The Devil Wears Prada

Posted on July 2, 2006 by admin

Comedy. An unfashionable girl gets a job with the Queen of the fashion industry and is educated in the ways of outer beauty. A thoroughly enjoyable moral tale about fashion as a metaphor for life. Anne Hathaway is brilliant as the neophyte thrust in over her head and Meryl Streep is even more brilliant as the Devil herself. What I liked about this story is that it was pretty fair to the fashion industry, even while critiquing it. That is, the moral was of course that you should be yourself and not some fake façade of nouveau, but it gave the devil her due as well. That is, one scene was the most brilliant in the film is where Ann chuckles at the pettiness and apparent irrelvence of the designer’s design choices. Meryl stops and turns it back on her by describing to Anne, the origins and development of the poor taste turquoise blue in the sweater Anne is wearing, all the way up to the point where Anne buys it in a half price bin, thinking she is making her own choice, without being aware that the entire fashion industry dictated her options to her right down to what she is wearing. It was one of those moments where you say the villain is not all that wrong, though she may be an extreme. Favorite line in the movie, Anne questions Meryl about the legitimacy of the fashion world, and Meryl says to her, “Don’t be ridiculous, everyone wants to be us.” There is a particularly poignant punch to that line that hit me about our culture. That is the entire world of advertising/marketing/fashion simply works because everyone DOES want to be the impossible unattainable icon. Fashion is the deity of perfection which we all desire or are drawn to, whether we know it or not.

What I did not like about the movie is that a triangle is set up between Anne and her current boyfriend, a nobody nothing student of some kind, and a writer of the fashion world that is hitting on Anne. Well, the boyfriend is set up as the guy who represents conviction and the world she left but should have stayed with and the fashion writer represents the false world of temptation into emptiness. And yet, I thought the boyfriend as a loser and undesirable non-convictional man. So, I think their moral was not quite incarnate in that character as depicted. Another failing I think is that Anne sleeps with the fashion guy and then leaves him for the boyfriend, as if that liason did not affect her spirit at all. This was dishonest. Something that The Breakup storytellers were more observant about. In the Breakup, they break up but never sleep with anyone else because the storytellers realize that that changes you in a permanent way and alters the hope for true reconciliation. Not that reconciliation is impossible, but surely that the relationship loses the true unity that it had. Sex is sacramental. It changes you and your relationships forever. It takes a piece of you and loses it to another person. To deny that is dishonest.

The Lost City

Posted on May 20, 2006 by admin

Period Romantic Epic. A wealthy family in the midst of the Castro Communist revolution of 1958 Cuba. And Andy Garcia, the filmmaker, shows the truth of Communism. Different sons of the family go different ways when Revolution foments in the Batista regime. Andy and his father and uncle believe in democracy, peaceful justice. Another brother joins the revolution and we see the cruelty and evil of it as the “government” takes over private property in the name of “the people” and shuts down Andy’s night club and free expression. It’s a powerful juxtaposition of two worldviews one free and the other cruelty in the name of the people. Che Guevera is portrayed accurately as a murderous slimeball henchman of Castro, spouting the true Communist ideal, “the ends justifies the means.”

Anyway, a wonderfully tragic and heart ripping love story occurs between Andy and his brother’s widow, who fall in love with each other. But unfortunately, the widow falls for the revolution and chooses it over fleeing to America with Andy because it makes her feel good to be a part of something bigger than herself, a cause. But there is nothing bigger than us and our love, Andy tells her. Well, this was not quite accurate because Andy does in fact believe in freedom more than love because he moves to America without her, even though they both love each other deeply. This was a very powerful powerful truth that there is something higher than human love, but it ain’t the collective alone, it’s FREEDOM. I would have liked to hear more of this, but Andy’s actions show it clear enough. Freedom is more valuable than even love. In fact, without freedom you cannot have true love. To see this was very unusual because most movies place the love of two people to be the highest value that trivializes beliefs and worldviews. But the fact is that freedom and control, democracy and communism, democracy and revolution cannot coexist. One must die for the other to live. And that is expressed brilliantly in the story. Thank you Mr. Garcia for a story of truth, beauty, freedom, love and higher causes that rings deeply true to the core.

