The Cabin in the Woods. TulaneLSU's 2011-12 movie review thread

Sarah's Key There is a growing corpus of Holocaust movies. Some of the movies are forgettable and are made with platitudinal frivolity, knowing that critics are slow to trash Holocaust movies, even bad ones. The subtitled, French flick, Sarah's Key, was neither lauded nor dumped, but it did receive a relatively lukewarm reception from both critics and audiences alike. After watching it, I think I understand why many critics were slow to say positive things about this movie.

Similar to the flip-flop juxtaposition of two lives in different time periods in Julie and Julia, we find in Sarah's Key two stories: one of a distrait girl running to release what she had locked away and the other of a woman in search of truth, also locked away. But truth is a powerful thing, something that can evoke angst, guilt, even if undeserved, and the pain of memory. Truth is the reason we are all called to be just, compassionate, kind, and humble. When we are not those things, we create a world in which truth harms the innocent and the innocent are decreated. The innocent become afflicted and suffer an unrighteous, unjustified penalty. We see this symbolically applied through the use of water in several scenes. Water, which is supposed to be a purifying substance, is transformed into purity's antithesis, guilt, as a result of the transgressions of others.

So much of the Judeo-Christian tradition is one of story telling. Whether the authors of this story made into a movie are explicitly aware of this characteristic is unknown. But the theme of remembering is strong, so strong in fact the movie opens and closes with a voiceover on the import of a story: "When a story is told, it is not forgotten." Those who have been following the LNBST may be thinking about YHWH's repeated command to remember. Remember your past. Remember where you were. Remember your bondage. Remember who you are because this story is who we are; this narrative of life is a grand drama from which we draw our understanding. The Christian Gospel, likewise, is a continued proclamation of this grand narrative: of what has happened and what is to come. Stories must be told. If they are not, they are forgotten.

I suppose that is the task of all arts: to tell a story, to prevent the story from becoming annihilated into a Heideggerian Vergessenheit. Without the story, the world has lost something vital to it. And that is probably why preservationists do what they do. They are trying to preserve a story because they understand that we are products of a story, of history, and that we are mere fragments of reality, truly illusions, if we have no roots in the narrative of history. The earth cries out with a story. All land is holy because all land has been witness to the story.

There is so much more to unpack from this gem about the little known story of the Holocaust in Vichy France, specifically, the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup. While the movie's focus is on retelling that story and the story of a woman wrestling with the idea of abortion, and does an adequate job of both, where the movie really succeeds is reminding us of the need for roots. Is a self-uprooted class of movie critics the reason for its critical blackballing? 9/10

Did this really need a new thread? If anybody gave a shite they would have bumped your old thread.

@ landshark screwing up the post-space reserving

quote:

---

Due to the enormous success of the 2011 TulaneLSU Movie Review Thread

---

You mean due to the enormous amount of times you bumped your own thread it was a success.

quote:

---

These reviews are for your benefit and edification. No longer do you need to trust some faulty "tomatometer" which relies on the opinions of buffoons

---

I think i'll stick with the buffoons.

quote:

---

The Arts Board has long needed such a thread, and I have worked diligently to provide my beloved ones with such a thread.

---

You dont need to becasue no one around here loves you. Honestly.

quote:

---

The Muppets - Another Hollywood attempt to make money off a franchise. It will work because, unlike most franchise movies, this movie is almost good. I had never seen The Muppets before this movie.

---

So you've never seen any other of the movies yet youre upset they are attempting to make money off of it. Got it.

quote:

---

The Muppets - Another Hollywood attempt to make money off a franchise. It will work because, unlike most franchise movies, this movie is almost good. I had never seen The Muppets before this movie. I had heard of them, but only as a cultural reference. I knew there was a frog and a pig and some other things, quite uninteresting things, I must say. The movie didn't move me, but the score is good. The story is believable enough, but if they needed money, why didn't they just get the world's biggest plumber supply dealer, Gonzo, to spot them the $12 mil? The two complaints I have with this movie are it, like other franchises because they lack originality, has no staying power. The viewer has a few high emotive moments during the movie, but a day later, the movie is a blank memory. The other complaint is a poor use of Amy Adams. She has more talent than all the other characters, yet she had almost no screen time.

