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Reviews
Spotlight (2015)
Won 2015 best film Oscar for subject-matter, not artistic quality
I rarely watch movies, but someone recommended this one to me as a "balanced" portrayal of the priest abuse crisis. I wasn't impressed, especially after having read traditional Catholic Randy Engel's excellent investigative journalism into the priest-pederast crisis, her 5 vol. «Rite of Sodomy: Homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church».
The film mentioned how homosexuality has nothing to do with this crisis, which is not at all true (80-90% of the cases are ephebophilia, sodomitic attraction to teenage males, not pedophilia). It portrayed the free press as the real savior of mankind (thus promoting more French Revolution, Liberal errors; cf. Pope Gregory XVI's encyclical «Mirari Vos»). The journalists were portrayed as "secular confessors." I did learn one thing: The Boston Globe got its first Jewish editor, Marty Barton, right before the Spotlight team started running hundreds of stories against the Church. Conflict of interest? Balanced journalism? Where are the stories on pederast rabbis? Pedophile school teachers? etc.? In this sense, the film correctly portrayed Barton as being against "the system" (i.e., against the Catholic Church).
Also, Boston Globe won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 because of its Spotlight team's work. The Spotlight film won an Academy Award for best film of 2015! Pattern here? Yes: Jew-dominated, self-laudatory awards being used to undermine the Church's authority.
The film's character development and artistic quality was sorely lacking.
The Unbelievers (2013)
Atheism is irrational.
Dawkins and Krauss are not that prominent in their respective scientific communities. They are proponents of atheism under the guise that it is more rational than religion. Yet, their "arguments" in this movie are based in their faith that hell doesn't exist, the soul is not immortal, humans descended from fish, etc., despite there being very little scientific evidence for any of those positions.
A healthy dose of skepticism is good, but when it leads to ideologies like Dawkins and Krauss are promoting, it becomes just as bad as the other "religions" they like to attack for being violent.
For a much better, less biased film on science and religion, see the upcoming film from Rocky Mountain Pictures:
The Principle
Les adieux à la reine (2012)
slandarous, pornographic pamphlet of the Queen in movie form;
Having finished «Louis XVI, the Man Who Didn't Want to Be King» ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2128494/ ) and Elena Maria Vidal ( http://planetrussell.net/emvidal2/ )'s «Trianon: A Novel of Royal France» (review: http://traditioninaction.org/bkreviews/A_007br_Trianon.htm ), my wife and I watched «Farewell, My Queen» and deeply regret it. Honestly, it is on par with the pornographic, slanderous pamphlets in the Queen's era.
Besides the unnecessary nudity, did Queen Marie-Antoinette really have same-sex attractions with La Duchesse Gabrielle de Polignac? And did she really make her reader Sidonie Laborde be a decoy and dress like La Duchesse just to save La Duchesse's life? «Louis XVI, the Man Who Didn't Want to Be King» ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2128494/ ) (watch in French here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5g9EuXPtR0 ) is much more accurate because it actually gives the King a part with dialogue, shows Trianon more, shows Marie-Antoinette's children and her being a mother more, mentions more history than just the Storming of the Bastille and a passing reference to the defecting of priests, and includes scenes from the King's trial.
Two thumbs down for «Farewell, My Queen». Two thumbs up for «Louis XVI, the Man Who Didn't Want to Be King» ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2128494/ ).
Louis XVI, l'homme qui ne voulait pas être roi (2011)
light-years better than «Farewell, My Queen»
Having finished reading Elena Maria Vidal ( http://planetrussell.net/emvidal2/ )'s «Trianon: A Novel of Royal France» (review: http://traditioninaction.org/bkreviews/A_007br_Trianon.htm ), my wife and I watched «Farewell, My Queen» and deeply regret it. Honestly, it is on par with the pornographic, slanderous pamphlets in the Queen's era.
This film, however, is day-and-night better.
It doesn't have unnecessary nudity like «Farewell, My Queen», which portrays Queen Marie-Antoinette as having same-sex attractions with La Duchesse Gabrielle de Polignac and making her reader Sidonie Laborde be a decoy and dress like La Duchesse just to save La Duchesse's life.
«Louis XVI, the Man Who Didn't Want to Be King» (watch in French here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5g9EuXPtR0 ) is much more accurate because, unlike «Farewell, My Queen», it actually gives the King a part with dialogue, shows Trianon more, shows Marie-Antoinette's children and her being a mother more, mentions more history than just the Storming of the Bastille and a passing reference to the defecting of priests, and includes scenes from the King's trial.
Two thumbs down for «Farewell, My Queen». Two thumbs up for «Louis XVI, the Man Who Didn't Want to Be King»p.
Demographic Winter (2008)
The REAL "Inconvenient Truth"
It is surprising that declining birthrates are something rarely discussed, especially when the global economies—like those of the United States and Europe—have been failing. This edifying documentary includes experts in demography and economics, even Nobel Prize winners, who all agree that the number one economic problem is drastically declining birthrates. By 2050 demographers estimate the global population will decline for the first time in recorded history. The smaller, younger generations will be even more overburdened in supporting the larger, older generations. Workforces will continue shrinking. Economies will continue recessing. Abortion, contraception, and euthanasia will only be deceptive, ineffective stop-gap measures.
But isn't this good? Isn't overpopulation a real problem?
After watching this film, you will think otherwise. Population decline and its causes are the real "inconvenient truths." To see why the overpopulation paranoia is a myth, I highly recommend watching this edifying documentary. But brace yourself for this cold, hard, most inconvenient truth.
Inception (2010)
It's absurdity at its best.
Philosophically it was absurd. Here were the main points I gathered from it:
Faith and doubt are discussed, but the conclusion is that having faith doesn't matter because you can't know what's real anyways. What did the Japanese businessman's non-faith avail him or di Caprio's character's faith avail him? They both ended up having the same destiny, no? So, freewill is an illusion, too.
Skepticism is the only valid approach to life.
Existentialism is true; we really do make life to be whatever we want it to be. Top remains spinning at end, or does it eventually topple? Was it dream or reality? Who knows? Does it matter? No, existentialism says we can define our own reality to our liking.
Relativism of truth: i.e., truth is whatever you make it up to be.
Subjectivism / idealism / Cartesianism / Kantianism, i.e., ideas are all that are real. If the senses are to be 100% distrusted for determining what is real, we might all be as insane (possessed) as the Dark Knight's Joker.
Objective reality, for all practical purposes, does not exist. Every subject just makes up his or her own reality. This leads to solipsism and ultimately a suicidal nihilism.
Murder can be justified as long as the person you are killing is someone's "projection." Di Caprio's character snipes men in the snow scene to the architect girl's surprise; he justifies this by saying they are just another man's "projection."
Magic potions (i.e., potent drugs) are the solution to anyone's problems.
Christopher Nolan should brush-up on some real, Aristotelean-Thomistic philosophy, but then maybe the movie would not have fooled the audience into thinking it is profound instead of absurd. There were good parts—the importance of fatherhood and family, for example—but they were overshadowed by ambiguity for the sake of ambiguity.
Also, artistically, it could've done without most of the car-chase and shooting scenes and confronted more head-on the philosophical issue it was raising, i.e., "What is real? What is being, existence? Etc," rather than hiding its ignorance in a silly plot scheme involving "kicks," "inception," and other Freudian, postmodern rubbish. If it were 1 hour shorter, it would have still been the same: absurdity at its best.