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

Hugo The 19th century was perhaps the worst century for Christian theology in the Church's history. Where Kierkegaard was one of a few very bright lights, his light was not appreciated until Europe emerged from the ashes of a fallen civilization after the Great War. What led Europe to its own destruction? Natural theology. More precisely, the theology of both William Paley and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Paley believed that all we need to prove God's existence is order in the world. He therefore starts with his observation, his reason, and works his way backward, an Enlightenment's God of the gaps, if you will. In his monumentally poor Natural Theology he writes, "Suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given -- that, for anything I know, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone?...For this reason, and for no other when we come to inspect the watch we perceive that its several parts are famed put together for a purpose...This mechanism being observed... the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker....who comprehended its construction, and designed its use."

Hugo is a delightful tale written by a person who likely does not realize he has adopted Paley's theology, but beneath the theological undertones of this movie is a distinctly Christian message. We are broken on the inside. Someone needs to fix us. This in itself is a good and natural realization. We do not need a revelation of any supernatural means to learn how broken we are. Just look at the world around us. If we were not broken, the structures of this world would not be so hopelessly broken and corrupt. Does anyone need to look further than the media, especially at ESPN, who campaign for Alabama's inclusion in the national championship game despite only playing four teams with a winning record and hanging its entire season on a loss at home? A just world would not allow such non-sense. A just world is filled with whole and healthy people. But the world is not just. It is broken, just as its inhabitants. The film does not have the courage to delve into the Watchmaker, but Scorsese has the sense, perhaps because he has the limited theological insight, to plant the story in the land of the temporal alone. While the movie is about the one who fixes others, even at the cost of his own safety, that character, so full of mystery is left as nothing more than a flat messiah. We learn so much about the dynamic character, the old man, and it is good. But the character I wanted to learn is left as little more than a tool. What makes his clock tick? Martin, tell me.

One thing slightly perturbing I see as I get older is the feeling among American directors that characters who are not American need to have British accents. The movie is set in Paris, but every single character has a British accent. Why? Apart from that annoyance that extends not just from this movie but nearly every Disney movie ever made to the council scenes in Star Wars, I liked the visuals of this movie. Set in the Gare Montparnasse, the famous Parisian train station, known in photographs for the train that could not stop and ended up shooting through the station's main window, the cinematography is beautifully done, making the viewer appreciate the cold. It's easy for your film to be beautiful when the setting is Paris, but even so, Hugo has something magical about it. One of its magic tricks is the use of cold. Cold can be a character of death and misery, but in this movie, the cold is used to show beauty and to bring us to a wonderland of mirth. It is, in that way, a quintessentially Christmasy movie.

The acting is rather ordinary, with no magical performances given. There is, however, one shockingly foreign performance. It took me a couple of scenes until I realized who played one of the characters. So unusual and divergent from his normal roles was this one. Hugo is one of those very warm family movies that will make a chummy memory in the minds of children. But for me, I felt like so much more was left on the table that could have been developed. 8/10

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The Tree of Life... It is the greatest movie that has ever been made. 10/10.

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That movie was pure crap. And, oh, before you go there... yes, I GOT it.

And concerning Winnie the Pooh... why should I believe your 0/10 when it's 91% with Rottentomatoes critics?

Sorry dude... I don't trust your reviews. But that doesn't mean I don't find them interesting.

Keep posting.