Soul Surfer - I went into this movie knowing nothing about it, nothing. It was playing when I arrived at the theater, so I went blind. All I knew was it was rated PG. When it began, I thought, "This looks dumb, but at least it's a pretty girl in a bikini." Moments later, the girl goes to church, and I'm thinking, "This must be one of those evangelical Christian movies that's trying to make a way into the mainstream." Bingo. With a star studded cast of Helen Hunt, Dennis Quaid, Craig Nelson (from the show Coach, who seems to be making a comeback with his recent role in the bland Company Men), Kevin Sorbo, and Carrie Underwood it caught me off guard because usually that type of movie has a no-name cast or with that fundamentalist guy Scott from Growing Pains.

For the first hour of the movie, I was really annoyed by it. It was overly preachy, overly sentimental, and overly focus on surfing and the life of a self-centered, selfish family that adds nothing to the world. They lived for their own entertainment, like most of the "evangelical Christians" today who are self-righteous and act that fake Mormon niceness that comes off as smug. People like this family put a lot of people off Christianity because they claim Christ, but live lives of the aesthete, living as if God chose them and them alone to enjoy the world. Suffering? As long as it's not me and my family, who cares? It's that type of teaching that has made much of what passes as Christianity in America the epitome of what Jesus taught against (much like Mormonism). Back to the movie, it was growing in annoying scenes, chirpy lines, and overly sentimental music to a crescendo of all I hate about American happy-clappyism. Where was the reality? The didactic moment?

But something happened in the last quarter of the movie. A pivotal change in the mood and direction, and it made all the difference. I won't spoil it for you, but somehow I got caught up in the young girl's life, and began sobbing uncontrollably in the theater. I have never cried like that from a movie, but this movie somehow reached into my spirit and tugged at it, perhaps more than any other movie since Rudy and A Walk to Remember. I confess that afterward, I felt a little used, but the feelings of manipulation passed when I realized this movie was based on a true story, and the one whose life it is based seemed genuine and true. I feel torn to give it a high rating because of the first 3/4 of the movie and the emotional roller coaster it takes you on, but I will give it a 7/10 just on the fact that it moved me so severely.

Source Code - a movie I went into blindly as well. From the title I thought it was going to be about computer hacking or some silly subject like that. Immediately, the movie embraces you with its mystery and action. The director really does his profession proudly using many of the known and unknown techniques of Hitchcock. To go into more detail is to give the movie away, but throughout the movie, I was intrigued and entertained.

It tries to pass itself off as intelligent, delving into the paradoxes of time travel, but it adds nothing of note, borrowing instead from Terminator and Back to the Future ideas. Not that interesting in my opinion, but what is interesting is the perfectly organized movie, its pace, and its great roles, perfectly cast might I add. I don't think I blinked the entire time. As a mystery-action-thriller, it doesn't get any better than this, but those who try to turn it into some intellectual treatise are morons. 8/10

Take Me Home Tonight The first half hour of this movie was amongst the worst 30 minutes of film in history. The trailer makes it out to be a comedy, but there are no humorous elements to the movie, especially in the first 30 minutes. The most interesting aspect of this movie involves failure and regret and how it has motivated, or rather, marked the movie's protagonist. If the director had focused on that instead of stupid scenes that did not help the movie, it might be worth seeing. But as it lacks comic and true dramatic elements, it flops. The music is pretty good if you're an 80s fan, but what? They didn't even put Take Me Home Tonight in the movie! Really. The title has nothing to do with this movie and the ending is just poor. 2/10

Tangled I felt embarrassed not to know this fairytale. After seeing it three times already I feel that I know the tale backwards and forwards. The young lady, even though she is a cartoon, is very attractive and I found her hair irresistible. The colors are beautiful and the music fun. Not as good as The Princess and the Frog, but still good. 8/10

Thor - Ah, yes, summer is here and so are the blockbusters. The summer has started in high style with Thor. I'm not a fan of those comic book movies, but this Marvel feature crosses the comic genre more than any other before it, even Iron Man. With themes from literature, religion, and science beautifully woven together, not to mention spectacular special effects that are among the prettiest ever made, this is the best movie I've seen so far in 2011. Natalie Portman and the guy who plays Thor have great chemistry, and that's not even the main story. The main story is about sibling rivalry, and it is marvelously illustrated. Absolutely outstanding. 8/10

The Tourist We're supposed to believe that Johnny Depp is the every man? Get real. Jolie is very attractive, perhaps at her prettiest in this film. And the cinematography of Venice is lovely. The story is not and it is one of the most predictable movies of the year. 4/10

