Reviews

If the great master, Charles Dickens, were alive I do not think even he could ascribe an appellation to a person that would fittingly characterize the very essence of the anti-hero as does the name Madoff. Yes, Bernie Madoff, the man who single handedly pulled off the greatest Ponzi schemes in human history and fraudulently MADE OFF with so many innocents' money which he laundered to the tune of 65 Billion, yes, with a "B" bucks.

Richard Dreyfuss and Blythe Danner pulled off, I think, one of the greatest acting efforts of their careers. Their portrayals of a man and his wife were picture perfect. I urge you if you have not seen "Madoff" look it up on the ABC web site or search your cable network to see if it will be broadcast again. Understatedly, it is a docudrama fit for our time.

I kept wishing there were a film group dedicated to the analysis of this portrayal of Madoff because there are so many topics of human nature including greed, narcissism and the intrinsic sickness of anarchistic capitalism gone wild that are worthy of discussion. Moreover, there are other films such as Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors," "Match Point," The Coen Brothers "A Serious Man" "Wall Street" and yes, even Holocaust films that speak to the moral lengths and extremes a person can and will go to serve his own ends or conversely to protect others even at his own expense.

The story of "Madoff" is so complex that it speaks to not only his life but to all of our lives albeit to our nation's life as well. It should give us pause to ask is this the nation we truly want to be. Or is there another way where as Martin Luther King said "... justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream."

There is so much politically economic -- basically everything -- from foreign policy to economic banking and trade policy that has raped the little guy and this film addresses one of the greatest economic frauds in the nation's history that is at the heart of much of the nation's woes. The Great Recession of 2007 had the potential to revisit the Great Depression on steroids. The film explained some of the complex minutiae of it defining the mortgage backed securities fraud that was at the epicenter of it and explaining some things like CDS (Credit Default Swaps), CDOs (Colateralized Debt Obligations), sub-prime loans and worthless mortgage backed securities through persons who knew the collapse would happen years before it actually did.

This gargantuan complex fraud had the attendant potential to collapse not only the US economy but the world economy and even end the capitalist system as we know it. Yes, we were that close until the US government, funded by you and me, bailed out the too-big-to-fail banks that created the fraud and allowed their CEO's to collect bonuses to boot. They put the 99% in a sink hole leaving us to drown in the muck they created as they sped away in their yachts toting their money bags in hand. Their profits tricked down to nowhere but themselves.

The film was not boring, it was precise and tried to explain the complexity of what happened and how trillions of bucks were lost, millions of jobs were lost and millions more homes were lost relegating many to live on the street at the mercy of what the immoral predatory banksters had perpetrated.

It was and still, in part, is an unhappy time, a catastrophic time and no one from the Wall Street that perpetrated the greatest fraud has been jailed ... yet. Instead they were rewarded, collected their bonuses and knew that if the system collapsed again the government would come to their rescue and bail them out saving their banks moral hazard be damned.

Every sector of our nation, I believe, bears the DNA of this gargantuan fraud. Wall Street knew Congress, which most understand is bought by Wall Street, would never let it fail and so it continues albeit with some changes dressed somewhat differently but still keeps the 1% fat cats happy knowing that Congress will be there to provide the safety net should the nation stand on the catastrophic precipice they create again. The Glass-Stegall Act of 1933 having been repealed in 1999 makes unregulated Wall Street economic anarchy a recipe for disaster yet again.

The film is blood pressure raising but understanding what occurred is a must if we are to fix that which is so broken in our nation and by doing so never allow this to happen again. It can, I believe, be done but will NOT be done by electing the very same persons of the same political stripes that perpetrated the greatest fraud ever told.

I have a very academically oriented cousin. He knows my points of view and how the intellectually curious mind is so highly prized by me. Because of that he recommends films he finds mostly on Netflix which he thinks I will enjoy.

He surely knows me well as he suggested a documentary film gem entitled "The Unbelievers" which threw a strike right over my cerebral plate. It is a wonderful documentary which I would like to distribute on street corners telling electoral ignorance the ever important difference between truth and fiction.

