Recommended, but beware of subversion. I love CGI animation. I love how expressive and cute the animated characters can be, how they represent human emotions and gestures with such similitude. I enjoy the simple storylines, easy to follow, strong on moral content. Shark Tale is one of these. Unfortunately, it’s a mixed bag of good values and subversive ones. Oscar is the little slacker fish at a Whale Wash who has big dreams of being loved by being somebody important up on the “top of the reef.” When he falsely gets the credit for slaying a shark, he goes with it in order to achieve that fame he wants so badly. Meanwhile, Lenny, the shark, is dying to get out of his shark family because he is a vegetarian and doesn’t want to rule the waters through fear and a carnivorous appetite. The shark world is portrayed rather ingeniously as a fish eat fish mafia family. Only the strong… Very clever and provides a whole new context for the genre. Loved that. Oscar and Lenny team up to help each other and everyone learns their lesson by the end. What I really liked about this film is the theme about the emptiness at the “top” of celebrity worship. Oscar’s character flaw is that he thinks he needs to be “somebody” famous and important to be loved, that he has to “be somebody,” because “nobody loves a nobody,” But what he doesn’t bargain for is that the “people” of that world of celebrity, as embodied in Lola, the sexy fickle female fish who uses him for her own benefit, are vacuous and without real substance or permanence in their character. Oscar comes to realize that the real ones who love him all along have been right in front of him, as embodied in the lovable small town fish girl Angie, who sticks with him through thick and thin. As she finally screams to him, “I loved you when you were a nobody! I loved you before the Lie!” Interesting that “the Lie” here is the alleged killing of the shark, but it really expresses a wider theme that the entire celebrity culture is itself a Lie. I was clearly reminded of It’s a Wonderful Life with George Bailey wanting to “wipe the dust off my feet of this crummy little town and see the world.” Build skyscrapers and such. It’s all great Americana values here and I love that. The simple morality of middle American values are captured in Angie’s straightforward command when she discovers the lie: To Oscar, “you tell the truth,” and to Lenny, “and you go home.” Of course, they don’t at the beginning and that’s what gets them into trouble. Oscar finally realizes, “I didn’t need to go to the top of the reef. Everything I needed was right in front of me the whole time.” The love of a good woman, and friends. Now, I guess a Marxist could criticize this as a conspiracy of slave class reinforcement, considering that the movie also repackages the whole “Car Wash” context for the poor black culture as happy slavery. You know, don’t aspire to greatness, just accept your position in life at the bottom of the food chain, and enjoy it doing what you are best at, slave jobs at slave wages. But I think that is too simplistic. I think the point of this is more like The Wizard of Oz, and Wonderful Life, to see the value of home and those who truly do love you, and the shallowness, indeed falsity, of public love for celebrity. And that is an interesting irony undergirding this moral story. Here you have all these celebrity actors and actresses, like Will Smith, Angelina Jolie, Robert DeNiro, Jack Black and others who are starring in a story about how empty and worthless their own celebrity existence is. They are the fish on the “top of the reef” telling us it is a miserable lonely life up there. Do they even realize their own stories condemn them? Now, here is what I did not like about the movie: Lenny the shark is clearly an analogy for a homosexual and so his mafia family’s rejection of him is an analogy for the claim that traditional society is being intolerant of homosexuals. Lenny is fey and sensitive like a homosexual cliché out of Will and Grace, and likes to dress up “like a dolphin,” which is an obvious insult to sharks, like “dressing up like a woman” is to men. And the way he dresses is obviously a queer eye guy with his yellow scarf around his neck. He regurgitates familiar gay phrases, like, “I’m not like other sharks,” “My family doesn’t accept me,” and “I like to dress like a dolphin, so what?” At the end this “dressing up” thing becomes more pronounced when the head shark, Lenny’s father, finally does accept him “no matter what you eat or how you dress.” And then they show other sharks being “liberated” from their mean stodgey “sharkness” by dressing up in what can only be considered Mardi Gras Gay Pride costumes. This theme of “accepting” people with abnormal behaviors or abnormal “tastes” is a very common one in movies, and an obvious subversive one driven by those with an anti-Christian agenda. And I might also add, a rather hypocritical one as well. I think it’s time Hollywood should start practicing what it preaches and put aside its own prejudice and bigotry. I think Hollywood should start expressing tolerance toward Christians and traditional moral valued people, who are truly the hated outcast rejected oppressed victims in LaLa Land.
