incipiosermo.com

Interpret them as you will:

• Transformers - amazing thrill ride
  
• Live Free or Die Hard - Yipeekiyay
  
• The Contract - ssllooww
  
• Rocky IV - zzzzzzz
  
• Jesus Camp - deep sorrow
  
• Manufactured Landscapes - we did that?
  
• Borne Ultimatum - smart and fun
  
• The Simpsons Movie - funny - provocative - funny
  
• The Last Mimzy - childish good idea
  
• Hot Fuzz - part funny, part....
  

Labels: movie review

I finally mustered up the courage to watch Jesus Camp. I knew it would take a large dose of emotional and physical self-control to watch, so I gathered up the courage and hit play. I expected to be angry, furious even, but instead I was overwhelmed with a sense of sadness and sorrow.

Jesus Camp is a documentary about a fundamentalist Christian children's camp in the US. I was saddened because these kids, 8-12 years old or so, were being emotionally manipulated and given an overwhelming sense of responsibility beyond their years. Some of the "low-lights" were seeing the kids "bless" a cardboard cutout of President Bush in a way that seemed like worship, seeing the kids being told that the future of the US and it's "immoral state" are on their shoulders, seeing these kids being treated like soldiers (even martyrs) and seeing one of the kids from the camp have a bizarre interaction with Ted Haggard. It was sad...I think kids have the potential to do amazing things in this world and should be given every opportunity to do so, however, to manipulate them, like what was seen in the film, seems immoral.

In fact, I would have issues with what I saw in the film if it happened with adults, let alone kids...what are they thinking? I remember running Jr. High church retreats and we always tried to be sensitive to the fact that kids that age are very susceptible to any sort of manipulation. That didn't mean we wouldn't share the gospel message but we thought about the implication of how and when we did it.

The film, for the most part, seemed fair to both sides but in the end, I was just deeply saddened by what I saw and find those emotions resurfacing even as I write.

Labels: movie review

Yesterday I went to see Apocalypto at the theatre. I had heard amazing things about the cinematic experience so I went with high expectations. The movie as a whole was good but it was a bit, shall I say: “Mel Gibson-ish.” I just found it very reminiscent of the movie “The Patriot” as if it was “The Patriot” transported back in time to the Mayan culture. All the graphic stuff aside (And it was extremely graphic! Although it wasn’t the most believable graphic stuff I have seen in these types of movies. For example, there is a scene where the Mayan priest is literally ripping out a man’s heart and the heart comes out easily and nicely disconnected from the veins and as gross as that was, I didn’t find it believable.), it is a cinematic experience and I felt like I was transported back in time. Like any good movie, it made you feel like you were apart of the characters lives and their fate was in some vicarious way, your fate. It’s a good story and Mel Gibson shows once again why he is a great storyteller…I guess I just wonder if his stories/movies are starting to sound the same, much like Michael W. Smith’s music (sorry to all those Michael W. Smith fans but it’s true). All in all, it was a good movie but it is one of those movies I won’t be buying on DVD – seeing it once is enough.

Labels: movie review

I recently watched Human Trafficing on DVD. This was one of those movies I knew would be moving but I wasn’t sure how and too what extent. However I wasn’t expecting it to effect me the way it did. I think the movie did a fantastic job of dramatizing the reality, the disturbing and horrible reality, of human trafficking in our world.

Although this is an issue that you don’t hear about often, trading humans is the third most common illegally traded thing in our world next to drugs and firearms. And it isn’t slowing down as criminals realize that although they can only sell drugs only once, they can sell women several times a day (stats say 8-15 times). Human trafficking may just seem like just a foreign problem, something that only happens on the other side of the globe, but the fact remains that when it comes to sex trafficing, North America is the main consumer for these women and children (that phrase sounds terrifyingly accurate).

The movie portrays several different ways women (and little boys) get sold into sex slavery. The examples they give are mail-order brides, kidnapping, parents selling their children for money, conning girlfriends, and conning models (especially young models). The methods are vast and the results are devastating.

Anyone who thinks prostitution is just a volitional choice for women (or men) needs to watch this movie and get a glimpse of the manipulation and intimidation these women are put through and how they are treated. There maybe some who volitionally choose prostitution for their career but they are the very very small minority. This issue needs to be seen for the reality it is.

My eyes were opened and something has to happen…I am not sure what my role will be in ending this cruel reality in our world but I can’t sit idly by in ignorance anymore.


Here are just a few stats on human trafficking I found (source: wikiepedia):

• a women will often serve 8-15 men a day.
• 800,000 to 900,000 people are trafficked across borders each year.
• 20,000 to 40,000 people are trafficked into the US each year.
• 800 people are trafficked into Canada each year.

Labels: article, movie review

With its recent win of best picture at the Oscars, I thought it was approriate to add the link to the blog entry I wrote on the movie Crash.