United 93

Posted on April 28, 2006 by admin

Terrorist Thriller. This docudrama recounting of the true story of United Flight 93 on that fateful day of 9/11, is the most important movie for America in years. Every American should see this film. These people are the heros of this generation. I am not exaggerating. These people are the heartland of America and they are what makes America great. When they discovered that these cowardly Muslim terrorists were going to kill them, these normal everyday people like you and me, stood up and fought back. They did it with knives and forks and extinguishers. They rose up together as one and fought evil. And they saved America. These people died for our country, folks, and that is no exaggeration.

This is a training film for every American. It is the only way to stop this evil. Just like Hitler. Hitler had to be killed or he would have killed millions more and enslaved the rest (just like radical islam). Appeasement would not work.

And to think that it was ordinary Americans who saved the Capitol, the most important of all the symbols that were attacked that day. That is why it is so mythic. And they did by fighting evildoers, not by appeasing them. Very excellent point in the film when the German passenger was telling everyone to appease the terrorists and do what they say and everything would be all right. Yes, this is Europe.

My one problem with it was that it focused too much on the technical and distant side of the air traffic controllers and the NORAD people. I wanted more of the personal. I wanted to see a bit of Todd Beamer’s life and the other guys who stormed those cowards. I wanted to know their humanness before they did this heroic act. I would have loved to see what Todd’s and some of the other’s goals were that day on their way to the airport, or whatever. It would have even been better to replace some of the documentary type tedious technical details in the air traffic controller’s room with more of the character’s development in the plane. But it was still phenomenal, AND MUST BE SEEN BY EVERY AMERICAN.

Take the Lead

Posted on April 13, 2006 by admin

Social issue dramedy. Antonio Banderas plays a Ballroom Dance instructor who tries to help inner city delinquent students to learn self-respect by teaching them ballroom dancing. This was a very rich story, full of hope and redemption for wayward youth. On one level, it is refreshing to see the discipline, hard work and beauty of Ball Room Dancing invade the undisciplined ugly environment of modern high school culture. It has the predictable lead student struggling between choosing a criminal life on the streets and the good life of accomplishing something through the dance competition. But so what. It still worked.

I enjoyed seeing the clash of cultures with Antonio’s polite manners being quaint anachronisms in the “modern liberated” egalitarian tyranny of public schools. Yet his politeness is shown to be superior to the lack thereof and even desired. A young kid picks up from him the lost art of opening doors for women. This of course is sexist patriarchal condescension to a feminist or egalitarian. But in this story, it’s goodness. And the burnt out woman principle played by the always lovely Alfre Woodard, jumps at the chance to do a dance with Antonio, even though every one else is questioning his program of dance for the kids. Even the teachers think it’s all just play and fun and the kids, who are in this class for detention, should be learning their math and doing homework.

Yet, Antonio explains to them how dancing teaches respect and dignity between people. Although it’s interesting that never once does he use the word discipline. It was almost like the filmmakers were trying to make a movie about discipline, but were still carrying residue from a politically correct worldview that just won’t admit to certain concepts like discipline and punishment. So, rather than being the hard strong Coach Carter, Antonio woos his students and persuades them. Well, this works well in fiction, but I question its efficacy in real life, and wonder what the real Pierre Dulaine (That Antonio plays) really was like. The filmmakers personal agendas most likely revised that history. But just the same, Antonio does tell the parents who are blameshifting their troubles, “Assigning blame is easy. Parent, environment, but it doesn’t make a problem go away.” True enough, indeed.

There is also a moment when a girl complains about the man taking the lead as making him “the boss,” and Antonio tells her “no,” she is the one who chooses to accept, to follow and is therefore not really being “led.” Well, okay, there’s definitely some truth to that, but you can’t help but think they are yet again trying to avoid the obvious patriarchal essence of male leadership that the very name of the movie, TAKE THE LEAD, implies. But of course, actions speak louder than words.

One thing bothered me though and that is the sexuality of the Tango that was used to inspire the kids. We see that their street dancing is sensual and erotic and they think that ball room is for old foggies. But then Antonio shows them a Tango with a dance queen and they see that it can be just as erotic in a classy way. The problem is that teens should not be sexualized so young and yet youth culture is so heavily sexualized that teens are being spiritually and psychologically raped and they don’t even realize it until they grow up and their screwed up relationships illustrate that they “grew up” too fast. Of course, like Antonio’s character, this very thought of mine is so anachronistic and old fashioned as to be laughable by the deluded modern mind. But it nonetheless remains the answer to the problem, just as his dancing was the unlikely catalyst of redemption.

