'My Take: (Major spoilers ahead) A case of style over substance if I ever saw one, this is a movie that is all dressed up with no where to go. There is no point and no plot, but everything from the music to the dialog, asks us to suspend our critical thought, and take it on faith that it is as profound as it thinks it is. But then what could we expect from a movie based on nothing but a cute gimmick. "Hey let's have a guy who gets younger as life goes on". Everything that happens in this movie is predictable given this premise. For instance, of course he would meet a young girl, fall in love, and have a baby with her when their ages meet. This is in no way profound or interesting, it is just the most obvious gimmick to stack on top of the first one, and unfortunately how the movie would play out was obvious to me after only the first 10 minutes. The next two hours are just painful to watch, as the movie never deviates from the expected path, with no surprises and no depth, but still dripping with hollow emotional cues of false profundity, very much like those of a religious service. One star might be a little low but, given how overrated this movie is, appropriate. '

'My Take: This is one woman's brutally honest look at Soviet occupied Berlin in WWII, but the story would be familiar to many woman in almost any war, even if it is rarely talked about with such directness. It will be hard to watch for both women and men, but the movie itself is extremely well done, with an ending scene that is so simple, sad, perfect and beautiful that it would have made even a bad movie worth watching. Evolutionary psychology at work. '

'My Take: This is a slow, beautiful film about several generations of families in a small Turkish village, but more generally, it is about the anger and hurt that is so often passed down from generation to generation, in a repeating cycle of cause and effect. My tag line for this film might be "One generation must end, before the next can truly begin to live". Don't watch it if you are in a hurry, or it will probably frustrate you. But if you have a couple hours to kill, with few expectations and can simply take it for what it is, your life might just be enriched just a little, which is more than you will get from most films. Recommended. '

'My Take: A disturbing character study of repressed sexuality, Erika (Isabelle Huppert) is a middle aged piano teacher who still lives (and sleeps) with her controlling, oppressive mother. She deals with her erotic longings through visits to sex shops and self mutilation, but when she notices that she has caught the eye of a younger man, She draws him into a world he is little prepared for. I wouldn't sit down and watch this with the kids, but if you enjoy unusual psychological studies, and are not easily distubed, see this movie.'

'My Take: If you ever feel your life is difficult or hard to bear, just give this little movie a spin. You might just realize how lucky you really are. It's bleak, depressing and disturbing, and represents the reality of many lives around the world. Lilja is a 16 year old girl, left to fend for herself in post Soviet Estonia. Her life is one continuous nightmare until she meets a boy who promises her a new life in Sweden. But as if punishment for dreaming of a better future, the harsh reality of a life destined only for tragedy, asserts itself once again. My only minor criticism would be that the last minute of the movie was completely unnecessary and poorly executed, detracting from the overall impact'

'My Take: If you are a Beatles fan, this movie is worth a watch simply for the reinterpretation of many of their songs. Some are good, some not so good, and some are great (Like Joe Cocker's Come Together), but all are fun to watch. The accompanying story line would be just cake, if not for the fact it is based in the 60's, which can't help but make it a little more than that for those of us who were alive at that time. It's also the only musical I've ever been able to sit through. mild recomendation'

'My Take: If the Coen Brother's have made a bad movie, I haven't found it yet, and it certainly is not this one. This somehow slipped under my radar for all these years since it's release, but it was a pleasure to discover and watch it for the first time just recently. Filmed in black and white, the lack of color fits the personality of the lead character (Billy Bob Thornton) so perfectly that it seems completely natural that he would live in a monochrome world. But although his presence is rarely felt by those around him, he will eventually effect the most dramatic changes in the lives of everyone he knows, without even trying. Highly recommended'

'My Take: Probably the best movie ever made on Hitler's last days. Taking place almost entirely in the bunker where he spent the final days of WWII, it is nontheless compelling, thanks to talents of an incredible cast. All the characters are entirely convincing, including Hitler himself (no small feat). Played by Bruno Ganz, his performce is so good you will forget you are watching a movie, which of course, is the rarely acheived goal of movie making. Historically accurate, I also liked that Hitler was shown to be multidimensional, rather than just the "monster" he has come to represent. To ascribe horrific acts only to "monsters", is to deny the reality of being human, and it is always this self deception that is the true cause of human cruelty.'

' My Take: We hitch a ride to the life of a street orphan and his sister in their daily struggle to survive in the streets of NY. That's it. There are no larger themes, no action to speak of, no forced drama, and that's what makes the movie so good. Just a small and sincere slice of life. If you want to be force fed entertainment look elsewhere, but if you want finely crafted film making, which can provide insights into the lives of people you won't meet every day, you have found the right film. '

My Take: What is the path to love? This fun, strange little film explores one of them. SM may not be your path or mine, but it does seem to enable the main character of this film to not only find love, but herself as well. You don't approve?? Well then don't miss the priceless look given to you in the final scene of the movie. I don't think she cares much, and I say kudos to that.