You can read it here: http://www.incipiosermo.com/2005/08/crash.html

Labels: movie review

In one of his recent blog entries, my friend James writes about the movie Capote that we watched together (I was the friend to the North he refers to in is blog). I totally appreciated and agree with what he writes and his perspective on the movie. However, I came out with a different experience. In fact, that is what I love about film; they often prompt different lines of reflection in each person. Each person sees something unique – it touches each of us differently.

For me, the movie made me reflect on the inner turmoil we all have with what is right and wrong and how, to different degrees, we lie to ourselves and to others. Capote was no different. He struggled with being authentic between the two worlds he found himself in. To the murderers he was telling the story about and to the readers he was writing the story too. He was two different people and his struggle was not feeling like himself in either situation. His inauthenticity drove him to depression and feelings of guilt, sorrow, regret and anxiety.

His angst is representative in each of us. We all, to some degree, present ourselves and our agendas differently depending on our situations and audience. It is that angst and differentiation that I want to avoid and although it may not be the outright manipulative inauthenticity that Capote volitionally choose, perhaps it is subtle deceptions we each make, lying to ourselves and as a result others – dare I say, even God.

Labels: movie review

I watched a great movie recently that was both moving and thought provoking. The movie was Crash and it really made me think about the whole concept of discrimination and prejudices. It is something that we don't talk a lot about in society, or church for that matter, but it exists all around us. Our prejudices could be based on race, socio-economic situations, religious beliefs, etc. but they exist and lead to destruction. In fact what caught my interest the most was the film maker's concept of the spiral pattern of prejudices and how they feed off each other much like parasites. They exist in an ecosystem of sorts that relies on prejudice, ignorance and misunderstanding feeding off more prejudice, ignorance and misunderstanding which ultimately leads to destruction.

I was challenged that as a believer and follower of Jesus, I am called to set aside prejudices and treat everyone as my neighbour and as I would treat Christ. I think a lot of what prohibits our care and desire for social justice in our country and around the world is our prejudices, the same prejudices that we are called to do away with. I was challenged to reconsider how I view and "judge" people and take the golden rule Christ gave more seriously.

Labels: movie review

I recently watched "Primer," one of the most thought provoking movies I have seen in a long time. Not that it was just philosophically engaging, but that it was by end very complex and complicated to say the least. I have to also say...hats off to the guys who made a movie like this; that is so smart and well filmed for just $7000. It is truly amazing!

The movie is basically about a group of friends who are engineers and every month pursue a new idea in hope of inventing something amazing and of course get rich. The movie gains momentum when two of friends (the main characters) break the friends' pact and do an experiment of their own. They find out that their invention is actually a time machine and over the course of a few days/weeks realize the effects of causality and in a nut shell realize they have opened up a "Pandora's Box."

To give you a small understanding of how complex the movie storyline is, here is an example of someone who has mapped it out and posted it online.

This movie leads to interesting discussions on paradoxes and causality. For example a paradox is defined as: "an apparently true statement or group of statements that seems to lead to a contradiction or to a situation that defies intuition." (Wikipedia.org). In theoretical time travel, if you go back in time and meet yourself, would you create a paradox and what would happen?

Have you ever thought about the paradoxes in Scripture? Paradoxes like: God knows the future yet we have free will. Or as John Ortberg describes "the cross as the ultimate paradox: God experiencing the absence of God so that he can draw close to us in our loss and grief." Or the theological idea of grace, that we can do nothing to gain everything. Or we are invited to loose our lives to gain it. I think and believe that it is those very paradoxes that make God so amazing and beyond complete human understanding. As Thomas Merton once said: "...if you find God with great ease, perhaps it is not God that you have found." I would change it to: "If we think we completely understand God, perhaps it is not God we understand but ourselves." The more I know, the more I learn I don't know, which is both exciting as I see the mystery of God, scary in that it is more and more beyond me and humbling as I understand what I don't know.

How about causality? "Causality describes the relationship between causes and effects." (wikipedia.org) In theoretical time travel, especially in this movie, it is used a lot. One of the most famous examples is the idea of the causality of a butterfly flapping its wings thus setting off a chain of events. This is the most problematic element of any time travel movie and the arrogance that somehow someone can go back in time and only change what they want. What if they unintentionally changed the outcome of their birth, would they then just disappear? Now think about causality in scripture and spirituality. How much does what we do effect those around us - both good and bad? How much do we leave out of our understanding of what God did at creation, what we did at the fall or what Christ did on the cross? We often limit those things but it isn't that simple nor should it be.