The film involves snippets of a variety of world-wide talks and discussions between Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and author of "The God Delusion" and his colleague Lawrence Krauss, theoretical physicist and cosmologist author of a "Universe from Nothing." I offer the following quotes from the documentary to whet your appetite for it:

"If we live in a world where certain things are not subject to question we live in a world where thinking has stopped"

"One might think that the religious beliefs of political candidates should remain off limits in public discourse. I don't think so, at least not when candidates wear their religion on their sleeves; then it becomes fair game."

"Before Darwin life was a miracle so one could not ask "Where did the diversity of life come from?" What Darwin showed were very simple laws of biological beginnings with NO miracle. Did he prove it? No, but it was plausible. Now there has been 150 years of proof that natural selection and genetic mutation essentially could produce all the complexity of life from very simple beginnings to the most complex over billions of years"

"How can how the universe works upset people? Instead of being threatened or having our faith threatened by the discoveries of science we should force our beliefs to conform to the evidence of reality instead of the other way around. People shouldn't be threatened by science." I cannot recommend "The Unbelievers" strongly enough. Watch it, learn and know!

Turning the channels on Christmas Eve and/or Christmas day can be an unrewarding endeavor. The channels are dedicated to a great deal of silliness, infomercials and repeats of news stories seen over and over again.

As luck would have it, though, I tuned onto a film that, yes, I have seen many times before but this time I looked upon it with different, perhaps, more mature eyes. To be honest, there are times when I have not been happy with my life, not happy with the difficulties of aging, losing so many I love and surely not happy I contracted a malady at 5 years of age which no one in this nation, thankfully, need suffer from again. I am glad for them, of course, but honesty must be spoken as I admit I wish I were born a mere six months after a vaccine for my malady was produced. When I kvetch (Yiddish for complain) about it I was told by one wise person in my life that I really should view James Stewart over again as George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life" and that it might teach me the essence of what is so valuable about my own life. On Christmas Eve "It's a Wonderful Life" was shown again.

The film speaks to people – really most people – whether one is a believer in a supreme being or not. George Bailey, ready for suicide as his life's events spin out of his control and is ready to jump off a bridge into icy waters below. Ultimately, he is shown by Clarence, his guardian angel, why he should not cease to exist and what life would have been like had he never existed at all; had he not even been born.

George Bailey's life, despite its overwhelmingly disastrous turn of events, counts. Yes, disbelief must be suspended but if one does suspend it the film teaches us that lesson. Most all lives count because in each life a person touches others in good ways one might never have imagined. The metaphor of a pebble thrown into a lake creating ripples far off from its point of origin is apropos. It says you mean something and you change lives – hopefully for the better – simply by your existence.

"It's a Wonderful Life" is a wonderful timeless film that has a message, I think, for many of us whether we get the things in life we wanted, and most especially, if we do not.

I have seen many films about the Holocaust since the first documentary newsreel I viewed in a local movie theater at age 10. It showed Auschwitz and other concentration camps liberated by the Allies at the end of WWII. I could not, then, understand the political history of what I saw but I certainly understood the piles and piles of dead bodies who would not experience another sunset, the piles of shoes which would not walk another step, the piles of spectacles the eyes behind which would not see another blue sky, or a loved one, or a mother, a father, a husband, a wife or even see their own children. The children were prepped by the Nazis for slaughter above all others because those Jewish children after all would grow up to be adults whom they reasoned – Germans were so good at reason — would continue to infect all of Europe. I knew enough to know that beast of human history dedicated to exterminating the entire Jewish population of Europe could have exterminated my family if my grandparents did not have the foresight to leave their dastardly Russian pogrom-overrun home 1/2 century before.

What I did not see then in newsreels was what it was like, what it actually was like, to experience a slaughter so barbaric, so cruel and so sickening perpetrated by so called civilized human beings on an unfathomable number of 6 – 10 million innocents reflected in the piles of bodies I did actually see in newsreels which made this 10 year old child sick.

"Naked Among Wolves" was one of the most authentic docudramas of that accursed time I have seen. It was about life in the men's cell block at Buchenwald. It was about men worked to death, tortured for the slightest perceived indiscretion, shot simply waiting to die in the filth of their excrement or hoping to live as Allied liberation drew near. They come upon a 4 year old Jewish boy hidden in a suitcase by his father brought into their midst to save under the gravest most life-threatening conditions. They try to save him. You must watch the film to see if they did.

