Category: movies

  • Family Movie Night

    Last night we watched Jesus Camp. Overall I thought it was a well done documentary. If you watch the trailers available on their website you definitely have a very strong idea of what the film is like, it just goes on much longer. It does give a good opportunity to get to know the kids better than the trailer does. Also quite a bit of Ted Haggard footage is featured, which is of course made more interesting considering his recent history. Apparently he was not pleased with the movie, whereas Pastor Becky Fischer did not feel so negatively toward it.

    I am not sure if I think the film would have been more powerful without a dissenting point of view, but since they did choose to portray one, I am glad that they used Mike Papantonio as that voice. He is well spoken, and strong in his own Christian faith.

    The subject matter was definitely not one I felt any joy in watching, but it certainly provided the family with a topic of conversation for the evening.

    The Families on Fire Summer Camp has shut down temporarily due to vandalism at the location they rent out for the camp. I hope the people involved in that vandalism do not think that they did anybody any favors. The ministry is still active, and has yet another reason to stand strong. The vandalism makes it clear, that as with every issue, there are a great many assholes on every side of it.

    The Boys of Baraka is another piece by these filmmakers that has been in my Netflix queue for quite a while. After watching this, it will definitely be staying there, and might even move up a few spots.

  • Rated F’d

    We watched This Film Is Not Yet Rated this weekend.

    The subject matter irritated me to no end, as everyone who knows anything about me knew it would. The movie itself, well I wish it had been a bit better. While the content was something I care about, it definitely was not one of the stronger documentaries I have seen.

    I do not like the MPAA. Actually I heartily dislike the entire system, and that is not all the MPAA’s fault. From the TV networks, to the theater owners, to the studios, to the big chain retailers, they all irritate me.

    I do not like to be told what I can and cannot watch. I do not like to be told what my kid should and should not watch. Most of all I hate for the general public to be relying on a largely arbitrary “stamp” to determine what they let their children watch. It completely infuriates me when they won’t even pay attention to those stamps and then want to complain because they don’t like what their kid watches (or plays). The nanny state does not protect children, it destroys society by relieving so called parents of their responsibility to actually parent.

    One of the useful things about the internet is that there are several sites that do provide detailed content information about films. G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17 and unrated mean nothing to me when it comes to deciding what I am comfortable allowing my daughter to watch. I want to know about themes. I want to know about scenes and the context of the scene. One of the sites that I used to check quite a bit, before they made it so incredibly broken and ugly for non-subscribers was screenit. I actually appreciated it enough that I did subscribe, but again, that was when it worked better for non-subscribers and then subscribers had perks. Now they make it rather unpleasant if you won’t subscribe, and I just preferred to support the old attitude.

    Anyhow, they have the following categories

    • Alcohol/Drugs
    • Blood/Gore
    • Disrespectful/Bad Attitude
    • Frightening/Tense Scenes
    • Guns/Weapons
    • Imitative Behavior
    • Jump Scenes
    • Music (Scary/Tense)
    • Music (Inappropriate)
    • Profanity
    • Sex/Nudity
    • Smoking
    • Tense Family Scenes
    • Topics To Talk About
    • Violence

    Which they first list off as mild, moderate, extreme, etc. If you see something that that makes you immediately certain you wouldn’t want to watch it, or let your child watch it, you can stop. If you are uncertain you can click down for detailed information. Which swear words, which body parts and how many, etc. Of course is you are looking for films with lots of full frontal, such a review can be useful too.

    This I find useful. PG-13 I don’t find useful at all.

    Now they could label a movie however they wanted and I wouldn’t care, except how they rate it affects me. If it is NC-17 a lot of theaters will not play it. They can’t place ads for it in many places. Walmart and Blockbuster won’t carry it. This means that they won’t be able to make nearly as much money, so there is a big push to cut it to an R. Instead of letting the actual consumers decide, the entire system is standing between artists and consumers and making choices on my behalf. Now they often release an unrated DVD later, but that just isn’t the same. For one thing, I have to wait until much later to see it. I do not have a giant screen and spectacular sound system in my house. Not only that, but in many of the cases the unrated DVD releases are no doubt different than the film they would have created if they had just been left alone to tell the story they wanted to tell. There is now added marketing pressure to make more of a difference between the R and unrated version. Then there is the other direction. Getting a G rating is a kiss of box office death if your core audience is about the age of 6, so they add a little extra crap (most often bodily function “humor”) to films to get at least that PG. The assignment of these ratings is affecting the films, leading us to a world with more product and less art.

    I won’t have anything to do with Blockbuster at all because of their policies on NC-17 movies. Their business, and they can run it their way, but I won’t give them my money. Actually I once quit a job over a policy shift along those lines at another video store, but that is a different story.

