Xavier Beauvois’sOf Gods and Men (2010) tells the true story of several French monks in Algeria who were taken hostage and later murdered by Muslim terrorists. (It happened in 1996.) Two of the eight of them escaped.
The monks are very admirable, truly Christian men living among and ministering to the rural Algerian people. Indeed, they are First World men helping folks–Muslims–living in a Third World area. If the film has a fault, it is that the monks are practically without fault. Christians come off looking very good here (although I dislike the abbot’s use of the expression Inshu’Allah [“God willing”]). Of Gods and Men is not terribly hard on anybody, however: the Muslims too are usually sympathetic characters. In some measure even a bloodthirsty Islamist called Ali Fayattia (Farid Larbi) is.
Lambert Wilson provides the abbot, Brother Christian, with intelligence and, like the other French Caucasian actors, a true spiritual dimension, a convincing devoutness. Beautiful but not lush, the film is visually rich.
Des Hommes et Des Dieux is a French picture with English subtitles.
The playwright Kenneth Lonergan has written and directed the 2000 You Can Count on Me, a decent motion picture about a brother-and-sister relationship. Pleasant Sammy (Laura Linney) is a churchgoing small-town resident who works at a bank and is a single mother. Her brother Terry (Mark Ruffalo) is a cordial if somewhat neurotic drifter, occasionally in trouble with the law, now paying a visit to Sammy and her 8-year-old son. Since the two have long been orphaned, Sammy more or less wants to cling to Terry, her only sibling, and is troubled when she doesn’t hear from him. Now, however, she is troubled by his ordinary irresponsibility, especially with respect to her son. For one thing, he fails to pick him up from school on a rainy day. Sammy, even so, unexpectedly turns into a moral wretch by practically abandoning a dating partner and carrying on sexually with her new, and married, boss at the bank (Matthew Broderick). When she summons her pastor, Father Ron (Lonergan), to counsel the ne’er-do-well Terry, she is attempting to hide from her own need for spiritual service.
But such a thing can only be short-lived. Sammy herself seeks counsel. But Father Ron is a Protestant softie who offers theological wimpiness. He is not quite what the adulterous Sammy needs, although he is right to put the following question to Terry: Do you believe your life is important in the scheme of things? Apparently he does, but will he ever behave in a way that confirms this view? The movie is resolution-less, which is rather too bad. It’s not about to try to answer any questions. What it does try for, here and there, is a certain tidiness which is better left alone, even though–happily–it little mars the picture. You Can Count on Me is a winner.
Lonergan’s script makes sense and its dialogue shines. Linney and Ruffalo never make a misstep , though Rory Culkin, as Sammy’s son Rudy, is uninteresting. As for Broderick, he is, I think, what John Simon called him in his review of the stage musical The Producers: “endearingly artful.” Like many other American flicks, the movie is a bit too foul-mouthed but–bravo–it’s certainly far from foul. Count on it.
I need to see Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 (2011) a second time before I can make a suitable judgment about it. I believe it to be weak in many ways, but as a motion picture it’s also unique and possibly acceptable. (I have no interest in reading the Ayn Rand novel.)
“The business man is only tolerable so long as his gains can be held to bear some relation to what, roughly and in some sense, his activities have contributed to society.” So wrote Lord Keynes, and the U.S. government in Atlas Shrugged, Part 1 must be espousing this view and seeing American businessmen as not contributing enough to society. Hence it has turned to an anti-business crackdown.
I’m not quite sure why French author Michel Houellebecq put a lot of sex in his novel, The Elementary Particles (2000) except that the book does impart the familiar message that no salvation lies in either sex or science. Houellebecq’s two main characters are Michel, a scientist, and Bruno, a hedonist. The author has no faith in liberalism or humanism either. As for religion . . . well, he’s not without a certain respect for it (he gives Michel the insight that “materialism, having destroyed the religious faiths of previous centuries, had itself been destroyed by recent advances in physics”), but neither can he embrace thoroughgoing belief.
Mr. H.’s plotless novel is highly intelligent and occasionally funny but, all things considered, not one I can finally accept. I’m rooting for him, though.
Do you fear Wasp’s? They are miniature flying dragons you know? Out terrizing society and fools like me… They like to come come fly down and land in your pool while your swimming to cool off for a bit.. What happens? RUN! (swim fast)
Yes folks..Wasp are scary stuff..
So what’s it all about? I thought I’d take a look at it.. Ya know? Just to try and discover exactly what the deal is. I found a Video clip that explains it…Well, sort of….
HEY! The below video don’t werk? HUH?
Sure man…. Sounds good to me.. I assume he is some kind of wasp counselor… He says it’s “learned behavior and that it can be “unlearned” Hmmm?
The problem remains… I’m still learning to fear them!
Wasp Fearsome Memories
I remember a neghbor kid swatting at some wasp. Fighting those flying dragons. They came buzzing about and one stung me right on the face. I haven’t been the same since. She apoligized for getting me stung… Of course I forgave her… But the Wasp…. He still haunts me.
Wasp in The Car
Isn’t it fun when your sitting in your car at a stop light and one comes flying in your car just as the light turns green. You hear it’s evil buzzing..
That’s when the panic starts.
It’s hard to drive down the road when your under attack. I wonder how many wrecks those demons have caused.
And the pain they inflect on a guy. The Pink Floyd song “Comfortably Numb” always had meaning for me with the lyric…”My hands felt just like two balloons” That cat must have been stung with both hands…OH the HUMANITY!
In 2003’s Bruce Almighty, God, played by Morgan Freeman, explains to Jim Carrey that if only people realized that not only God but they too possess power, they wouldn’t need to pray as much as they do and everything would be . . . whatever. Never mind Bruce‘s theology: it’s a big zero. As is the hilarious but atrocious writing from Steven Koren, Mark O’Keefe and Steve Oedekerk.
A Buffalo, New York TV reporter, Bruce (Carrey) yammers about God and all the misfortune he faces until the Almighty, fed up, decides to endue Bruce with His own miracle might and see what kind of job he does as Supreme Ruler. What he does for self-gratification is a howl, but it isn’t long before illogic and desultoriness stain the story. So does sentimentality: Bruce is the most syrupy comedy since Patch Adams (1998), both of which films were directed by the same man, Tom Shadyac.
Bruce Almighty raked in the almighty dollar when it was released, despite being a foolish wreck.
![Cover of "Bruce Almighty [Blu-ray]"](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51%2B3NQFLYqL._SL300_.jpg)