I am of the opinion that one should not shield oneself from this and that one must remember history if history is to have any meaning for us at all.

When I was a young activist against war I used to say the Holocaust had a purpose, that it was for something higher and that this was perpetrated on so many for a lofty reason. As I aged and my political thought took shape I asked where was God that so many innocent human beings were made to suffer for years in dumb anguish. Now I say god was nowhere as 6-10 million Jews seemingly died for nothing, that the Holocaust had no meaning and no purpose. It was about hatred of "the other." "Naked Among Wolves" is a film I believe ALL should, especially in our time, see but suspect few will. I cry useless tears hoping against hope that human beings will change and that one group will not wipe out "the other" so that, in time, we will not all perish from the earth.

I saw the film "Spotlight" which is, as most likely know, a film about the Boston Globe's "Spotlight" team's exposé of systemic pedophile sexual abuse of children by priests in the Catholic Church in Boston and the Church's cover-up complicity of it. Viewing it took courage as, quite frankly, some things despite the worldly horrors we are privy to each day, are so noxious, hypocritical and sickening that it takes fortitude to view the stories about it in detail.

The film itself starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams was expertly crafted and the acting was without flaw. Happily, it did not reenact the many sickening crimes. Through a few adults re-telling their horrific experiences one could, I thought, cope with the retelling of their trauma. It was a seamless and truth-telling reenactment of the "Spotlight" team's investigation of the Catholic Church's most impactful and nearly self-immolative destruction not only in Boston but ultimately all over the nation and even the world. The Globe's exposé was an earthquake indictment of an institution many thought sat next to God himself.

Sadly, most institutions whether the Church or money-driven power-crazed government will sell their soul for a price and the Church paid a heavy price for doing just that transferring pedophile priests from parish to parish and "treatment" centers to "treatment" centers without a whisper to the authorities of the priestly crime of sexual abuse of minors lest it cast aspersions on a sacrosanct institution. The church remained in silent cover-up of itself despite its rape of so many young souls.

I viewed it because I thought it important to do so much as I think it important to view the history of the Holocaust though it is difficult to do. We view these things so that light can be shown on silent darkness and so others may never know such crushing experiences again. "Spotlight" is spotless in its focus and makes crystal clear why a free press matters. Without the exposure of these indelible crimes by the press they might never have seen the light of truthful day and nothing would ever change from one generation to the next.

"Sometimes it's the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine" – The Imitation Game This film is inspiring on many different levels. It is a chapter of WWII of which I was unaware. The German code breakers and their brilliant analysis of what was prudent to strike and what was not was simply amazing.

It shows one why fascism political, religious or otherwise cannot be allowed to win the day. In WWII the time in which the film takes place, western civilization and true democracy hung by a thread.

The British code breaker mathematical genius Alan Turing saved our proverbial necks from fascism's tyranny! Suggested reading: "It Can Happen Here" by Sinclair Lewis. Alan Turning got a raw deal and his maltreatment was in no small part because of who he was -- gay at a time when not only was it criminal but your body could be medically attacked for it. Thank you Alan Turning for showing us why our treatment of gays had to change and thank you for doing nothing more than saving western civilization! We owe you a huge apology.

It CAN happen here and we have the extremists to prove it.

I LOVED this film, Julianne Moore and Alex Baldwin in it. It completely emotionally covered me and I cried much. Many, I am sure, who see this film have had at least some experience with neurological diseases like Alzheimer's or something else. My own family has suffered with that and more.

I thought the film reminds us what truly is important in life and that it is about love, as Alice, so compromised by the erasure of her personality by the disease, still in the end, saw! Julianne Moore is incredible but this film may not be for everyone unless you can see the realities of life played out without wanting to hide under the covers that will not, in the end, save anyone. I watched the movie in segments because it saddened me so but I believe it is necessary to see the sad of life to appreciate the happy of it as well.

What a wonderful film "Still Alice" is. T'were the trillions wasted on killing humans in endless wars of stupidity instead were spent on the research and treatment of nature's mistakes that could save many of us from an unacceptable fate.

The why of it all has always eluded me but we go on nonetheless, I believe, to fight for humane and just causes with the hope our one little life can mean something good for those who follow.

