Cloverfield

Cloverfield is about fear's overwhelming presence in our lives. Fear can cripple us all. We all walk around in fear for a good chunk of our lives, just waiting for something to happen (especially since 9/11). I am not saying that it is apparent all the time, but in the back of our minds I believe we all have real fears. Cloverfiend plays on those fears. It does not try to explain what is attacking New York City, or why. Those are irrelevant questions. The only thing that matters is that something very scary is killing people, lots of people.

This film puts us there as it is happening. We are part of the experience. We see what the characters see, and feel what they feel. It is all about perspective. The film was shot with a camcorder, so be aware that it is shaky and jerky. A bunch of friends are at a get together for a friend who is leaving for Japan. During the party something that feels like an earthquake happens. Then a giant explosion, and all the people that we have been getting to know must now run for their lives. What they thought was important no longer carries any value. Tragedy makes us realize that very few things are truly important to us. They are scared out of their minds as they slowly learn more about what is happening. But again, the film is not about why or why. It is about how we as humans experience fear and catastrophe, but taken to the ultimate extreme.

Cloverfield is as tense a movie as I have seen in a long time. Some may be turned off, or just made sick, by the shooting style. I think it is brilliant. It has been called Blair Witch meets Godzilla, but Cloverfield is far, far superior to either. This film is very entertaining. It truly gives you a unique experience (not unlike the last film I saw, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). We are not only put in NYC during some sort of horrific attack, but we as the audience experience the fear and the tension much more than your standard disaster flick with a third-person omniscient perspective. Cloverfield is an existentialist film. Sometimes horrible things happen, and it doesn't really matter why. We just have to deal with them as they come. All that is relevant during times of horrible disaster is survival; our own survival and the survival of those we love.

Is it all hopeless? Are we all just going to die? How do I stop being afraid? Fear grips us and does not let us go.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

This is a special experience.


Based on a true story, Julian Schnabel directs The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the story (in French) of Jean-Dominique Bauby who was paralyzed from a stroke at the age of 42. We wake with Bauby in a hospital, and slowly come to realize that he has lost all movement in his body except in one eye. We journey with Bauby every step of the way. We live in his head, hear his thoughts, see what he sees, and experience what he experiences. This film makes you live inside another human being more than any other film I have ever seen. The direction of Schnabel is a revelation, something truly unique and creatively amazing.

I was dreading seeing this film because I despise sappiness. A terminally ill man with nothing to live for finds out what life is all about - gag. My cheese radar was on full tilt. Man, were my expectations off. Bauby is as real as one could get. The film never falls into over the realm of sentimentality. There is a great sense of humor throughout it all, and life, true life, comes to the forefront. It is not contrived or manipulated, it is real.

Just imagine being completely paralyzed, save one eye. You might feel a great deal of self-pity, I would. This is one of Bauby's most significant struggles. He tends to feel sorry for himself, but decides that he doesn't want to do that anymore. It will do him no good. It is a struggle throughout his life, but a battle he is willing to fight. We must not give in to this temptation either. Sometimes life is very hard, and it all seems very unjust. Yet, if we wallow in our own pool of self-pity we forget our purpose. We have to remember that we are all here for a reason, and God knows that reason. If we spend all our time focusing on how we have been wronged or how life isn't fair we miss out on so much. We all must fight the good fight (with God's help) against our own self-pity.

Before his accident, Bauby wanted to retell the story of The Count of Monte Cristo from a woman's perspective. In the original novel, a man is falsely imprisoned. When he escapes he spends all his time and money seeking justice and revenge. He seeks to right the wrongs done to him. It seems as if Bauby wants to write that story from the female perspective to take out justice and vengeance upon himself. Let me explain. He has not treated women well in his life. He has three kids with one woman, whom he did not marry, and sleeps with many others. He toys with them. Now, Bauby is actually in a prison (he calls it a Diving Suit), like the hero in The Count. He wants to right the wrongs from his past too, but those wrongs are not so much what has been done to him (outside of the stroke and paralysis of course) but what wrongs he has done to others. He begins to regret some choices he has made and desires to change them. But what if it is too late? How would someone right so many wrongs when all they can do is blink?