Vanity Fair
Kind of Recommended. As far as period pieces of the 19th century go, this one is visually rich, with great costumes, and environments, good dialogue and subtext as well as complicated relationships. I even thought Reese Witherspoon as the lead actually pulled it off. I had doubts about Miss Legally Blonde, but she delivered. I also liked the heart of the story which dealt with the difficulties of women in Victorian society. The disadvantage they were at in desperately needing to find a husband, and one who had status and wealth. The problem I had with this movie is that the story was very weak and thus I could not follow it as well because there were too many important characters that watered down the main character’s story. It was supposed to be about Reese as a poor orphan desiring to climb her way up into high society and the price she pays. The lie of aristocracy is that significance of life is found in family birth rather than personal achievement or character. In the story, the merchant, played by Jim Broadbent, is just as rich as the nobles, because of his own economic efforts, yet he is portrayed as a miserly uncouth hardhead without class. Well, she mentions her goal of social climbing in the beginning, but then the middle of the story becomes this hodge podge of her life that does not support this goal. She marries a handsome soldier who is lower caste, which doesn’t match her goal. And we get caught up in everyone else’s story around her. The real story that was most interesting and relevant to the original premise was that last third of the movie when a rich man played brilliantly by Gabriel Byrne, draws her into high society and pays her way, with a price attached of course. That was a great story. Problem is, it didn’t start until the last third of the movie, so the story was not strong. I particularly enjoyed how the storyteller tried to show how this thirst for aristocratic company was an empty fraud. As Byrne says, “the women who jealously guard the doors to society so that you will not discover there is nothing behind them.” Byrne plays a Victorian Mephistopheles, who openly explains to Reese how empty it is, yet is there to fulfill her passionate drive as she ignores the truth in her headlong pursuit. This is all a very poignant depiction of temptation and the vanity of the world, or as the title suggests from John Bunyan’s classic, Pilgrim’s Progress, Vanity Fair. I also thought the ending was rather abrupt. Like they spent too much time developing too many characters and then had to wrap it up quickly at the end with a happy ending so we wouldn’t be so unsatisfied. Problem is, it was unsatisfying. Reese loses her husband because she is caught in an apparent indiscretion (though not real), and then he goes off and dies of disease in the army. Because of this, she ends up as a card dealer in a gambling casino. The moral problem with this story as I see it is that the heroine in the end winds up with her original suitor in the movie, an obese traveling man whom she uses to free herself from her casino whoredom. This Machiavellian morality is no better than the aristocratic mindset in the rest of the film that society requires proper pedigree or else one should be punished for their social climbing. As if this ending is a “happy ending.” So it is a pragmatic nihilistic interpretation of social status and worth. Righteousness is jettisoned in favor of survival and personal desires.