If there is another film that I have enjoyed more than "The Theory of Everything" I do not know what it is and throughout my life have seen hundreds of films.

"The Theory of Everything" is a biographical sketch of Stephen Hawking, the Einsteinian astrophysicist genius diagnosed with the neuro-motor degenerative disease, ALS. When diagnosed as a young man he was given two years to live. He is now 72 defying the odds. Stephen Hawking remains one of human history's most phenomenal minds of science and one of the most profound contributors to the science of astrophysics.

Eddie Redmayne, as Stephen Hawking, deserved the Oscar for best actor and then some. His portrayal of a man with this degenerative disease was nothing short of brilliant. He turned into Stephen Hawking as I forgot, most of the time, this was an actor portraying him. Felicity Jones as Hawking's wife was excellently performed as well. One must, I think, see this film to grasp its all-encompassing resplendence.

"The Theory of Everything" speaks to the deepest most enduring and profound questions of life -- how did we, our planet, and indeed the universe begin and will it end. It asks, too, the most unanswerable question -- why. "The Theory of Everything" of course cannot answer everything but man's big brain can make the generational attempt to try. Every day we live we see the relevance of physics and the leaps forward in history science has made.

For those who love relationship films it had that too. His wife Jane's dedication to him through much of his ordeal was breathtaking. Having three children with him amid the onslaught of the disease defied credulity.

In the end the message of the film speaks loud and clear to me as Hawking, through his voice synthesizer states: "Where there is life there is hope!" Indeed, the life of Stephen Hawking proves that hypothesis eminently true.

No need to beat around the proverbial bush I loved this film. It took the highlights of the Alabama Edmund Pettus Bridge march for equality and the struggle for civil rights nearly fifty years ago and turned it into a film masterpiece.

This amazing non-violent man, Dr. Martin Luther King, did things to improve the lives of millions; things that no one would or could have done and he did so in the face of humiliating provocation, hubristic insult and the crushing brutality by the forces of malevolence few could endure. He turned the other cheek for the haters to smash as well.

This film shows to those who knew him and to the youth who can only study about him the inspirational charisma he possessed. He brought hope to hopeless millions and changed centuries of misery's darkness into the possibility of freedom's light. He brought his power to a recalcitrant, mean and vicious slice of oppositional white power and galvanized a nation of all colors, religions, and creeds to his moral cause.

We saw, through the communicative media of the time, the Edmund Pettus Bridge walkers bludgeoned when they tried to cross it by white and Confederate flag-flying racists as Dr. King forged a path for those that walked with him toward a better life.

People say for all the world to hear malevolent and mendacious things whether there is evidence for it or not against the giants of men and women upon whose shoulders we stand for the progress of mankind.

The larger truth was that a David honed justice against a Goliath of Billy clubs and bats. "Selma" was a snap shot of that time. It was a time of attack dogs, fire hoses and police Billy clubs used on old men, old women, children and anything black (and sometimes white) that got in the way of a white life of privilege. Persons of color wanted to merely sit anywhere on a bus, anywhere in a movie theater, at any lunch counter or, indeed, the right to vote free of literacy tests no one could pass and poll taxes many not afford.

Dr. King helped extricate his people as the metaphorical Moses of Biblical antiquity allegedly led the slaves out of Egypt. He was historically huge and this film portrayed him as that. I do not care about his personal life that some scurrilously impugn nor do I care about small poetic justice historical error there may in the film. I care about what Dr. King did for those who lived under the jackboot of a backward brutal south that tried to crush people of color for any invented reason they could think.

The movie, "Selma" was great. We who empathize with those who suffer injustice and who are on the side of the arc of justice as it bends towards it will love this film for the truth it brings.

The lessons, though, are for our time as well. Again the shouts of injustice fall on seemingly deaf ears. The deaths of innocent Black men whether at the site of a burning cross, at the base of a Poplar tree or at the hands of some present-day bully can be seen in our nation now. Voter suppression, intimidation and hardship with the most egregious "conservative" Supreme Court nullification of the most important part of the 1965 Voting Right Act exist in our time. They have now the blood on their hands that so many shed to attain what rightfully should be America's promise to everyone. The efforts of Dr. King and those who followed cannot have been in vain.

