Brian's Thoughts on Movies

  “Blessed are the merciful, so for they shall obtain mercy.”   Matthew 5:7, quoted by Abraham Lincoln in “Young Mr. Lincoln”. One of my favorite films of the past decade is Lincoln, directed by Steven Spielberg, which I wrote about a few years ago.   Spielberg’s film focused on the mechanics of what President Lincoln is most remembered for, the passage of the 13 th Amendment which eliminated slavery in the United States.   President Lincoln is one my heroes and I find just about any well written book or film that focuses on him worth spending my time on. However as much as I enjoyed Lincoln, I regretted that it only covered a brief period near the end of Lincoln’s life.   Recently I discovered a little gem called Young Mr. Lincoln, directed by John Ford in 1939, starring Henry Fonda.   John Ford is probably most known for his Westerns with John Wayne.   My Ford education is pretty light as I’ve only seen The Searchers and Mr. Roberts but if I ha...

 "Thanks, I'm also a youth pastor"  Jimmy Woo in Ant Man and the Wasp.                                                                          (Spoilers below) Avengers: Infinity War (2018) The third official Avengers film was perhaps the most anticipated MCU film to date.   At the end of the first Avengers films there was a quick glimpse of Thanos and he appeared in a few scenes of Guardians of the Galaxy as a figure to be feared.   The MCU has built nicely to this crescendo by using the six infinity stones as MacGuffins in several of the other films.   I have a hard time keeping track of which is which throughout the series though Infinity War does a pretty good job of keeping us in the know. Narratively, the film has an enormous job as Thanos needs to obtain all six ston...

"Tell her that you love her.  You've got nothing to lose and you'll always regret it if you don't"  Daniel (Liam Neeson) to Sam  Starting last year with Atonement , I opted to start a tradition of posting romantic movies on Valentine’s Day.   So here is one about Love Actually.    Beware, spoilers are below. There is a surprise performance of the Beatles “All You Need Is Love” during a wedding in writer/director Richard Curtis’ ensemble romance, Love Actually, which could be the theme of the film.     Love Actually is, like most of Curtis’ films, a romantic film with a lot of music.   Curtis, the writer of Four Weddings and a Funeral, and writer director of Notting Hill and About Time, favors romantic stories and here has gleefully compiled ten different stories.   Each story has some minor overlap with at least one of the others, but they all stand on their own.   Some of the stories are brief glimpses into the lives of their sub...

"Trust quality of what you know, not quantity"  Myagi  With the arrival of the Cobra Kai series on Netflix I opted to show my kids the original films as a lead up to watching the new show.   Spoilers for all follow.                                      The Karate Kid (1984) John G. Avidsen (who directed the first three films) and composer Bill Conti, two of the people who made Rocky such a success, brought Robert Mark Kamen’s screenplay to life with a similar underdog story.   Daniel LaRusso has an accent similar to Rocky and also spends the second half of the film building to a tournament he seems to have little chance of winning.   I had doubts about seeing this again as it had been years since the last time I saw it.   I wondered if Myagi would seem like a caricature and if it would be uncomfortable watching an overmatched kid be bullied so muc...

"You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger darling"  Eames from Inception. Inception, released during the summer of 2010, is director Christopher Nolan’s first mega-budgeted non Batman film, funded by a presumably ecstatic Warner Brothers after the overwhelming success of The Dark Knight which came out two years earlier.   Nolan’s second Caped Crusader film grossed so more than expected that Warner Brother delayed the planned November 2008 release of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince to July 2009.   Harry Potter fans were angered though as an only casual watcher of the Harry Potter series I was indifferent.   Spoilers for Inception below: From both a visual and structural standpoint Inception seems influenced by The Matrix.   I always felt the latter film’s attempts to be cool worked against the confusing plot dynamics.   Nolan and his editor, Lee Smith are much more successful in telling their stories using multiple and sometimes narratives, ...