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is an overwhelming film spectacle, and Schnabel is well-deserving of his Oscar nod for Best Director. This film causes us to examine our lives, and to realize the gift of life we all have while we are still breathing. Life is precious, no matter what the quality seems to be. All life has meaning, even the seemingly hopeless and utterly lost. Life is good, because life is a gift from God.

Oscars 2007

Well, let's hope that the Oscars actually happen this year. In that spirit, here are my thoughts on the nominations. First off, the Best Picture race has five very good films (Atonement, Juno, Michael Clayton, No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood), just like last year. Lately the Academy has been choosing really good stuff. I thoroughly enjoyed all five film, and have a review of each one. That being said, I think There Will Be Blood should win, it was the best film I saw all year. I don't think it will though. I believe No Country will take the top prize, and that would not disappoint me at all. It is also a spectacular film. Although, Juno could sneak in there because it is the only film that is even remotely light-hearted.

Best Actor will and should go to Daniel Day-Lewis, who is just indescribable. I must say I was very happy to see Tommy Lee get nominated for In The Valley Of Elah, a much overlooked movie and performane, because he was great. For Best Actress I have to say I am a little unprepared. I have only seen two of the performances (Julie Christie and Ellen Page) thus far. They were both very good. I would have to predict Christie to win, though I do have to say that her performance in Away From Her did not even take center stage in the film. It was overshadowed by Gordon Pinsent's performance. Excellent film too, by the way.

For Best Supporting Actor I would give the Oscar to Tom Wilkinson, though Philip Seymour Hoffman was absolutely amazing as well. Sadly, I don't think either one will win, that distinction will go to Javier Bardem, who was great as well. Best Supporting Actress will be Cate Blanchett for I'm Not There (which I still need to see) or Amy Ryan for Gone Baby Gone. I do have to say Saoirse Ronin's performance was very, very good in Atonement, and I hope she wins.

The most important category most years is Best Original Screenplay because it is all about creativity. This year Juno will run away with it. It was awesome to see Ratatouille get a nomination here though, I love that film. The Best Adapted Screenplay is an overloaded category, so much competition, but No Country will win that one. And that leaves Best Director. The Coen's will probably take this award, though I would love to see P.T. Anderson take it. He is truly a master.

Well there you have it. I hope the show goes on. Another great year of nominations and an overall great year for good films. Click here for the official list of nominations.

Sunshine

Good science-fiction uses the future as a means to ask hard questions and help us investigate ourselves and the world without the normal constraints. Sunshine does this excellently. Brit Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Millions) tries his hand at yet another genre and succeeds. The film centers around a crew of eight who is sent to the surface of the sun. Why? Because the sun is a dying star; it is burning out. Without the sun, our planet will die. So we as humanity have made a bomb the size of Manhattan, and we need to get that bomb to the center of the sun. Thus, the bomb will create a new star in the dying one. The crew (including Cillian Murphy, Michelle Yeow, Chris Evans and Cliff Curtis) has been in space for a long time. Their ship is attached to the back of the bomb. They have a shield on the front of the ship that blocks the uber-intense heat of the sun. Their plan is to get close enough to the surface of the dying star to jettison the bomb, turn around, and head back to earth. The ship is aptly called the Icarus. Humankind has tried this before, and the first attempt failed seven years ago. This Icarus is earth's last hope; the earth has been depleted of bomb resources. If this mission fails, all humanity dies.