This post was edited on 1/26/12 at 6:42 am

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Posted by TulaneLSU

Member since Aug 2003

Member since Dec 2007

13298 posts

Posted on 11/16/11 at 7:22 am to TulaneLSU

Transformers 3 It was slightly better than the second one, but the story of Omega Prime isn't well told. I think if they had gone a little more in depth with the character of Omega, the movie might have gone somewhere, but Bay knew the public wanted to see bang bang pow pow, transform, die Decepticons! than actually develop a character or a story with any depth. It's a shame because all the animation would have buttressed an interesting story. 3/10

The Tree of Life To watch The Tree of Life is to stand before the expanse of the ocean or the heavens, knowing that every little thing you see has meaning, even if you don't understand what the meaning of each thing is. A day removed from watching this film, I feel like Christopher Columbus upon his landing in the new world or Frederick Cook. There is a mysterious infinity of faith and love in The Tree of Life.

Mr. Malick does not want to confuse people. He wants to open their eyes to faith and to the huge questions of faith, questions that are often reduced by fundamentalists of every stripe. For the fundamentalists who claim faith, faith is reduced to certainty. For the fundamentalists who assail faith, faith is a remnant of evolution gone awry. Faith is something to be jettisoned as baggage that has no worth in the modern world. But Mr. Malick sees and believes right through both forms of the same arrogant idolatry. So when Malick begins the film with an epigraph from Job, the divine question in response to Job's creaturely theodical question: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth...when the morning stars sang together?" we are to view the movie through that passage in Job more than the Genesis creation account(s). This movie, like Job, is one person's, Malick, attempt to reconcile his faith in a good God that brings life to be with the God who allowed his brother to die at an early age. The movie is an an honest prayer, a supplication of integrity to God: God, why did you allow my brother to die? How can you say you are good and how can you ask me to be good, if you, God, are not good?

I think this question, uttered in a soft whisper, as all the movie's direct communication with God is done, is what drives the movie. But the movie begins with the answer: a beautiful sweep of history from the electron to DNA to the dinosaur to destruction to the specific story of one family, all are the work of the God who freely moves as a gaseous spirit of fire, the loving, birthing, consuming fire. We have the question of divine goodness and power within the boundaries of goodness in the beginning and goodness at the end. Thus, I think, it is Malick's way of saying, God, I know you are good. I know you are good, but why? Why? I know you are good. God's goodness is not known in the acetonic assurances of Mrs. O’Brien's mother, who cites scripture, just as Job's friends did. No one, not even God, who does not dwell in the depths of despair with another has the right to do such things. And that is why this movie only can make sense in a Christian worldview, a lens that sees the Creator as the Suffering Servant, the one who bore our iniquities and carried our sorrows. Only this God has the right to answer Job's question with another question: Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world? Only the God who knows suffering of the most real sort can understand Job or Jack O'Brien or Terrence Malick or you or me.

Doorways play such a huge role in this movie. But the most significant doorway is that at the end, when the grown Jack cautiously walks through, or boldly leaps through the door. This is the Kierkegaardian leap of faith. "Very truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep," says Jesus. And it is only after taking that leap into a new existence that the question of why falls to the wayside and he is reunited in a prelapsarian, or rather, post-redemptive paradise, reunited with his family, transported to a place where every tear has been wiped away, every imperfection made pure. Near the end, Mrs. O'Brien says, "The only way to be happy is to love. Unless you love, your life will flash by." This is the way, the truth, and the life of grace with which the movie opens. And the message is this, I think: That until we leap into the Christ, who was with God in the beginning and who suffered with and for us, and who loved us to the ultimate distance, unless we are bound to that Christ, we will have no love. Without love our lives wither and fade, and death is the end. But with love, with Jesus, we live forevermore in the valley where the tree of life bears fruit for us forevermore.

There is so much more to say about this movie, and perhaps I will one day say it. But I believe this movie to be an inspired work of God. It is a true masterpiece against which all works of art should be compared. It is the greatest movie that has ever been made. 10/10.

This post was edited on 11/16/11 at 7:33 am

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Posted by Green Chili Tiger

Lurking the Tin Foil Hat Board

Member since Jul 2009

47932 posts

Posted on 12/8/11 at 4:48 pm to TulaneLSU

quote:
overly focus on surfing and the life of a self-centered, selfish family that adds nothing to the world. They lived for their own entertainment, like most of the "evangelical Christians" today who are self-righteous and act that fake Mormon niceness that comes off as smug

quote:
It's that type of teaching that has made much of what passes as Christianity in America the epitome of what Jesus taught against (much like Mormonism).

Dude.

Did a Mormon steal your girlfriend or something?