Between Strangers
Recommended. Saw this on video. I love chick flicks. And I love movies like this about women’s struggle in this life. I’m a softy for a good subtle feminist flick, cause I think there’s always some truth to their claims of oppression. This story reminds me of another little movie about women that I loved titled, Things You Can Tell Just By Looking At Her. Between Strangers is three stories of women dealing with their fathers or husbands and how they are connected to each other, though strangers. That’s one of the points of this film: how we are looking for human connection and healing and how we become strangers to those closest to us, yet can find intimacy through others who are strangers. One woman plans to kill her father, who is just out of prison after 20 years for beating his wife to death, the woman’s mother. Yet, this revenge alienates her from her own family. Another woman seeks to find her passion of drawing with a crippled selfish husband who doesn’t even notice her, let alone care about her. And the third woman is a news photographer struggling in a relationship with her over-achieving famous photographer father while dealing with the morality of shooting pictures of pain and suffering without actually helping the victims. She actually shot a picture of a girl rather than saving her from a collapsing building from which she could have saved her. The acting in this film is superb and by some of the better actors out there who aren’t in blockbusters. They are all united by seeing a vision of a little humming girl who represents the innocence or past they have all lost. The ex-con father redeems himself by saving a stranger woman from thugs and being beaten to death instead of her. Substitutionary atonement. Redemption for him in the eyes of his daughter who could not forgive him except for this kind of change of heart. Truly moving. The artist seeks her long lost daughter she gave up for adoption and goes after her dream to visit Florence. Her husband is a stranger, but decides to help her a bit in the end, rescuing his otherwise toadstool selfishness. And the photographer decides that she cannot follow in the footsteps of her heartless yet successful father by taking pictures of pain rather than helping relieve pain. His rationalization of helping their abstract “cause” rings hollow with actually helping actual people. All of these are excellent relevant moral dilemmas that touch the heart with power. This is one of those movies that I love that show lives of different people who appear unconnected and by the end of the film, they have some kind of providential crossing that connects them. It gives me the sense of how all those thousands of people in the background of MY life, are actually living important and complex lives of their own, are all looking for human connection, just like me. Strangers in our lives are valuable intimate friends in someone else’s. We need a little less egocentrism and a bit more human connection.
What the Bleep Do We Know?
Not Recommended. This title is the publicly toned down version of the eminently more irreverent, “What the F___ Do We Know?” This film is a cleverly done hybrid documentary/drama that mixes the two genres rather appropriately for its postmodern message that Quantum Mechanics is a new paradigm that changes our view of reality. While the unnamed “authorities” of science and philosophy spout their postmodernism, a fictional character experiences what they are speaking about. This is all rather fitting, for in postmodernism, there is no fiction and non-fiction, ALL is fiction, all is story. It does a bang up job of communicating how certain interpretations of quantum physics change our understanding of reality and force us into a paradigm change. Major problems with the logic and honesty, though. It basically posits the Copenhagen and mystic interpretation of Quantum Physics while deceitfully neglecting to point this out as one of about 11 different interpretations of said science. They make the point that “we have models of what the world is and this colors our perception of our experience.” True enough. But then “much of what we take for the real world simply isn’t true,” because of the new physics that negates absolutes in right and wrong, true and false, and then proceed to tell us that their new paradigm is the true paradigm and the old ones are wrong. The gall of such intellectual imperialists! That is the central conceit of the movie, indeed all of modern science that has the habit of telling us about our ignorance and superstitions and then proceed to tell us what the TRUE PARADIGM is. Yet, history has proven that so many scientific theories have been “proven” wrong and replaced by new ones, that one can only conclude that these fools are so blind to their own ignorant pride that they don’t even see what they are saying. In 50 years, THEIR paradigm will be proven fallacious and therefore ignorant. Modern science is the sacred cow of this culture, yet, it can’t even tell us if eggs are good for you or bad for you. That is, it changes its mind every 5 or so years. Well, let’s walk through the several main points in the film:
1) Observer created universe: “We create reality,” “There is no world out there independent of my experience,” “matter is more like thought,” This is like the Zen koan about a falling tree not making a noise if there is no one there to hear it. They appeal to the wave function collapse that supposedly occurs when we “observe” something. That is, until something is observed, it is only a wave function of possibilities, that then collapses into a distinct particle when we observe it. Therefore, we create the universe by observing it, rather than observe a universe created by someone else.
2) We are gods. I kid you not. That is a quote. “You are a god in the making.” “Our purpose is to be creators.” At least they are being consistent here. Unfortunately, this “drastic philosophy” as Stan Jaki calls it, of turning man’s epistemic ignorance into ontological reality is a mortal philosophical sin. Just because the subject may influence the object through observation does not at all mean that it creates it. This is like a child who holds their hands over their eyes saying “I cannot see you, therefore you don’t exist,” humming loudly so he can’t hear him either.Supreme arrogance. Our lack of ability to measure the location and speed of an atom at the same moment does not at all logically mean that the atom is in flux doing neither until we observe it. Our lack of ability or understanding is our own lack, not reality’s lack. Funny, but the Creator of the universe says, “Psa. 100:3 Know that the LORD Himself is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves” This pseudo-scientific claim that we create the universe is not new at all.