Back to the movie...I would highly recommend watching it - probably experiencing it is the better word. But be forewarned...it is thought provoking, you will have to watch it several times, and you may lose some sleep over it as you lay in bed, as I did, trying to figure out what was happening when

Labels: movie review

I watched War of the Worlds last week and after processing the movie and the experience I have come up with a few observations and thoughts about it.Caution...this blog contains spoilers so if you haven't seen the film and care about the ending don't read on.First, let me say that it had some of the best special effects that I have every seen in a movie. Second, I was not fond of the acting and that increasingly crazy Tom Cruise in this film. But beyond that, it was the holes in the plot that irritated me most. As much as I realize that I have to check part of my sense of reality and logic at the door and go for fun, I can't completely turn off all of my brain (much to the theatres dismay - I am sure that is part of their sales strategy for charging $15.00 for popcorn and pop). Here are a few examples of those plot holes I mentioned: How does Tom find a flashlight that works when any other electronic devices are dead? How do they end up with the only vehicle that works, as if the solenoid from their wood-paneled Caravan was stored in a lead box in the part shop? Most importantly, how does an advanced alien species, who has been preparing for this invasion for over a million years, not think about the potential contagious viruses on planet earth? We know, as lesser intelligent species, that we wouldn't go to a planet without thinking or preparing for that - that is planet invasion 101. Beyond all of that, the movie brings up an interesting discussion. If we were to find and communicate with an advanced intelligence in space, wouldn't it reason that they are more likely to crush us like an ant hill or look at us like an annoying stray dog following them home or howling at night with our crazy satellite signals? I think humanities perspective is that advanced life wants to talk to us, and even more telling that "advanced life" means more moral, good, pure, loving, etc. What history has taught me is that with all the technology and advancements we have made, we still struggle with the same things and the same addictions. Men and women have always struggled with lust and the advancement of technology has been used to that end and alarmingly so. Pharmaceutical companies spend ridiculous amounts of money on curing Erectile Dysfunction rather than Cancer or HIV. The internet has fuelled a desire for pornography that is growing bigger and bigger. In terms of greed...people have just learned how to use technology to steal in different and more efficient ways (identity theft, etc). In terms of our pride...we assume that we know more, have a better way of life, eat better, etc.I think that we believe and have accepted the notion that humanity is getting better and better. I am not saying we are getting worse, just that our state of moral corruptness has always been with us and will continue to until, as I believe, Jesus returns bringing his kingdom in full. The nature of humanity is that we are God's treasured who, apart from him, are also lost. But the larger story is that there is a God who is seeking to redeem us. I believe humanity's true hope is not in an invention or a medical advancement, although there is nothing wrong with those things and they are to be pursued. However, humanity's true hope is in a God that creates, loves and wants to redeem it. Imagine if we spent the same about of time and energy fuelling our desire and hunger for spirituality and communicating with the divine as we do with possible alien civilizations.But you may be saying...isn't that what you believe, that God is an intelligent being that we as human being are trying to communicate with. I think it is and I think that is part of what drives us to pursue alien life. I think we have been created with a desire to find and pursue God but I would add that we are looking in the wrong place. The God who created us also wants to redeem us. I think our pursuit for intelligent life is part of that internal desire that has been wired into humanity. My belief is that God is pursing us more then we can ever pursue him and he is doing so with perfect love.

Labels: movie review

I recently watched this movie out of interest from the movie jacket at my local video store. Two things caught my attention. First, it was about quantum physics - a subject I know little about but have some basic interest in. Second was the comment of its spiritual nature on the video jacket. I am always interested when I hear scientists talk about spirituality (we often in the Church don't think science has anything to do with spirituality but I believe it has everything to do with it). Anyway those were my expectations when I watched it. Oh ya, I can't forget the lady at the video store who warned me it was a documentary and told me she lasted 20 minutes before she was too bored and turned it off.In terms of just communicating their ideas the movie was clear and laymen enough (although the graphics went way overboard and cheesy) but it was NOT a documentary. It was obvious to me that all the people in the movie had their taking points because they all oddly said similar phrases and no one was giving the other side of the "argument" as you would see in any documentary. That is why a lot of the studies and things they talk about were interesting but also speculative to say the least. I obviously, as an extreme lay person in quantum physics let alone regular math, had and have no idea how to critically and intelligently think about the subject. As a result it leads one to believe that their point of view or at least application of their "studies" has to be correct and fact. But to do that would be like believing those automotive awards, the ones that rate a certain car "top in its class" and then you read the fine print to learn that the award was given by the car's manufacture.The movie make an interesting point, that everything in the past that people have believed was true about the world (earth was flat, sun revolved around earth, etc.) we now know to be false and so how arrogant are we to assume that everything we know now we will believe is true 500 or even 100 years from now. That is an interesting point and puts a lot in perspective and for me to live in the mystery of my spirituality is often better then in the know. The mystery in some ways for me provides hope and help my faith although in the modern matrix of belief seems contradictive.I also found the fact that all of the people and physicists in the movie believe in God interesting. They don't believe in the God I do but it is interesting that they recognize the fact that quantum physics in their estimation and from their perspective leads us to a belief in God and spirituality.But the parts I struggled with are also the parts, as I alluded to earlier, that come from a "perspective of one." In other words, without hearing the other side of the debate you are left, because you are a layperson, with just the "facts" they present - which is always dangerous. After seeing this movie I am struck but the vastness and complexity of creation and God's design but also disturbed by the one-sidedness of the application and the science behind it. I would caution anyone who watches it to at least pursue truth and not just one person or one group's perspective or belief of it - that is always dangerous.Would I recommend this movie? Maybe but with the caution to always read and watch everything discerningly and intelligently.

Labels: movie review