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Posted by iwyLSUiwy

I'm your huckleberry

Member since Apr 2008

34785 posts

Posted on 12/13/11 at 12:59 pm to TulaneLSU

quote:
Soul Surfer - I went into this movie knowing nothing about it, nothing. It was playing when I arrived at the theater, so I went blind. All I knew was it was rated PG. When it began, I thought, "This looks dumb, but at least it's a pretty girl in a bikini." Moments later, the girl goes to church, and I'm thinking, "This must be one of those evangelical Christian movies that's trying to make a way into the mainstream." Bingo. With a star studded cast of Helen Hunt, Dennis Quaid, Craig Nelson (from the show Coach, who seems to be making a comeback with his recent role in the bland Company Men), Kevin Sorbo, and Carrie Underwood it caught me off guard because usually that type of movie has a no-name cast or with that fundamentalist guy Scott from Growing Pains.

For the first hour of the movie, I was really annoyed by it. It was overly preachy, overly sentimental, and overly focus on surfing and the life of a self-centered, selfish family that adds nothing to the world. They lived for their own entertainment, like most of the "evangelical Christians" today who are self-righteous and act that fake Mormon niceness that comes off as smug. People like this family put a lot of people off Christianity because they claim Christ, but live lives of the aesthete, living as if God chose them and them alone to enjoy the world. Suffering? As long as it's not me and my family, who cares? It's that type of teaching that has made much of what passes as Christianity in America the epitome of what Jesus taught against (much like Mormonism). Back to the movie, it was growing in annoying scenes, chirpy lines, and overly sentimental music to a crescendo of all I hate about American happy-clappyism. Where was the reality? The didactic moment?

But something happened in the last quarter of the movie. A pivotal change in the mood and direction, and it made all the difference. I won't spoil it for you, but somehow I got caught up in the young girl's life, and began sobbing uncontrollably in the theater. I have never cried like that from a movie, but this movie somehow reached into my spirit and tugged at it, perhaps more than any other movie since Rudy and A Walk to Remember. I confess that afterward, I felt a little used, but the feelings of manipulation passed when I realized this movie was based on a true story, and the one whose life it is based seemed genuine and true. I feel torn to give it a high rating because of the first 3/4 of the movie and the emotional roller coaster it takes you on, but I will give it a 7/10 just on the fact that it moved me so severely.

Source Code - a movie I went into blindly as well. From the title I thought it was going to be about computer hacking or some silly subject like that. Immediately, the movie embraces you with its mystery and action. The director really does his profession proudly using many of the known and unknown techniques of Hitchcock. To go into more detail is to give the movie away, but throughout the movie, I was intrigued and entertained.

It tries to pass itself off as intelligent, delving into the paradoxes of time travel, but it adds nothing of note, borrowing instead from Terminator and Back to the Future ideas. Not that interesting in my opinion, but what is interesting is the perfectly organized movie, its pace, and its great roles, perfectly cast might I add. I don't think I blinked the entire time. As a mystery-action-thriller, it doesn't get any better than this, but those who try to turn it into some intellectual treatise are morons. 8/10

Take Me Home Tonight The first half hour of this movie was amongst the worst 30 minutes of film in history. The trailer makes it out to be a comedy, but there are no humorous elements to the movie, especially in the first 30 minutes. The most interesting aspect of this movie involves failure and regret and how it has motivated, or rather, marked the movie's protagonist. If the director had focused on that instead of stupid scenes that did not help the movie, it might be worth seeing. But as it lacks comic and true dramatic elements, it flops. The music is pretty good if you're an 80s fan, but what? They didn't even put Take Me Home Tonight in the movie! Really. The title has nothing to do with this movie and the ending is just poor. 2/10

Tangled I felt embarrassed not to know this fairytale. After seeing it three times already I feel that I know the tale backwards and forwards. The young lady, even though she is a cartoon, is very attractive and I found her hair irresistible. She reminded me of my Beloved. The colors are beautiful and the music fun. Not as good as The Princess and the Frog, but still good. 8/10

Thor - Ah, yes, summer is here and so are the blockbusters. The summer has started in high style with Thor. I'm not a fan of those comic book movies, but this Marvel feature crosses the comic genre more than any other before it, even Iron Man. With themes from literature, religion, and science beautifully woven together, not to mention spectacular special effects that are among the prettiest ever made, this is the best movie I've seen so far in 2011. Natalie Portman and the guy who plays Thor have great chemistry, and that's not even the main story. The main story is about sibling rivalry, and it is marvelously illustrated. Absolutely outstanding. 8/10

The Tourist We're supposed to believe that Johnny Depp is the every man? Get real. Jolie is very attractive, perhaps at her prettiest in this film. And the cinematography of Venice is lovely. The story is not and it is one of the most predictable movies of the year. 4/10