Also, some of the humanistic worldview of individualism kept trying to creep in and recast the meaning. For instance, Antonio explains to the parents about his leading of the principle in a dance, “If she allows me to lead, she’s more than trusting me, she’s trusting herself.” Boy does that make any sense? He tells another kid, “You need to dance for yourself, not anybody else.” And to another, “Having courage to follow your heart is what makes you human.” All very beautiful half-truths. Of course on one level, kids do need to learn that following their peers or living to please peer pressures etc. is not cool. But I would recommend “doing the right thing” is freedom, believing the truth is freedom, and both those things often do not reside in our “selfs” or our hearts, which tend toward selfishness.

North Country

Posted on March 4, 2006 by admin

Civil rights drama. Story of a single mother trying to work in the mines of Minnesota and how she overcame widespread sexual harassment on the job. This is the first class action lawsuit for sexual harassment that occurred in 1989. Charlize Theron is just brilliant in this gut wrenching social justice story. It is superbly told and should have received an Oscar nomination for best picture. The most moving movie of the year. It captures the experience of the heroine, Josie, as she joins the male-dominated workforce of the mines, where a few women have been allowed in, but are so frequently sexually harassed by the men that it went way beyond bad taste. And to top it all off, she has a false reputation as a whore (she was actually raped), which causes everyone to shift the blame onto her and no one will stand by her, not even her own father or the other women at the plant because they feel their jobs would be in jeopardy.

This movie is mostly fair in its portrayal of the kind of reasons why people do nothing about harassment. They all ring true, and quite frankly, as a man, I have to say that the sexual harassment rang true to male nature as well. The moment where her father turns and stands up for her at a union meeting, which is entirely against her, is a beautiful moment of grace and redemption. But so is the moment when she is in the court room all alone as the sole complaintant, trying to get someone, anyone to join her in order to get the class action lawsuit. And no one will do it. Until they all find out that she was raped and she is not a whore and then her best friend, who happens to have Lou Gehrig’s disease stands for her first, and then one by one a dozen people stand to join her. It’s all very formulaic and I CRIED MY EYES OUT because it was beautiful and virtuous and true.

Francis McDormand and Sean Bean bring it in with excellent performances as the childless couple who actually have a loving marriage, and Woody Harrelson is the New York lawyer who defends her, and is too shy to actually date her. So, the movie actually avoids feminist stereotyping by portraying a few good men, and good marriages.

On the down side, they try to cast the slanderous political attack on a black man, Clarence Thomas, as a similar case of sexual harassment, when in reality, Anita Hill was proven to be lying with a political agenda that could not be substantiated. And that points up the kind of story that really needs to be told now: The story of how victimization as a political agenda has created a culture of fear that can destroy innocent men’s lives with the mere accusation of political incorrectness. But despite this one major fallacy, the movie is a profound and beautiful story of redemption in the midst of a harsh environment of prejudice.

Casanova

Posted on January 28, 2006 by admin

Period Romantic comedy. Infamous promiscuous adulterer falls in true love with a proto-feminist in 18th century Venice.

This is a well crafted farcical comedy of errors almost on the level of Shakespeare, at least certainly on the level of Shakespeare in Love. I found this tale actually quite satisfying both from a story as well as a moral standpoint. Not perfect, but satisfying, because the story is about how this sleazebag womanizer meets his match in a strong woman named Francesca and learns to love her alone for the rest of his life. Of course, the Roman Church is mocked for being prudish (The Inquisitor uses all the language that makes moderns like us scoff, like “vile fornicating destroyer of women’s virtues,” stuff like that), as well as intellectually foolish (as when the Inquisitor rants about heresy being “whatever I say it is.”). But it’s not so extreme as to be hateful in my opinion, and quite frankly, there have been Catholics who have been like that in history, so it ain’t entirely false either. But of course, the assumption that drives the mockery is the modern one of fulfilling natural sexual urges as completely natural.