3) The interconnectedness of all things. Okay, in that we are all composed of the same kind of atoms held together in a unity. But then they conclude that “The deepest level of truth, of reality, uncovered by science and philosophy is that we are one.” “I am one with the great being who created me.” Funny, I thought they said we create the universe, now we are created not by our observation as if something does exist apart from our observation. One of the many contradictions in this hodge podge of inconsistent gibberish. Another quote, “The problem of religion comes from seeing God as distinct from me that I must worship.”
4) Okay, this gets to the real purpose of why these people made this movie. To attack the Christian God with their hatred of his goodness and his Law and his judgment of their sins. I kid you not again. Funny, how scientists and the like all say that religion has no right to judge scientific things because religion exists in a realm apart from science, and then THEY ALWAYS turn right around and have the unmitigated gall to use their so-called science to try to judge religion as wrong. Modern scientists are Monsters of hypocrisy. Here’s what they say in the movie, “Now we have the technology and science to rid ourselves of this ugly superstitious backwater concept of God who has everlasting punishment. This is not how God is.” “How can one tiny carbon unit on a speck of a planet betray God Almighty? That is impossible.” Methinks the lady doth protest too much. It comes clear that these people have crafted their pseudo-scientific philosophy to try to deny that they are sinners deserving the wrath of God. Then they have the stark raving stupidity to claim that the Christian notion of God as punisher and rewarder is, “arrogantly creating God in their own image.” Oh, so, in the beginning of the movie, you claim we create reality and revel in our apparent deity, but then at the end of the movie, you tell us it’s wrong to create God in our image? And whose god are you? You’re not the boss of me according to your own claims. God-damned hypocrisy is what that is. This leads to another rather revealing point they make
5) There is no right and wrong. “The problem is that people have set up right and wrong and punishment and reward. There is no such thing as good or bad.” “We are just evolving, we aren’t good or bad.” “I don’t think you’re good or bad, I think you’re god.” Okay, so there is no right and wrong, no right and wrong, you tell us. And then like the good Nazi you are, you tell us its wrong to conceive of God in the Christian way, and it’s wrong to judge right and wrong, and it’s wrong to see us as distinct from God because all is one. And it’s wrong to think of science in the old way of subject object distinction. How stupid do these Nazis think we are? Like Philip Johnson said, it is very typical of a predator to console its prey that everything is fine when it is preparing to eat it. They tell us there is no right and wrong, all is one, and yet we should not worry that they will ultimate imprison us in their prisonhouses of language? There is no right and wrong so they can justify their immoral godless rebel lives, but then all of a sudden there is right and wrong in how religious adherents are believing and behaving? Sorry, bubs, you’re bleeding hypocrisy from every pore of your being. These people are ultimately tyrants trying to control the masses. Tell us all what we can and cannot believe. Thought police.
6) Love and emotions are reducible to chemical reactions in our brains. But then they try to say that we have free will, that “I can change my mind, I can change my choices, I change my life, who I am.” We can control our material troubles like addiction and physical states through mental reprogramming, but they’ve reduced mental activity to brain waves which are controlled by chemicals and chemical laws. There is no self, they say, yet we create ourselves. Excuse, me, who is this “we-self” that is creating again? If there is no self, there is no one to observe or create. The contradictions are so rabid, this movie should be put down, cause it can’t be healed.
The half-truths in this film are powerful, but therein lies the rub. They turn into all lies because of the ultimate lie they are in the service of. This movie is riddled with more holes of hypocrisy and contradiction than Bonnie and Clyde were with bullets. But then, what the #$*! Do they know?