There is a dichotomy here. Our strongest desire is to survive. The death of nearly 7 billion people would be a horrible thing. We should do everything in our power to save our planet. God entrusted this planet to us, and we are called to be its steward. Yet there is this nagging feeling that we are playing God. We are putting the future of the universe in our own hands and manipulating everything for our own benefit. Do we have the right? Most people would say yes without question. But one man in the film has a different view of this. Is he crazy? He claims to

talk directly to God. What does God want? God loves his people, He would want the best for them. He created the world and said that it was good. Why would God allow the world to be destroyed then? Is this a test? God gave us the scientific ability to save the world, so why shouldn't we? Or is the dying of the sun God's plan, His judgment? The underlying questions of Sunshine are fundamental. Science and God are not opposing ideas. God created everything, and science is how we understand what God created. Yet how should we use science?

Sunshine looks stunningly beautiful. The pictures of the sun, its incredible heat, the vacuum of space, and the surface of Mercury all put us there. We are truly reminded of God's infinite power and creativity. And we are dwarfed by God's creation. Who is man, why do we think we are so great in the face of all this grandeur and majesty? If the sun-shield is turned just 1.1%, disaster could occur. Anything outside of the shield is immediately engulfed in flames. The temperature in the shadow, even that close to the sun, is -273 degrees celcius. Just imagine.

This film brings us face to face with eternal questions. It makes us investigate not only ourselves and our motives, but humanity as a whole. What is our place in the universe. To what extent would we go to save ourselves? Should we be allowed to save ourselves? Let us remember that God's creation is great, awe-inspiring, and powerful. And let us remember that we have a place in it. After He created man, God said it was "very good." God does take particular interest in us, He created us in our image. He also sent His son in our form to save us. We are very special to Him. So what does all of that mean in terms of the possible end of the world?

There Will Be Blood

What happens when you pair the genius of Paul Thomas Anderson (Magnolia, Punch Drunk Love) and the genius of Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York, My Left Foot)? You get an epically beautiful movie-going experience.

Day-Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, a Texas oil man who starts his business around the turn of the century. After working hard for years and gaining a reputation as a great entrepreneur, Plainview receives a strange visitor, Paul Sunday. Sunday tells him of his father's ranch, and how there is oil coming up from the ground. Plainview is interested, but keeps his cards close to his chest. He visits, with his business partner/son H.W. and takes a look. Eventually Plainview ends up with the ranch and turns the small town of Little Boston into an oil money-maker. Now in this town there is a young, ambitious preacher named Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), brother of the man who led Plainview to the town in the first place. Eli has plans for his town as well, which include "saving" everyone who has come to Little Boston because of the oil, especially Plainview.

The film is very similar to two other American classics which tell of the rise and fall of great men, Citizen Kane and The Godfather. I know, that is a bold statement, but this film may very well deserve to be in that company. We start out liking Plainview. He is hard-working, which is seen by the first 15 minutes of the film (Plainview working by himself with no dialogue, beautiful). He is a master businessman, epitomizing the perfect capitalist. He makes himself rich instead of inheriting it all. There are parallels here with such great American business men as Rockefeller and Carnegie. Plainview is a good father; he is raising his son on his own and doing a pretty good job of it. I found myself caring deeply for this stoic, straightforward man. Yet by the end of the film I found myself hating him. How did we get there? We slowly find out who Plainview is and what his motivations are. There is a conversation near the middle of the film that reveals everything about Plainview. He says that he hates most people because he has a competition in him that makes him want everyone else around him to fail (even the ones he loves). He doesn't like to explain himself either; Plainview wants to be completely self-sufficient. This is a deeply flawed man. His flaws are not obvious, like so many villains in film history. This is a man whose motivations are his downfall. There is a great deal going on inside his head all the time, and we are privy to it only when he lets us in. A great character contains many layers, and Daniel Plainview is about as deep a character as it is possible to meet in two and a half hours.