But back to the good stuff, the heart of true love in this movie is expressed by Francesca, who says, “Give me a man willing to give himself only to me and I would love him forever.” This becomes the redemption then for Casanova to eventually learn and learn it he does. But even more so, Francesca also speaks of Casanova’s conception of love, and by extension, all the stupid women who allow themselves to be exploited by him, this way, “What he imagines as love is self-love.” Wow, what a great insight into promiscuity, indeed, extramarital sexuality, the lifestyle of most Americans. Francesca then says, “My true love must sacrifice himself for me.” And so Casanova eventually does sacrifice his very life to save Francesca and in so doing, wins her love and his redemption. The redemption of a self-centered human is of course, self-sacrifice, it’s opposite. It’s a beautiful portrait of true love and maturity.

This is all very powerfully Christian in it’s outlook, except for an annoying little humanistic addition to the story. Even though they elevated marriage for Casanova, they also celebrated his promiscuous lifestyle by raising up a newly deflowered virginal young man as the new Casanova to continue the legend with a nod and a wink. In a way, this is the viewpoint that boys will be boys, and young men are horny, so it is normal for them to be promiscuous and get that experience before they meet the one they TRULY love for a lifetime. Thus, this movie was a mixture of good and bad, but in my opinion the good outweighed the bad.

The New World

Posted on January 25, 2006 by admin

Historical Romance Epic. The story of Pocohantas and her relationship with John Smith, the Western explorer.

This is a very beautiful looking film. Terrence Malick is a cinematic painter of scenes and visions and few words. He has a signature now I guess of existential poetic internal monologue that repeats itself from The Thin Red Line, his previous film. I have a mixed reaction to this film. On the one hand, he handles abstraction and symbol pretty well, such as the final scene of Pocohantas’ death. We see her sick in bed, then the bed is empty, an Indian from her tribe runs out of the house in slow mo, and then we see her playing with the sun in the garden. Very beautiful and evocative. Some powerful images of the forest and nature.

But I have to say, all this abstraction and symbolism becomes too dominant for me and overshadows the story, which made it rather boring to sit through. Could have been 20 minutes shorter. Too may scenes of contemplation and brooding and pondering makes this just too boring. Also, his non-linear, non-contiguous editing did not work for me. As a technique, it was overused. I know fans will say that is its creativity and that I am being just too stuck in my linear narrative approach. I don’t know, I’m pretty open to variety and even non-linearity, if it is done well or appropriately. I just don’t think it worked here.

I have to say that Malick propagates the lie of the “noble savage” in this story. The Indians are portrayed and perceived by Smith as in tune with nature. He calls them “loving and kind. No sense of guile, no jealousy, envy or sense of possession or treachery.” And of course, all the Englishmen are ugly, spitting, treacherous betrayers of one another. Smith justifies fornication with Pocohantas (implied) by saying, “Love, shall we not deny it when it visits us? Shall we not take it when we are given it?” Okay, so what about the “love urges” of child molesters, adulterers and practicers of incest? Shall they not deny those urges when they visit us? While I would not deny the positive elements of all cultures, anyone with any cross cultural experience with third world or uncivilized tribes will tell you, that despite the good elements of their cultures, they are all very acquainted with jealousy, envy, pride and greed. It is pure lunacy to deny the inherited sinful nature of mankind. The Indians were not all evil in their culture, but they were certainly NOT all utopian either. They killed each other from warring tribes over territorial and other pursuits. They had petty jealousies and rivalries within their tribes.

It’s all just too utopian and too boring to ingest. And yet, once again, the transforming experience of Christianity on Pocohantas is virtually ignored by relegating it to a 3 second Baptism shot, which is unexplained and out of context. So, once again, Christianity is written out of history by those who wish to retell the story of history as secular.

End of the Spear

Posted on January 20, 2006 by admin

Jungle Thriller. A son explores returning to the stone age tribe that killed his missionary father in the 1950s.

This movie is a step in the right direction for Christian stories being told in Hollywood. I think it still has a long way to go. But we are getting there. We are getting better. I believe we need to support these kind of movies by paying to see them so the studios will distribute more of them and then we’ll get better at making them. And so I recommend seeing this, but I still think Christian filmmaking has a lot to learn. So let’s support it with our money so it can get better. This movie is miles ahead of those End Times obsessions that keep being made, and for that, I applaud it and support it.