Paparazzi
Not Recommended. Rising action star’s new fame turns to horror when a pack of paparazzi try to destroy his life through pictures in Tabloids. This is a morally bankrupt film of vigilante violence. One good thing is that it poignantly depicts the moral depravity of paparazzi photo journalism with its complete disregard for the privacy and humanity of its victims. It shows the complete and utter distortion of the truth, heck destruction of the truth, engaged in by these kind of people, including artificially creating false stories through image placement and interpretation as well as actual “photo creation,” using pieces of images from different photographs to create a lie that looks like it happened. I loved the symbolic analogy of the hero’s car crash, to Princess Diana’s own death as the paparazzi get pictures of seriously wounded people rather than helping them. The fact is, these people are responsible for the destruction of lives they prey upon. The main villain Paparazzi’ rationalization rings hollow: “Everyone wants steak, but no one wants to date the butcher.” In a real sense, this is a truthful indictment of the public’s shameful insatiable addiction to this stuff. But it rings hollow in light of the journalist’s own personal responsibility. SO would they provide children to the child molester if it paid well? Interestingly, the creation of false stories is yet another consequence of a postmodern culture that denies onjective or absolute truth in favor of one’s own “created truth.” Ideas do have consequences. No doubt, this hateful contempt for paparazzi journalism is what drew superstar icon Mel Gibson to produce it. Ah, these poor demigod celebrities who live off their fans’ idol worship and then accuse those same fans of idolatry. But on the other hand, the story answers this Michael Moore Nazi style journalism with an equally hateful vigilante violence. It is one thing for the hero to protect himself, but it is quite another for him to murder, plant criminal evidence and plot the deaths of these miscreants, no matter how heartless they may be. When the hero tries to help the first paparazzi in a road accident, and decides to release the man to his death instead, the movie was over for me. The hero became a villain who murdered, not in self defense, but in revenge. Then the hero sets up another paparazzi to be accidentally shot dead by the cops. What they should have done is have the hero try to save the first guy, and fail to do so. This keeps him sympathetic. But then when the other paparazzi find out, they falsely assume the hero killed him and THEY up the stakes by trying to kill him or something. This would have placed the hero in the position of self defense. But instead we get vigilante violence, and another murder by baseball bat by this evil hero. Taking the law into one’s own hands rather than due process of law (Romans 13). Vigilante violence, no matter how psychologically satisfying it may be in the short run, is nevertheless immoral and requires redemption itself. Instead, what we have is Dennis Farin playing a bad impersonation of Columbo as a detective who knowingly allows the hero to murder and plant evidence and never takes him down. Yes, the hero uses the paparazzi’s own lies and deception against them, but I’m sorry, Mel, immoral irresponsibility does NOT justify murder. And this, coming from a man who just made the most important movie about Jesus, the ultimate sufferer of injustice, who did not open his mouth or raise a hand in vigilante violence. This Paparazzi movie, driven by and affirming hatred made by a man who made a movie about Jesus who said hatred was murder in the heart. It appears Mel has not been as affected by his own savior. I love you, Mel, but you need to repent from this.
Suspect Zero
Partially recommended for postmoderns. I’ve said it before. The reason why I like the horror and thriller genres is because of the great potential they have to evoke a visceral gut feeling of the reality of real genuine evil in a postmodern world that denies absolutes and is increasingly deluded into thinking that evil is a relative cultural construction. (Read my article, “A Theology of Horror Films” click here) This movie does that very well. It’s not for the feint of heart though. It’s the story of a serial killer who is killing other serial killers, and he uses “remote viewing” to track them down (psychic seeing from a distance, developed by who else? The military and the CIA, then FBI). Well, there is something certainly emotionally satisfying at seeing a vigilante justice with these scumbags getting a taste of their own medicine. But of course, this is ultimately not morally acceptable and the movie communicates this in having the “good guy” killer pay for his crimes as well. Unfortunately, the very concept of a “suspect zero,” as a guy who criss-crosses the country, being responsible for most serial killings and missing persons is all rather trivializing of real evil serial murders, and therefore unbelievable and unsatisfying. However it is somewhat redeemed at the end when the hero FBI guy faces the good guy killer at the end, after killing the “suspect zero,” and tells him, “You can’t see everything. You don’t decide what’s justice. You’re not God. You think we did something mythical. We just killed a deviant. There’s thousands more out there. There is no suspect zero.” It was a good conclusion that evil is real and it lives on. We’re not heroes vanquishing evil like gods, we are humans struggling with it and always will. Evil is so thoroughly ingrained into human nature, that we don’t “get rid of it” or vanquish it, we can merely fight evil people. While the movie looked real creative and well shot with grainy nonlinear scratchy images of pain and evil intruding onto the normal visuals, it never quite entered the supreme quality realm of Se7en or Silence of the Lambs, which are the obvious goals of the film.