' My Take: I was disappointed with this film. All through the movie I had the feeling there was something wrong with it, but couldn't really put my finger on it, but when the ending came, it all became clear to me. Someone had dreamed up what they thought would be an incredibly clever, ironic, meaningful ending to a holocaust movie, and then set about making a film, that might make such an ending plausable. The only problem is that this is a nearly impossible task given the nature of the ending, and in my opinion, they failed miserably.'

' My Take: A time will come when oil production will reach a peak, and start on a steep, inevitable and perpetual decline. If we are not prepared for this, the consequences will be more severe than most of us in the modern world could begin to imagine, ranging all the way up to the collapse of the modern industrial civilization. This documentary is a warning. 2010-2020 is the time frame agreed on by most experts, but some believe it is already upon us. Many believe the end of oil will be a good thing for humanity and our planet, Me among them, but few will enjoy the consequences of a failed transition. The US could be leading the way in finding solutions and facing the problem head on, but unfortunately self deception is the only thing we seem to be able to do well any more. Hang on kids, it's going to be one hell of a century'

' My Take: The more someone studies history, the more they understand that while the dates and descriptions of events are generally accurate, the interpretation of, and the causes and repercussions of, these events, can vary so much as to bear not even a passing resemblence to each other. Of course part of the reason for this is that causation is complicated. There is usually no one clear cause of any event, but instead many contributing factors that must be weighed objectively. But there is the real culprit isn't it? Objectivity. How it has so often been tossed aside by those who would rather than face the truth, instead opt to protect closely held illusions about the world they desire to see. Historians are not scientists, and history is not science, But even more important is that the vast majority of a historian's audience members - which can define a historian's populatrity and success - are simply not always interested in the truth, especially if it makes them feel bad, or contradicts a deeply held belief system.

 

The history audience, in fact, can shape the way an entire culture, or even the world, views significant historical events. The best example of this (not mentioned in this book which limits itself to American history) is the role of the Christian church in the fall of Rome and the subsequent one thousand years of relative misery that fell over the population of Western Europe. Currently as it is taught in high school, the church is the only thing that saved the west from an even more horrible fate (what could have been more horrible is left to a failing imagination), and it's effect on the fall of Rome reduced to nothing more significant than the introduction of a new style of toga.

 

Of course any thinking person might find that this ignores a couple of very large glaring facts that stare back at us. How can we just pretend that the forced change of a culture's entire core belief system, has no effect on the future of that culture? Most thinking people would consider such a change about as dramatic an event that a culture can endure. What of the churches role in the following thousand years of history? can we also ignore that during this time, in many ways defined as a disdain for, and a lack of, new knowledge and learning, that the most powerful institution in all the land, was one that defined as useful only that which could be found in a single holy book, and repressed with as much gusto as it could muster, all knowledge, of any kind, which contradicted this one book, or threatened to weaken the churches power over the people. Only with the eventual weakening of this power did humanity begin to lift itself up once again. Another grand coinicindence? But of course it would be too painful for Chistians to hear these truths, and much too dangerous for a historians career to speak them. Much easier to simply minimize or ignore such unpleasantness, for both the historian and his christian audience, and let ignorance and self delusion continue to feast on our human potential.

' My Take:This is an older book in the reletively new field of evolutionary psychology, but what it may lack in up to date information , it more than makes up for in prose, and I can see why it is still recommended as one of the better books on the subject.

' My Take: It is a difficult thing to come up with an unequivocal definition of life. Every specific definition one comes up with always seems to have it's exceptions, but if we make the definition just a little more general, to accomodate the exceptions, it begins to apply to things which don't seem to make any sense, such as huricanes, tornadoes or even steam engines. This book is not out to define life, but it does seek to explain it's origins in the same physics which drive what we consider to be nonliving complex systems such as weather systems. The premise is that wherever there is an energy gradient, complex systems, whether they be tornadoes or humans, will develop as a natural process of maximizing entropy. You might think of it as the natural preprocess of biological evolution. Not a particularly well written book and neither was it well organized, but it was interesting enough for a mention here.

' My Take: In Sweden and Denmark less than 20 percent of the population believe in the existence of a personal god, less than 10% believe in a place called hell, and almost no one can conceive of a politician having to declare his religious beliefs in public in order to be elected. Let's contrast that with the US where 85% of the population believes in god, about 75% believe in hell, and there is not a snowball's chance in this hell, that a politician can get elected without prostrating themselves in front of the altar of delusion (Preferably the Christian version, and please get me out of here). By these measures, Christians would tell us to expect these countries to be cesspools of crime and depravity with no thought given to the welfare of others, yet we find just the opposite. By every measure of human happiness and development these two countries lead the rest of the world in almost every category, from how educated the population is, to the level of violence to the level of social welfare for others, and they do it all while enjoying a high standard of living. In comparison, it is the US that looks like the cesspool, yet it is the most religious modern democracy left on the planet. A coincidence? The author makes no claims for or against, but considering that this correlation between religion, discontent and human development holds up in nearly every case, I don't think so. But then this should be no surprise to anyone capable of looking at religion objectively.

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