On Martin Luther King Day I say rest in peace, Dr. King, and may you be for all time at the side of the God in whom you believed!

Reese Witherspoon, as in other performances I have seen of her, is brilliant in this performance as well and my rating shows it. I loved this film. There were many moving moments but my rating of excellent revolves around what I see as the centrifugal force from which all other aspects of the film flow.

This film, a true story, of a woman whose life is shattered by the death of her mother whom she adored and from whom she drew breath is I think an example of endurance, strength, courage and the sheer will to survive the near impossible obstacles nature presents hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. The understatedly arduous hike of a woman with a back pack perhaps weighing 75 pounds or more along the Pacific Crest Trail to recapture her shattered life is amazing.

I thought the film a metaphor for many who have suffered, as Shakespeare's Hamlet says "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" that life can convey but go on despite those hardships and sometimes because of them. A road not taken or a life's love lost the consequences of which can seem insurmountable until we do persevere. We may learn from those difficult experiences; we may take another road leading to other, perhaps, better things or those tragedies may have no meaning at all. The film allows for that and it allows for us to see a woman go where few women have gone to defeat the obstacles that nature places in her path, greet impossible odds and overcome them. Some people help her along the way and some do not but she bravely encounters them and goes on.

I thought this film, too, a metaphor for life. We may encounter great hardships, perhaps, even seemingly impossible ones but endure and survive as she did. This film is not tied into a neat bow though. It leaves the viewer the ability to draw our own conclusion as to whether her journey down the Pacific Crest Trail and the arduous journey she and many of us face throughout life is worth it or not. It appears she did think it worth it and it seems most of us usually do.

Where did the three hours go? It was a very long film which I utterly LOVED. The time flew by. The performances were riveting and dazzling. Leonardo DiCaprio proves over and over again to me just how superb an actor he is. I believe he has not gotten the recognition he deserves. Glad he received the Golden Globe and hope he receives the Academy Award. He is probably among difficult competition but he surely will be in contention. The foreign press gave him the Globe for best actor in a comedy. I was surprised about the comedy part but after seeing the film, my sides hurt from laughing so much. Does it glorify Wall Street? NOT from my perspective. I think it makes fun of Wall Street by its never- ending Roman orgy like spectacle. If one is offended by bad language, tons of sex, tons of nudity and drugs galore than this is, perhaps, not the film for you. I,however, a constant critic of Wall Street, thought this film indicts it like no other has and by the way Margot Robbie is drop dead gorgeous!

I do not know, however, how either the actors or the real life perpetrators of this Roman orgy investment insanity came out alive.

Incredible entertainment that says something as only Martin Scorsese can about the nature of our nation. It is one of his best!

This weekend I had the grim opportunity to see "12 Years a Slave" based on the true story and written work of a free African, Solomon Northup, in 1841. Northup, a great African American violinist and musical talent living as a freeman in the north, gets apprehended by thugs and sent back into slavery in the 1841 south. If one sees that film, which I HIGHLY encourage, and really understands it one will be guaranteed a true perspective on the etiology of our nation's historical white racist albatross. The old Confederacy is dead BUT the white Tea Bag Republican Party is determined to keep its malevolent heart beating and the major Republican Party is more than willing to use these know nothing Tea Baggers to attain power for the rich who so desperately want it.

If one sees this film one will know why, if you do not already, our first African American president is disrespected and pilloried attempting to crush everything he proposes whether his nomination of judges or of his signature legislation the Affordable Healthcare Act by those who wave the Confederate flag proudly and those rich white men within the Republican Party echelons of power who allow these malevolent malcontents within their ranks to exist undeterred.

This film is a window into the American soul. The nation armed with its document of freedom and egalitarian treatment for all can reduce this precious document to refuse. It is impossible to understand how African Americans could even survive the onslaught of a system that degraded and reduced their status to beasts of burden; property that whites could kill or use at will. One sees, through this film, man's inhumanity to man EVEN in a country which purports to know better. The hypocrisy is endless and the cruelty of white masters toward their black property knows no boundaries.