The Excorcist: The Beginning
Partially recommended, but mostly for postmoderns and materialists. Okay, This is a pretty well done supernatural thriller for the first two acts of the movie. Rather subtle, scary build up. Not over the top at all. All rather well done. But the last act, when the ex-priest who rediscovers his faith must face off with the demon possessed woman, looking very much like Linda Blair in her ugly face make-up, the special effects were all a bit unbelievable, and unfortunately work against the truth of the story by making it more unrealistic. The reason why the original Exorcist is THE SCARIEST MOVIE EVER MADE is because it was more realistic. Okay, pea soup and 360 degree head turns might be a bit over the top, but the context was much more realistic and that movie broke through to many materialists and atheists in a way this movie never will. They should stop with the sequels already. So this one just wasn’t as realistically scary. I’m sorry, but shaking beds, upturned eyes and shadows in the night in the first half are a lot scarier than poorly done CGI hyenas and a demon possessed person who can crawl on walls like a spider in the second half. Why? Because the unseen is scarier than the seen. And that’s the merit in this film, it tries to bring some reality to the unseen world of the spirit that modern materialist man denies. For me, that makes this movie contextually valuable even if it’s not perfect in its theology. But I was also pleasantly surprised that the storytellers did not really imbibe in too much Roman Catholic exorcist rituals, which are patently unbiblical and more pagan in their Gnostic formula magic. Say this prayer, say that prayer, say it this many times, etc. In the movie they have the exorcist ritual book, but they never really use it. When the priest faces the demon woman, he loses the exorcism book and pretty much has nothing but Scripture to quote at her, and all of it spoken out of a faith in Christ as the weapon of warfare. Yes, you heard me, he stands against her and fights her with “mere” faith. Couldn’t be anything more truthful than that. At the end, the priest ultimately casts the demon out of the woman rather than exorcising her. This is all much more biblical than the original and I was surprised yet pleased to see this kind of true faith, the Word of God and the Spirit of God as the only sword against the demonic realm. In the Bible, demons are never exorcised with ritual, they are cast out or rebuked in the name and power of Jesus (Acts 16:16-18; Luke 9:49; 11:18-20; Mark 16:17; 6:13), or the more difficult ones by prayer and fasting, but not ritual (Matthew 17:17-21) In fact, the only place that does mention exorcists, they are pretty much useless because ritual is no replacement for true faith. But that is what this movie says as well. Here is the passage in the Bible about exorcists:
Acts 19:13 But also some of the Jewish exorcists, who went from place to place, attempted to name over those who had the evil spirits the name of the Lord Jesus, saying, “I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches.” Seven sons of one Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, were doing this. And the evil spirit answered and said to them, “I recognize Jesus, and I know about Paul, but who are you?” And the man, in whom was the evil spirit, leaped on them and subdued all of them and overpowered them, so that they fled out of that house naked and wounded.
There is also an interesting subplot of the hero’s fall from faith being based on Nazi’s forcing him to choose who will die of a group of arbitrary people on the street (the movie takes place shortly after WWII). This is a rather good expression of the struggle of evil and the existence of God. It’s the most universal psychological issue we humans have with God and so I think this film deals with that honestly and fairly.