I liked how they tried to avoid the Christianese of many Christian stories by downplaying the god talk of the missionaries. HOWEVER, this is a story about missionaries, and I never got to know the hearts of these people and what would drive them to risk their lives trying to get to these savages? And also, what would drive the women of the martyred men to go back into the village of the people who killed their husbands and bring their children? These are the most important moments of the story and they are never dealt with. It’s almost like they were so paranoid of sounding like a typical evangelical movie that the result was a lack of clarity of purpose behind characters as well as internal issues and struggles.

I thought it was an interesting idea to show the native’s perspective, but unfortunately, the actual result was a bit boring. I found the missionary stories to be more interesting, but less developed.
The final scene where the son of the matryed pilot confronts his father’s killer was a powerful opportunity, but I have to admit that it didn’t work for me the way it was done. I didn’t believe the kid’s acting or the way the whole thing was set up.

Munich

Posted on January 5, 2006 by admin

International Espionage Thriller. “Based on true events,” this is a self-loathing Jewish “Godfather” interpretation by Spielberg of the Israeli assassination of terrorists in response to the Munich slaughter of Jewish Athletes in 1972. Movies do not happen in a vacuum. Period pieces are ultimately interpretations of the present by using the past as an analogy, and this movie is no exception. It is more than an anti-Israel polemic about Munich, it is an attack on the American policy of hunting down terrorists in the wake of 9/11. In the film, one of the characters says, “What happened in Munich changes everything.” This is an obvious reference to the oft-quoted notion that this is a different world since 9/11, that 9/11 changed the way we as a nation respond to terrorists because of their cowardly cruelty and evil in killing innocent people in the name of Allah.

This movie is a shocking piece of insanity that concludes that hunting terrorists breeds terrorist attacks and perpetuates a “cycle of violence” and creates monsters like Osama Bin Laden (In this story, the claim is made that Carlos the Jackal came into being in response to these hits on evil criminal terrorist cowards—yeah, right). It is an attempt to establish moral equivalency of the US and Israel with evil criminal terrorist cowards. There is a cut that shows the Israelis going over the list of evil criminal terrorist cowards that they are about to kill, just after we are shown the list of innocent Jewish athletes targeted by the evil criminal terrorist cowards, as if this is the same kind of hit list. Another Jew says they won’t win unless they “learn to act like them.” Golda Meir is quoted as saying something she would never have even thought, “Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values.” This is supposed to somehow indicate that the Israelis considered what they were doing was wrong, but did it anyway. The reality is that it is NOT a compromise to kill evil criminal terrorist cowards, but it is the incarnation of moral justice for a sovereign nation to do so.

Interestingly, “justice” is a concept that is never even addressed in the movie. The pursuit is pictured as revenge and bloodlust of people like the South African convert who says, “the only blood that matters to me is Jewish blood,” thus making the Israelis out to be racist Nazis just like the evil Palestinian criminal terrorist cowards who hate Jewish blood. A key scene where the Hero has an argument with a PLO member who does not realize he is a Jew tries to redefine evil criminal terrorist cowards as merely wanting a place to call home, “home is everything.” Funny, how the storyteller leaves out an important bit of factual information that the real desire of Palestinian evil criminal terrorist cowards is to, and I quote from the Palestinian evil criminal terrorist cowards themselves, “Drive the Jews into the sea.” This is not some secret plan that nobody knows about, its documented all over the place, and reinforced every time in history that the Israelis would give in on negotiations and the Palestinian response would not be rejoicing but another murder bomber.

But there is an unwitting dialectical tension here, because Spielberg tries to show that killing evil criminal terrorist cowards breeds more killing by showing televised historical events that occurred in response to the assassinations. But what Spielberg does not seem to notice is that the evil criminal terrorist cowards respond by hijacking and killing innocent people. As if there is any comparison. Oh, so let’s not execute capital criminals because look at how criminals respond to law enforcement by engaging in more crime. It’s interesting that the movie portrays most all the evil criminal terrorist cowards as “normal” men being nice to people, teaching literature, being nice to his family, etc. so that it would be questionable as to who they are killing. What he should have done was that effect done in Run Lola Run, where you would show snapshots of each of these evil criminal terrorist cowards killing people, plotting their evil, making their bombs, killing Jews etc. But of course he doesn’t, that would show that it was justice and that these evil criminal terrorist cowards deserved it, and we can’t have that confusing concept enter into the discussion.