It mattered not whether one was a black man or a black woman as each were treated with unfathomable cruelty in his/her own uniquely vulnerable way. Both sexes endured the lash but the female had to endure the lash and the humiliation of loveless, brutal and savage rape by her white master and could do not a thing about it. It can be said and Todd Aiken who made the preposterous statement that a woman can shut down a pregnancy if she is raped that unequivocally biology knows no difference between impregnation by love or by rape as the many light-skinned blacks of that era could attest.

This is what it is like when men because of who they are have no rights and where other men can lord over them, strip them of rights, strip them of the vote and strip them of the humanity of human dignity based solely on who they were born.

The film has great relevance to our day. Republican whites, as in the era of Jim Crow, try their best to deny, by any means necessary, the vote to those blacks and others who would attempt to vote those into office who would have their interests at heart.

This film instructs us today NOT to let racists within our ranks gain traction and win electorally through rancid policy that which they could not win through a Civil War that crushed them two centuries ago. The Old Confederacy has morphed into a new and ugly monster that will rise again ONLY if we of egalitarian principle let it. WE WILL NOT LET IT RISE AGAIN NOT THIS TIME and take us back as they did Solomon Nothrup to the bestial era of the 1841 south.

They must be roundly defeated not only for persons of color but for all of us including women whose power WILL be nullified by right wing extremists who have only hate and religious dogma in their hearts. They will take us back to the 19th century and even, as one Nevada know nothing legislator said, vote to take us back to slavery if the public wants it. According to the Las Vegas Sun, Jim Wheeler of Gardnerville, NV was speaking to the Storey County Republican Party when he made the remarks. That remark says it all as does the remark in the film of Brad Pitt abolitionist white plantation worker when he says of the corrupt and bestial slave system: "Thou devil, sooner or later, somewhere in the course of eternal justice, thou shalt answer for this sin!'" And so they have but, in my opinion, not nearly enough!

I usually appreciate Stephen King for his profundities even if it is through his very macabre dark imagination. Not having read the book, "Under the Dome" it is, in my opinion, the worst of his adaptations -- "Misery" with Kathy Bates being the best.

I Season Passed this series through my cable provider but yesterday after watching six or so episodes I erased it from my list. It was to me boring. I tired of the characters and the side plots, thought the acting mediocre and have frankly seen much better. I was saying alright already what the heck is the Dome anyway and what's with the baby dome as it perpetually made me want to finally find out what the heck it was after watching many episodes with boring repetitive character side lights complete with a young pretty woman (naturally) chained to a bed in a shelter as water poured in. I kept wondering just where did that woman do her human excretory functions chained to a bed with no bathroom in sight. I think about these things as the situational realism of these plots strained belief. Moreover, how this battered woman survived I do not know as she is not only chained to a bed but knocked out, hitting her head hard falling on a hard floor. She makes real the concept of the battered woman!

"Under the Dome" in my opinion COULD have been good. I thought it was going to be a "Lord of the Flies" type dystopia but alas it never reach that intellectual depth so in an instant by the miracle of technology I erased it from MY universe. A good concept I thought gone terribly terribly boring, ridiculous and wrong! I just found out there is another season to this madness -- count me out!

I saw this film when I was quite young. I, at that time, had very little political awareness. It would take the maturity one gets from higher learning to understand why this film was so brilliant. It was a film for its time discussing a subject that would not get traction until a decade later. This film dealt with race in a way that reflected an era; when it was significantly more desirable to be white and one of mixed race origin often were shunned by both black and white worlds. Sara Jane is without a doubt the most compelling character in the movie. It is she born to a black mother and a white father desperately wanted to be accepted in the white world of privilege and suffers humiliations because she superficially could pass for white BUT when those who came to know more personally and understood her truth she was brutally rejected.

As I went through the revolution of the late 60's I so often thought of this film. When I did I thought how different Sara Jane's world would have been had the changes that ensued for us did so for her.

I loved the character of Sara Jane, empathized with her as I became more left of center political and knew we were marching and reacting for change that was necessary. Who could see then that 60 years later this nation would elect its first black president? Sara Jane was born too soon in a world that crushed, brutalized and destroyed both her and her adoring wonderful mother.