Open Water
Recommended. This movie is the scariest movie I have seen since Blair Witch Project. Why? Because it is based on a true story and has that same documentary style realism to it. Any movie that makes you think of yourself in the situation depicted and forces you to re-evaluate your own life and the value of what you are spending your time and energies on is a valuable tool for the conscience. Open Water does this for me. As you watch these two stranded out in the middle of the ocean, forgotten, vulnerable and reassessing their own lives surrounded by sharks, you can’t help but reconsider your own. They cherish the value of normal mundane existence on the brink of their own destruction and struggle with the psychological effects of impending death. And the tragic irony of providence is that our very lives may hinge on the trivial mistakes of others, something that can only be coped with if one trusts God, otherwise we would go crazy at the “unjust” and tragic monster of chance destroying us all. Hopelessness, meaninglessness and despair is the only possible conclusion in a chance universe. It’s a brilliant low budget high concept film with a profound underlying premise that it is only in the face of the jaws of death that we wake up to the precious treasure of life. My one big complaint is a completely gratuitous nude scene in the early part of the movie.
Alien Vs. Predator
No recommended. Not much to this sci-fi action cat and mouse film. It’s more of the same, though done well with a very clever setting and new twist on the the two movies coming together. The idea of predators hunting down the aliens as rites of manly passage, a rather war society type value. Prove your manliness by killing. The “Aliens” are really the meaningless killing machines and the “Predators” are more human. The theme is basically, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” which is mentioned a few times in the film, and is embodied in the lead actress ultimately teaming up with one of the predators to stop the last of the aliens before they escape and ravage the earth with their parasitic destruction of human species. Well,on the one hand, this is a rather relevent theme in such action movies and tends to underscore, with mythological force, the justification of entering into wars with enemies against greater enemies. Like teaming up with Russia to defeat Nazi Germany, or with Iraq to get Iran, or with Afghanistan to get the Soviets. Now, this notion has some merit, but look at the results: in all these situations, our “friendly enemies” against a greater enemy almost always grows to become our new enemy with more powerful weapons that we trained them on. Look at Stalin’s Soviet Russia and the Cold War, look at the Taliban in Afghanistan, and of course, Saddam Hussein. All of these became worse monsters than those we fought against and we helped them. I am not very convinced that this idea is a correct one. Couple things bothered me: 1) They employ the “Chariots of the Gods” thesis from the 1970s and revived in today’s pseudo-scientific culture and movies (Stargate and Contact) that religion is simply the worship of ancient aliens as gods who gave us the wonderous knowledge to build the pyramids. I am reminded of G.K. Chesterton’s comment, that when people give up belief in God, it’s not that they do not believe in anything, but that they will believe in anything. There is no end to the absurdity that will be embraced by an atheist or skeptic. Witness the Copenhagen Quantum Theorists who believe that chance is the foundation of order, and we create the universe, Atheistic Evolutionism that believes something comes from nothing, order comes from disorder, laws come from chance, and life comes from non-life (talk about Dark Ages pre-scientific superstition!), and postmodernism that denies logic while using logic, and believe that we create reality. And they call themselves “free thinkers.” Or as the Bible calls them, “Fools” (Psalm 14:1). As ridiculous as this idea is, and there are many respectable people who actually believe this nonsense, it unintentionally admits something about ancient cultures that defies evolutionary theory, namely that they were NOT “primitive” in all their understanding of knowledge and reality. They were actually highly advanced, even technologically. We still don’t know how they built the pyramids and are astonished at it. They have found circumnavigated global maps 1000s of years old. Well, if these evolutionists admit that ancient cultures were not so primitive, then their theory of evolving culture is WRONG. Cultures don’t evolve, they devolve. Ancient cultures have an incredible knowledge, but their beliefs and depravity and worship of idols cause them to self-destruct. Another truth revealed by the Creator:
Psalm 115:2
Why should the nations say, “Where, now, is their God?”
But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.
Their idols are silver and gold, The work of man’s hands.
They have mouths, but they cannot speak;
They have eyes, but they cannot see;
They have ears, but they cannot hear;
They have noses, but they cannot smell;
They have hands, but they cannot feel;
They have feet, but they cannot walk;
They cannot make a sound with their throat.
Those who make them will become like them,
Everyone who trusts in them.
Folks, we become like the gods we worship. Idolatry leads to self-destruction.
2) The other thing I didn’t like was that these kill-or-be-killed movies can in some ways reinforce a survival of the fittest ethical worldview. It breeds an attitude that we are like animals merely fighting to survive, rather than subduing creation for a higher kingdom of spiritual transcendence. Don’t get me wrong. Self-defense is morally right, even to the extent of killing someone who is trying to kill you. And that is why I am not entirely against this film. I am just talking about caution, and big picture worldview thinking.