Plainview's nemesis in many ways is Eli Sunday. Sunday's life parallels Plainview's. He wants to be great, to be rich, to be powerful as well. But instead of using oil, Sunday uses God. Sunday connives to get money for his church, manipulates to get the main road in the town to lead directly to the church, and works very hard to get Plainview to confess his sins in front of everyone and to repent and seek forgiveness from God. This last scene especially stuck out to me because it is a great example of using God for your own purposes, as a power play. It was very clear to me that Sunday did not care about Plainview's soul, he just wanted power over Plainview. The spiritual realm was the only arena in which Sunday had one hand up on him. I won't spoil the ending, but there is one scene in which Sunday comes face to face with who he is and what his motivations have been as well. Has he truly been a man of God, or was he just using religion for his own selfish purposes? At one point Sunday says that he would reach for God's hand in this hard time, but he cannot see it. How do we reach for an invisible God? For an exploration of this question, check out Philip Yancey's book Reaching for the Invisible God.

Religion and the American Dream are constantly in conflict in There Will Be Blood, yet many times they are running parallel courses. A child is marked with oil on the forehead, much like a baptism, and this is a powerful image. The central scene of the film takes place during an accident at an oil derrick. Plainview's son H.W. is knocked to the ground by the spewing oil and struck deaf. Plainview is panic-stricken and does everything he can for the boy. But while this is happening the derrick catches on fire. Plainview leaves his son to go take care of his business. Everyone around is frustrated and dejected, but Plainview is excited. They have struck it rich. He is torn between his son and his riches, but clearly chooses the latter in the end. His pursuit of his riches is merely the face of his greatest desire, power. And this desire for power is in the preacher as well. It seems on the surface that religion should stand at odds to this ruggedly individualist capitalism, but Anderson shows that sometimes they are one in the same. Yet we must realize that true religion is not a selfish power grab, but in fact the opposite.

A great filmmaker does not tell you, he shows you. This is what Paul Thomas Anderson does in There Will Be Blood. The film is based off of the Upton Sinclair novel Oil!, but Anderson adapted it for the screen and took the title from Exodus (which makes sense considering the strange events of Anderson's masterpiece Magnolia). As with American Gangster, this film examines the America Dream in great detail. It also delves into the heart and motivations of two men who are eerily similar. The cinematography is breathtaking. The use of music in the film is pitch-perfect and eery. The story builds to a stunning crescendo. The film was an absolute pleasure to behold. Day-Lewis has crafted an absolutely perfect performance that should win him an Oscar. Anderson has made an epic American film which is truly worth of being called a masterpiece. This is the film I have been waiting for all year. There Will Be Blood was one of those special movie-going experiences that I will not soon forget.

Juno

Juno is a tale spun by newcomer Diablo Cody, and directed by Thank You For Smoking's Jason Reitman. The story revolves around Juno (Ellen Page) who went and got herself knocked up by Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cena). What should she do now? Juno is only 16 mind you, just a junior in high school. Her first instinct is to hit the local abortion clinic, but as she goes through the process she finds herself repulsed by it for no particular reason. Thus, Juno decides instead to give the baby away to a loving family. So she goes to meet one perspective couple, the Lorings (Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman). She decides this family is a good fit and proceeds to let the baby cook in the oven for a few more months, pop the thing out, and get on with her high school years. The dialogue is quick and witty, the plot moves along swimmingly, and we enter into the world of a high-school girl.

At one point in the film Juno's stepmother says that there could be a precious blessing from Jesus in this garbage dump of a situation. This echoes many Biblical ideas, such as the story of Joseph ("What man has meant for evil God intended for good") and Paul's words in Romans ("In all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose"). A teenage pregnancy is not an ideal situation, and it adds a whole lot of extra stress to many lives. It is far from ideal, but God can take crappy things and turn them into good. We must remember this when we are going through the valley of the shadow of death in our own lives. We have to look for the blessing in it all.

Purpose plays a major role in Juno. People are constantly searching for what they are called to be (a mom, a rockstar, a normal girl, etc. ). One thing that impresses me about Juno's character is that she knows her role and she sticks to it. She realizes that she is not equipped to raise a child at this point in her life, so she turns it over to those who can. This is all way beyond her maturity level, and Juno is not afraid or ashamed to admit it. She knows her role and is alright with being in the process of figuring out her purpose in life. She is a work in progress (aren't we all), and she embraces this fact. There is no pride in her heart.

