Seeing The Light

Is There No End to Revelations of Sex Abuse by Priests?

Just when we thought we’d reached a plateau on the disclosure (or cover-ups) of priests abusing children, more comes to light, as the January 21, 2013 Los Angeles Times reports. (see link below)

At this point, we need a national accounting: 

How many priests are we talking about?  How many ch...

OVERVIEW OF MOVIES ON THE BLOG

7 JANUARY 2013

Amour

The Hunger Games con.

Skyfall

Pitch Perfect

24 NOVEMBER 2012

Argo

Looper

Arbitrage

Cloud Atlas

Gone Baby Gone

Flight

4 SEP...

AMOUR

I vow to love you through thick and thin, through sickness and in health, 'til death do us part. How many times have we heard that or said it? And we mean it too, don't we? Such vows are made in public settings (e.g., weddings and anniversaries) before our dearest friends and family; a testimony to their importance. And we mean good when we say the words, we mean good.

So why is it that so many peopl...

ARGO

 Argo (2012) has received a lot of good press, both in terms of the story and the filmmaking. Ben Affleck demonstrates that directing oneself in a movie can be done well, in spite of the obstacles. It inspired me to go see Gone Baby Gone, one of Affleck’s earlier efforts—discussed below.

 Argo is based on a true story about a CIA agent, Tony Mendez, who takes a crew into Iran in a dramat...

THE BOURNE LEGACY

Who doesn’t know and love The Bourne trilogy? All three are classics of the genre and invite multiple viewings. No wonder the news of a new Bourne movie elicited such excitement. The film is a spin-off centering on yet another CIA-engineered human. The tag line makes that explicit—there was never just one.

It makes sense, completely believable, no problem for Aristot...

PROMETHEUS

Prometheus (2012) is a movie about time, identity, and memory. It is also about aliens among us and what people are capable of in the quest for their personal Holy Grail.

Given director Ridley Scott is responsible for two of the greats of Sci-Fi—Blade Runner and Alien—it’s not surprising we should be exploring what it means to be human. Android David of Prometheus bears some resemblance to android A...

THE HUNGER GAMES

Gary Ross’s earlier movie Pleasantville presents a parallel universe meant to be a Utopia. It’s a fixed universe that is black and white, relatively soulless, and certainly sexless. When teenager-siblings David and Jennifer are teleported into Pleasantville, their lives undergo a major shift, as do the lives of those they encounter.

We follow the pair as they assume the li...

A BETTER LIFE

Carlos Galindo is one of the many mostly-Latino gardeners at work keeping lawns and backyards looking beautiful around Los Angeles. We see them daily throughout the city—fixtures in the yards where they mow lawns, trim trees, blow leaves and maintain gardens. They pile the bags of cut greens, cuttings, tree limbs, and assorted tools into their beat-up pickup trucks with their suspension systems pushed to the max.

They...

THE IDES OF MARCH 

People in positions of power—whether politics or business or anything else it seems—have an array of others at their beck and call. We get a glimpse of that in The Ides of March (2011), which shows the dark underbelly of political gamesmanship. The stakes are high and the losers can be left with little or nothing. The action revolves around Ohio governor Mike Morris, a charismatic candidate in the h...