The Manchurian Candidate
Not really recommended. I was mildly and happily surprised that this movie about mind control and politics starring the mighty Denzel Washington was not another thinly veiled political agitprop. The filmmakers did a great job of displaying a U.S. Presidential election without showing any parties and without making the good guys or bad guys obviously either of the parties. In fact, they set up characters as almost combinations of both parties. The guy who is running for president has an agenda called “compassionate vigilance” much akin to Bush’s “compassionate conservatism,” but this same character also brags and crows on about how “I’ve faced the enemy on the battlefield,” just like a John Kerry. But I must say, the candidate, Raymond Shaw, played well by Liev Shrieber, and his controlling Lady Macbeth mother, played by Meryl Streep, are wittingly or unwittingly, dramatized to be more like Democrats or liberals. The dirty rotten, scheming, controlling socialist mother is unavoidably a replicant of Hillary Clinton, down to the hairdo and look. I heard they tried to recut the movie so she wouldn’t be as much like her. Also, Shaw’s unnamed party talks about easily winning the East Coast and California, but not holding onto the Southern states, obvious strengths and weaknesses of the Dems. Interestingly, Mother Hillary Streep is concerned all about medical care and says a line to an enemy trying to stop her, “I will bury you,” that I just could not help but connect with the Hillary ideological bedfellow Nikita Kruschev’s famous line to Kennedy that “we will bury you!” This movie did an interesting take on the Cold War scenario. Rather than the typical clichéd controlling fascist or Big Brother government being the villain, in this movie, it is the evil multinational corporations that transcend politics altogether. I see some good and some bad in this. I think that there is plenty of danger and heartless evil intent behind many corporations concerned with profit unhindered by morality. This is undeniably real. And this is certainly a more realistic concern for our world than the fantastic fiction of an empire-building America. Couple problems: 1) It may encourage a more neo-Marxist distortion of social theory that reduces all power issues to class warfare and exploitation by capitalist corporations. I only say this, not because I believe the movie intends such imbalanced perspective but because the current milieu in which we now find ourselves has made a certain fashion of Marxist envy and resentiment, as the French would say, and Nietzsche would elucidate and Michael Moore would mangle and bastardize. That irrational hatred for anyone better off than you are. 2) I think the movie’s plot suffers because of this. For the whole point of putting the Global Conglomerate’s man into office by assassinating the newly elected president, is not really spelled out beyond having a man in their control who “runs the country.” Yeah, but why? What do they really want to do? What’s the real goal of having their man in there? They never really say, which makes the story a bit unsatisfying. Also, I see a moral failing with the film. At the end, when the bad guys are caught and Denzel assassinates the Vice President and his mother instead, we are all supposed to say it’s okay cause the mother was evil, and the good guy was brainwashed. But the problem is that the VP gives Denzel a strong look at the end that tells him and us that he does remember, that there is a small part of him deep down that they can’t control, which hints at Denzel to kill them, not the innocent president. But see, if there is that ultimate untouchable part of our will that cannot be controlled, then Denzel did not kill under mind control but under his free will to do so. Which makes him a murderer, and of a good guy!! After all, the VP shows he is not a total puppet and foils the big bad corporation’s goal. Also, the Feds go back into security cameras and retouch Denzel’s pictures to look like another assassin from out of the country. They do this to save Denzel from paying for his own crime. Again, it is supposed to be okay cause he was manipulated by the One World Company. But consider the moral issues involved in this. If it’s okay for the government to lie and break the law in order to get the bad guys, then what is stop them from breaking the law when they think you and I are guilty? This is exactly the kind of thing that critics of the Patriot Act are wringing their hands about. If we allow the government to suspend civil liberties at any time, even to catch the bad guys, then how can we stop them when they suspend our civil liberties when we are not criminals? Power without moral restrictions always leads to more power and injustice and tyranny. And that’s not a movie, folks. That’s reality.