Life at the Movies

Two weeks ago I could not find my peg bag. I thought I had lost it—forever. The loss reminded me of when I lost my cat. The loss also reminded me of loss in The Secret Life of Pets (2016, out now on DVD). This film is about, as the title suggests, the “secret life”…

Return of the Jedi (1983) is a good movie to herald in the New Year. Why? Because it is so positive. Yeah, I could nitpick, but Return of the Jedi is so much more. Return of the Jedi may not be as tightly written as the previous episodes in the trilogy, but it does have…

Gone with the Wind is a traditional holiday movie around Christmas and New Year’s. It has that epic scope that makes it a worthy holiday film. Perhaps a soap opera, this film has people and the days of their lives at its core. It’s told on a huge canvass and is set in the South…

Christmas is not a bed of roses. “Merry Christmas” is not merry for some. The infectious, good natured comedy As Good as It Gets (1997) is apt viewing because Merry Christmas is a ‘broken hallelujah’. Though not a real Christmas movie, it even contains some profanity so is hardly Christ-mas strictly speaking, it’s got that…

It’s A Wonderful Life is 70 years old this December 20. It’s a wonderful life. Radical statement? Or true? My feeling is that some people today have been used to a wonderful life, but then come the spanners in the works, such as disasters, terrorism and terrible weather. The wonderful life has gone to the…

Recently, I happened to channel surf to a Christian channel. A Christian or faith-based movie happened to be starting so I decided to watch it. So the film was Seven Days in Utopia (2011, USA). It’s about golfer’s paradise. One may long for golfing success which would be paradise. The money, the fame, the adulation.…

Max is a small pet dog attached to his owner, in The Secret Life of Pets (2016). He is upset when his owner, a young woman living in a New York apartment, leaves for work every day and he is left alone. Max needs her. Max wouldn’t call their ‘relationship’ soul mates, but there is a…

No one dies today is a theme of director Clint Eastwood’s latest film Sully (2016). There are other ideas competing. Sully is typically Eastwood on the issues, but in a far more subtle way than his Million Dollar Baby. The idea remains the same.  Logistics, technicalities and rules and regulations get in the way of…

Of all the films I have seen, I have seen one per-cent faith-based films. It is not that many. Since I have watched so few, did I become tired of them? The answer to this is that I was ‘raised’ mostly on the mainstream fare. For a while, I did not know Christian films existed.…

Inspirational drama Miracles from Heaven (2016, USA) is life affirming and leaves a positive effect. The Beam family’s story is the kind that may engage the skeptics as well as the faithful because it is about a miracle though the former may be more critical. However, Miracles from Heaven is based on a true story. It…

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