Sunday, July 17, 2011

Movies

I'm not much of a movie person. I've always been a book person. Don't get me wrong I do watch movies but just not very often. When I am watching a movie it is most likely an old black & white one (Like Gaslight with Ingrid Bergman), science fiction. Yes, I could spend all day watching the SyFy channel and all those cheesy movies :)  My most favorite movie of all time is Enter The Dragon with Bruce Lee I've probably seen this 100 times and it never gets old.

But lately I've been thinking about movies with the release of the final Harry Potter and all the hub-bub around it. I watched a girl on the news in tears because it moved her so. Hmmm...That got me thinking about movies that moved me so that I couldn't shake it.  Two come to mind.

"The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas"  Eight year-old Bruno is the sheltered son of a Nazi officer whose promotion takes the family from their comfortable home in Berlin to a desolate area where the lonely boy finds nothing to do and no-one to play with. Crushed by boredom and compelled by curiosity, Bruno ignores his mother's repeated instructions not to explore the back garden and heads for the "farm" he has seen in the near distance. There he meets Shmuel, a boy his own age who lives a parallel, alien existence on the other side of a barbed wire fence. Bruno's encounter with the boy in the striped pajamas leads him from innocence to a dawning awareness of the adult world around them as his meetings with Shmuel develop into a friendship with devastating consequences.

"The House of Sand and Fog" Massoud Amir Behrani is living a lie to fulfill a dream. Once a member of the Shah of Iran's elite inner circle, he has brought his family to America to build a new life. Despite a pretense of continued affluence, he is barely making ends meet until he sees his opportunity in the auction of a house being sold for back taxes. It is a terrible mistake. Through a bureaucratic snafu, the house had been improperly seized from its rightful owner, Kathy Nicolo, a self-destructive alcoholic. The loss of her home tears away Kathy's last hope of a stable life--a life that had been nearly destroyed by addiction--and Kathy decides to fight to recover her home at any cost. Her struggle is joined by deputy sheriff Lester Burdon, who tries to take the law into his own hands to help Kathy. Ultimately the tale, itself, explores what happens when the American Dream goes terribly awry.


Both of these movies left me with my mouth hanging open and a feeling of ....WHAT?!?!! I cried during both. Both had endings that I didn't see coming and after these films ended. I turned off the TV and just stared at it.

Have you ever watched something that moved you beyond words and caused you just to sit and contemplate life?

Blessings!!

James 4:14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes..

1 comment:

  1. Yes! Requiem for a dream, I do NOT recommend watching this ever. I was depressed for 2 days. So sad I just couldn't shake it. I also had a hard time watching I am Legend. I know, I know... but I don't care if Will Smith is in it, I do not like movies about the whole world turning into zombies with little hope for the future. Debbie Downers obviously wrote both films

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