It is certainly bordering on lunacy to suggest that Israel should not respond to evil criminal terrorist cowards and that we should not fight crime because it might make criminals mad and they might do more crime in response. Since there is no nation where evil criminal terrorist cowards reside, and they parasitically and hypocritically live off the societies that they seek to destroy, then there is no other moral way to fight them than through international espionage. I think some of the truths that come through this otherwise politically correct drek is that justified killing does affect you negatively, regardless of its righteousness. The hero gets paranoid that others are trying to kill him, just like he is trying to kill others. He ends up distrusting Israel itself, believing that it will kill him because he knows so much and after all, Israel is just like the evil criminal terrorist cowards, right? Interestingly, Israel did not kill him. And they always sought to avoid killing innocents. What does that tell you? Maybe, just maybe, there is a difference between evil criminal terrorist cowards and imperfect nations seeking justice and righteousness. Another funny contradiction in the logic of the film is that the Jews are portrayed as stereotypical “moneygrubbers” who are worried about getting receipts and talking about the high cost of killing people, as if this is immoral reduction of people to objects of money. But then, the hero protects his information source and is loyal to them over his country, yet that source is the epitome of people who worship only money and no ideology. As if it is good to favor no government and betray anyone and everyone for money. This source betrays ALL sides to each other for money, as well as tipping off the hero’s whereabouts to his enemies. So this STUPID hero kills a whore who turned in his friend for money, but protects the worst of them all, the betrayers of everyone for money. You know, even though this story was an attempt to prove moral equivalency, I was unmoved by the attempt. Every time an evil criminal terrorist coward got assassinated, I cheered and felt justice was done. And I was affirmed that this is exactly how we need to respond to evil criminal terrorist cowards, the Winston Churchill way, not the Neville Chamberlain way of appeasement.

Proof

Posted on December 3, 2005 by admin

Family melodrama. A brilliant mathematician (Gwenyth Paltrow) must take care of her brilliant mathematician father (Anthony Hopkins) who is losing his mind with Alzheimers. This is a very touching story that also includes the ubiquitous Jake Gyllenhall as the love interest. Well, it started out like the play it was based on, a lot of talk that sounded staged and was redundant. We hear Gwenyth recount her entire last evening events with her sister that we already saw. And it is a bit difficult to believe Paltrow as a genius, but that is the genius of this movie because the dramatic question is Did she write the brilliant notebook full of breakthrough mathematics during her father’s brief remission or did he? Once the plot kicked in, the play-likeness faded and I was able to enjoy it more. And of course, the whole idea of how can she prove she wrote the proof is a reflection of the difficulty of modernity in which we live. What is proof? Her appeal to Jake is to trust her. Just as she has learned to trust him. A faint echo of the truth that all reason is based on a faith commitment or trust in the underlying uniformity of nature, something we assume but simply cannot prove. In other words, in order to our Reason to be legitimate, certain preconditions of reality must exist or our reasoning is unintelligible. And one of those is the law-likeness or regularity of nature. If nature is not uniform, that is, lawlike then we cannot use reason because in fact one moment the law of logic we appeal to may be valid, one moment it may not. Only if we assume that logic is always true can we even use it to prove anything. But it can only be a proof if nature is law-like, that is, the same everywhere at all times, past, present and future. But since we are finite and cannot be everywhere in the universe at all times to see or know that logic works, then we are ASSUMING or presupposing that it does outside of our little ignorant tiny corner of knowledge in a vast universe beyond our comprehension. In a non-Christian worldview we simply cannot know that the future will be like the past, therefore we cannot know that nature is uniform and will continue to operate the same in the future in a way that we can reliably count on it in our reasoning. The appeal to inductive reasoning of science as being valid because “that’s how it has always operated in the past” is begging the question. So our entire edifice of Reason and science is in fact founded on faith – faith in the uniformity of nature—just as Augustine said, “I believe in order to understand.” And I think that the Hopkins character is a great incarnation of the insanity which is the ultimate end of a modern Enlightenment metaphysic that reduces reality or truth to mathematical theorem.