---

It's hard to truly give a good review of the thread to those familiar with the Muppets if you are not familiar with them. For Muppets fans this was a really good movie and a good movie to bring the kids to.

Dude, you are a nutter butter.

quote:

---

Twilight: Breaking Dawn Mormonism is the greatest threat to Western Civilization that has ever existed. The faith and reason of the last 3000 years is at stake as Mormon Satanists attack with their propaganda, housing it now in the form of pop-gnostic teenage romance books and films. How better to convert people to your belief than through entertainment, which at surface level appears benign and without intent, but below carries a pungent punch? The NFL has been doing the same for twenty years now.

Behind Twilight's childish romance where an average looking girl is swooned by a fabulously wealthy, powerful, and good looking knight in shining armor, is a sick, sinister plot to poison the minds and hearts of teenage girls throughout the world. The Mormon Satanists know that the way to world dominion is through the female because it is through the female that much of religious belief is passed. Young girls believe they are seeing their dreams come true on a silver screen, but what is being administered is arsenic of the soul. Twilight is nothing more than a capsule lined with a bad story that will appeal to teenage and lonely female masses. But its middle is boric acid. It is deadly and I would suggest you do not let your children see it.

The story is as ridiculous as any I've seen. Unnecessary drama compounds unnecessary drama. A girl wants to marry a pale white vampire, but is torn by her love for a dark dog. She marries the vamp and has a kid with him even though the kid will kill her, they believe. But magic blood and venom from the vamp hubby can bring her back to life. Meanwhile there are dogs fighting dogs and steroided vampires who run around hunting. Beneath the cover of this movie, the theme is hating humanity. Humanity is evil because we are fleshly. The dogs are evil because they are of this world. Humans are evil because they are of this world. The goal of life is to move beyond the physical world and gain a pseudo-eternal life with vampires. Gnosticism has never received a more wide spread audience, nor, in recent times, has the white supremacist doctrine of Mormonism.

I hate this movie more than anything I have ever seen before. I only watched it for the readers of The Arts Board. Accept my sacrifice by not watching this filth. I now must cleanse my body and soul from the ideas of this movie. 0/10

---

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol - My mind is not as fleet as it once was, so I cannot remember who said it, but I like this quote: "It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him." Was it Walker Percy? Or John Steinbeck? Regardless, I like it because it is true. The more we expect from someone, the more they will achieve. The converse is true, usually, as well. This philosophy can be taken to extremes. Consider Todd Marinovich or any failed pre-med who throws away her life because she could not meet her expectations. The converse of that axiom is true in Hollywood. If we expect and accept garbage, we will receive garbage. Tom Cruise knows that, and he and others like him have made careers giving audiences with low standards exactly what they want.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol adds to an already sprawling landfill that grows larger by the week. Let's hope they can make something happen with River Birch. If not, where will all the refuse go? Despite the bloody intro, I have to admit, I thought to myself, "This is going to be a fun movie. Enjoy it for what it is." And I thought I would. But somewhere along the way, I realized I had seen this movie before. Not once, or twice, but many times. International espionage. Stolen codes to Soviet nukes. A terrorist. A good guy. A race to stop a nuclear holocaust. I think half the action movies in the 80s and early 90s had the same plot. Sorry, but did I just spend $10 for a matinee on this? Yes, thanks to IMAX, I did.