At one point, Juno wrestles with the idea of love between two people. She wants to know that it is possible for two people to truly love each other for the rest of their lives. Her father gives her great wisdom. He says "You need to find someone who loves you for exactly who you are, no matter what." Absolutely true. And that is a hard thing to find, and a hard thing to do. The film delves into that question, and examines our cultures ideas of love, marriage, commitment, responsibility, friendship, etc.

Along the lines of many "dramedies" lately (much like Little Miss Sunshine and Lost in Translation) Juno is an awkward, painfully real coming of age comedy that makes us laugh and cry at the same time. It asks questions that need asking, like: "What does a child mean and how does it change one's life?" and "What is true love?" The story treats teenagers with depth and dignity, something that is far too rare in films. It is also refreshing to see a film that is pro-life, and not just in a shallow political way. This film promotes the beauty and miracle of life itself. Juno is a joy to watch, an exciting and authentic trip into the psyche of youthful love and profound responsibility.

The Great Debaters

Denzel Washington has joined the ranks of movie-stars turned directors (Eastwood, Gibson, etc.). The Great Debaters stars Denzel as Mr. Tolson, a teacher and debate team coach at a small Negro college in Texas (Wiley) in the 1930s. Tolson chooses four students to form his team, including Henry Lowe (Nate Parker), Samantha Brooke (Jurnee Smollett), and James Farmer Jr. (Denzel Whitaker - yeah, check that name out). Farmer is the son of the school's president, played by Forest Whitaker. Needless to say, the acting is superb, and not just from the two fantastic Oscar winners. So Tolson picks his team and trains them. The story progresses into a very familiar storyline: the team works hard, starts winning, starts competing against better competition, etc. Well, eventually they set up a debate against the Harvard team. Now this was a Negro team from Texas in the 30s, remember. Thus, race relations play a huge part in the film. Also, this was a very small school, going up against the reigning national champions. It seems rather fantastical, but it really happened.

One of the best things about this film is that it applauds intelligence. In The Great Debaters, the champions are crowned through hard work, discipline, and smarts. It is glaringly obvious that intelligence has little to no value to our society nowadays. This is especially true of the power of rhetoric. Hey, wait, you mean what we say and how we say it actually matters? Just listen to any sports interview for five seconds and see how completely idiotic people sound, see how many times you can count "ya know." I have taught a high-school speech class for four years now, so it is a subject I am familiar with (I do have to say though that I am much better at teaching speech than at doing it myself). I will be showing this film to my students every year from now on. As James reminds us in his epistle, our words have the power to heal and to destroy. The ship is controlled by the small rudder and the horse by a small bit, just as our being is controlled by our small organ known as our tongue. But instead of letting our tongue get out of hand, imagine if we use it for good, for change. This film reminds us of that potential, and shows us how important intelligence can be.

What is a good man? This film also puts forth a good picture of a man, a strong leader who loves his family, works hard, and is a gentleman. It is hard to find a film these days that actually says "this is what a good man is" instead of "look at all these worthless pigs."

During their training, Tolson drilled the students with this call and response:
"Who is the judge?"
"God is the judge"
"Why is He God?"
"He decides whether I win or lose, not my opponent."
"Who is your opponent?"
"He doesn't exist. He is merely a dissenting voice against the truth I speak."
Beautiful exchange, profound truth, one of the best movie quotes I have heard in a long time. We must remember that God is ultimately the judge of all that we do. Yet we so often get clouded by the opinions of others. When we are criticized, put down, argued against, attacked, we should always realize that if we speak the truth, there is nothing anyone can do to change it from being the truth. Truth is truth, period.

The Great Debaters' plot revolves around racism in the south as well. This is an important aspect of the story, but a sub-plot in my opinion. At its very soul, this film is about young men and women realizing their potential and working hard to achieve it. It is about the help that teachers and mentors give, the help we all need along the way. And it is about the power of the truth to change lives, and about the fact that we must seek after it long and hard if we desire to be part of it.