    Movies should all be rated R anyway, why should kids go see anything without a parent or guardian? Who is going to make them sit down and shut up and stop kicking my seat if they don’t have a parent with them? Oh wait, the parent will probably just be chatting on a cell phone, no doubt calling loudly to complain to a friend about how horrible it is that the movie showed a nipple. I hear so many parents complaining that a PG-13 movie had very objectionable content and should have been rated R. How many times are they going to fall for that PG-13 label and not do further research? Apparently over and over. Is every 13 year old they know the exact same maturity level as every 16 year old they know?

    I don’t even have the energy to start typing about how twisted it is that we seem to be so much more comfortable with violence in this country than we are with nudity. I did enjoy Darren Aronofsky’s assertion that bloodless, exciting, glorified, big action film violence should be for adults only, and lower rated movies should have to show painful, bloody, consequence filled violence instead.

    The MPAA is talking about making some changes, but small DIY improvements are not going to turn an outhouse into a mansion, or even a bathroom. Something is rotten in the state of asinine, power hungry, god fearing, we know what the world should be watching, homophobic, sexual repressed, braindead, holier than thou stupidity, but they are not going to do me the pleasure of bloodlessly cutting out the diseased whole.

    Netflix currently has Jesus Camp on the way to my house for my next viewing displeasure.

  • Post 1 of The Things I Like Series

    Having been raised to give some serious respect to Thumper’s Rule, I spend a lot of time silent. People who know me a little might be shocked to hear that, because I certainly don’t seem shy about complaining. People who know me well realize I keep much more of my rampant disgust and dissatisfaction to myself.

    So, I thought I’d try some posts about things that I actually like.

    But first, I’ll start with the negative.

    I have the shittiest luck in movie theaters. I can go to a matinee show of a film that has been in theaters for 8 weeks, and I will still have a shitty experience. When I go to the movie theater, one of the following will occur:

    • people will bring their 4 children ranging from infant to 8 years old to see an R-rated movie and let them run around screaming the whole time
    • people will let their child sit behind me and kick my seat the entire movie
    • people will answer their cell phone and talk to the person during the movie “nothing… just watching this dumb movie”
    • people will make-out stretched across the seats with their head almost in my lap
    • people will have belching contests and laugh hysterically at how cool they are
    • people will have blue flame contests and laugh hysterically at how cool they are
    • people will change their baby’s shitty diaper seat next to me and then leave the diaper sitting there
    • people who get off on violent rape scenes will sit next to me and become extremely and noisily excited during them
    • people will threaten to kill me because I ask them to be quiet
    • people will vomit and just continue sitting there
    • people will leave their young, unruly, poorly behaved, unsupervised, rude, snotty (usually literally) children to watch the film I am seeing, and go watch a different movie themselves

    Often, more than one of them occurs.

    It isn’t that I hate movie theaters, just people.

    Because movie theaters don’t work well for me, we use Netflix, and I find it a reasonably painless way to rent movies. Prior to Netflix, I hadn’t rented a movie in at least five years and was instead supplying any film watching desires with an out of control DVD purchasing addiction. Netflix did a lot to help soften the addiction. What is with the rating system though? 5 stars? Who can make any meaningful rating and comparison of a movie with a measly 5 stars. I need at least 10, and I really want at least 20 points on the rating curve to measure things effectively.

    They only give me 5 though, which makes some of my ratings come out a bit odd. There is always the quality factor to consider, as well as the enjoyment factor. Plus, how difficult am I to please in a particular genre? If I tend to hate movies in a genre and then enjoy one, it deserves a different boost to its rating than a movie that has everything going for it as far as my personal taste is concerned and yet only manages to not be disappointing. Even though at the end of the day I might think the second movie is better.

    Favorite is too strong of statement and I don’t use it often. I can’t even imaging trying to narrow it down to a favorite movie. I am just going to list a random 5 (not in order, nor necessarily the top 5) by genre, that I gave 5 Netflix stars to.

    Foreign: La Femme Nikita, Cinema Paradiso, The Wedding Banquet, Battle Royale, Amelie

    Animated: Bambi, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Nightmare Before Christmas, The Iron Giant

    Comedy: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Heathers, Swingers, Dazed and Confused, Bring It On

    Drama: Dangerous Liaisons, The Shawshank Redemption, Dogfight, I Am Sam, Dead Poets Society

    Horror: Nightbreed, Scream, An American Werewolf in London, The Lost Boys, Something Wicked This Way Comes

    Action/Adventure: Thelma and Louise, Die Hard, Indiana Jones, War Games, Young Guns

    Thriller: Killing Zoe, Falling Down, The Usual Suspects, Death and the Maiden, Closet Land

    Romance: Garden State, The Man in the Moon, Before Sunset, Say Anything, Sliding Doors

    Sci-Fi/Fantasy: Serenity, Empire Strikes Back, Blade Runner, Highlander, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

    So there, some things that I liked in some fashion for a wide range of reasons I am not going to detail out.