The action shots are good, but the most impressive part is the opening overview of the city. Those shots are amazing, but the movie is downhill from there. Kids will love the BMW. Adult males with penis fixations will adore the Dubai highrise. In fact, I almost want to say this movie is an infomercial for that building. The 80s nuke plot is just window dressing. All in all, and I will make this quick, I thought it was typical blockbuster Hollywood garbage. Violence, explosions that are supposed to bring back memories of the WTC, and fancy gadgetry, and futuristic cars. With a romance story forced on us for goodness' sake. Bringing shame on us all, this movie will make hundreds of millions, and convince Hollywood to drop off more trash in the landfill that has become the American mind. 2/10

quote:

---

you see it from Disney movies to Lord of the Rings to Batman's butler.

---

Is english dumbass

War Horse I do not often write jeremiads, warning that this generation's wickedness is so great, surely God's wrath will fall upon it. I do not romanticize the past, saying that the morality of ages past is superior to the wanton ways of contemporary nations. Caliginous, Cimmerian perspectives of the present ignore the evils of the past. They assume that somehow people are different today from what their ancestors were. At the same time, I am not drunk with the possibilities of progress and revolution. As Weil said, "Religion is not the opiate of the masses. Revolution is the opiate of the masses." One aspect of human nature, or decreated nature, if you believe in the Christian view of a good creation, that it seems we just cannot shake is that of violence. There is nothing as inhumane as the violence perpetuated in war. One could argue that the WYHI threads are just as bad, but with such thought, there is the possibility of metanoia and redemption. The violence and death associated with war make that possibility impossible for so many who are killed too soon. The past is littered with human inhumanity to other humans in war. Cynically, I do not see much change possible, as we continue to find new and more efficient ways to kill others. To be human is to be at war. But to be human is also to be religious. Some will claim that the two -- religion and war -- are so inextricably linked to blame one on the other. I see it differently. That these two fundamental aspects of the human experience are at odds with each other, but because they are so much a part of the being of humans that they are confused. Religion, I believe, saves us from war.

To be of two natures at once, completely, this is what in Christianity has salvific power. Jesus is fully human and fully divine. It is in Jesus's divinity that we can be saved. It is in Jesus' humanity than we are saved, for as Gregory as Nazianzus wrote, "That which was not assumed is not healed; but that which is united to God is saved." Salvific incarnation has permeated philosophy and Western culture for two millennia that many of our most beloved figures in literature and, now, in film, are characters who have two natures, and use those two natures to show humans the greatness we have been given ["You have made him a little lower than God, And You crown him with glory and majesty" (Psalm 8)] and the pure workings of a creation that is set to follow the established beautiful laws of creation.

I suggest that War Horse uses its main character, a horse, to bridge the gap between humans and the creation. The horse, Jimmy or whatever his name was, opens a new realm to people by being one of them -- having the excellences we value: courage, love, purity, honor, devotion. But he does not discard his creaturely being. He does not try to make himself into a god. He does not build a Tower of Babel. He does not build a golden calf. He does not start war to increase his kingdom. He does not build weapons to kill for profit and power. It is his acceptance of his creaturely nature, something humans reject each time we go to war, as life is only God's to take, that makes him a Jesus-like figure. Being subject to the natural law placed on creation, none more important than to see ourselves as servants to a higher thing, i.e., the physical laws for animals, or a higher Being, i.e., God for humans, which in natural theology are essentially one, allows the horse to bridge the divide and to bring peace to warring sides. His atonement is not easily missed by the observant viewer. His blood drips from a crown of barbed wired thorns. His blood shows the nations that violence destroys and has no good use.

While I do not believe the writers intentionally made the horse a Messiah figure, he undoubtedly becomes one. And it works beautifully. In one of the best scenes of 2012, as the horse makes a mad dash away from the inhumanity of mechanical war only to be brought down by it, we see the power of sacrifice and of love. And we see later how humans have the capacity to rise above it, if we would just claim our God-given inheritance of love and treating others as our brothers and sisters instead of our enemies. The beginning is slow, and I was not impressed by the relationship the young boy has with the horse. It was uninteresting and boring. But the being of the horse itself redeems this movie and makes it good. 8/10