell phone, and we cannot hear anything he is hearing, but we only see his face and all the ambiguous emotions he was going through. It was truly the finest moment in the film and worthy of the accolade of “great filmmaking.”