I cannot recommend this film highly enough. It should NEVER be lost in time because it said so much about THAT time and why things had to change. I am proud as a white person that I stood up for that change. This film makes me cry even today. I want to reach out to Sara Jane and tell her things get better. They did but even still we have a long way to go! FABULOUS film.

The Life of Pi which we saw over the weekend appeals to those of who are plagued by the larger questions of life and its difficulty. It is a HUGELY profound film BUT one has to enjoy that type of intellectual challenge to take the time to analyze, walk through its weeds and see the depths of its thought.

Reading what others say about it online is helpful to understand the depth and varying opinion about it. Some things about its essence were not clear to me. The more I thought about and discussed it with others who have seen it the more I can appreciate its brilliance. Ang Lee the director won the Oscar for best director. I surely can see why.

I think to get the film's maximum experience one should see it, if possible, in a theater with 3D disposable glasses the theater hands out or view it in IMAX. Viewing it with 3D glasses makes it a stunning visual experience as one sees, for an example, birds flying in the most vivid color directly in front of you to touch. 3D makes Pi amazing.

It is about man, animals, the universal creation and every living thing's challenge to survive within it. One sees life's diversity, gorgeous complexity but continuously asks why we as sentient understanding beings are left to forge though it seemingly alone with the constant companion of suffering and death.

I believe the major thrust of the film is contained in the Biblical story Job. It is about man's quest to understand and give meaning to the vicissitudes of life without losing faith in a God in the face of life's table of tragedy spread out before us. It is man's quest to find the meaning in life to give it purpose and help us when we are weaker than what life visits upon us.

The protagonist a young Indian boy named Pi Patel is constantly thinking about the same things and even becomes a Hindu, a Christian, a devotee of Islam and even Kaballa Judaism in his quest to seek personal answers and peace.

The film is available On Demand on TV BUT without the 3D glasses one does not gets, the visually awestriking experience. I may see it again on TV so I can re-see the thoughtfulness behind the movie albeit not in as visually appealing form.

I give this film a thumbs-up IF and ONLY IF those aforementioned things usurp your consciousness as they do mine and if you are prepared to think hard about what the film is offering. To some it may seem like a children's movie but I suggest it is far from that. It could be seen by children but they would not have the sophistication, ability to question life and the experiences of it that only an adult could possess.

I cannot possibly write a spoiler as if everyone does not know the outcome of this film then they have been hiding under a rock. Still I will make my comments general. Probably I should have given this docudrama a 10. I did not because the film has been criticized by some especially on the left who are much more knowledgeable than I am about the details of the operation.

In view of that I will give my high review a caveat. That caveat is that I wonder if the details of the film are absolutely accurate. Did the US use torture which includes water-boarding and SO much more? If so did that use of torture lead to revealing the details about bin Laden's courier leading directly to him. These two questions are pivotal.

STILL no matter what the veracity is concerning my two questions, the technological expertise of this film is a thing to behold. I am amazed on two levels. The first is that the film maker took such pains I believe to get the details correct AND I am awestruck by the nerves of steel of those who were involved in the planning of it and the US military who had nerves of steel conducting it. Ultimately, though, it needed the all systems go from the president. He gave it although the film showed nothing of the president but one knows in the final analysis of the mission if it failed he would have been blamed entirely! I suspect the filmmakers did not want to make this a political pro Obama statement. I thank the US military, the president's advisers and the president himself for their incredible pursuit and acquisition of intel to capture the world's most wanted man!

Stephen Spielberg's "Lincoln" is yet another masterpiece from the master. It is one of the best snapshots of our 16th president and the social milieu in which he lived that I have ever seen. It concentrates on Lincoln as president toward the end of the Civil War and the machinations between Congress and him to pass the 13th Amendment to the Constitution eliminating slavery from our national reality.

Daniel Day Lewis as President Lincoln and Sally Fields as Mary Todd Lincoln are brilliant as is Tommy Lee Jones in the part of Thaddeus Stevens the great orator of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania and fierce proponent of abolition.

A refresher course on the 13th Amendment content:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

One can understand by attempts to pass present-day legislation how difficult it actually is and the compromises it takes to pass it as events on the ground unfold. Outlawing slavery by passing the 13th Constitutional Amendment was, to say the least, a Herculean task. Our racist past still even now digs its heels into the cement of our national architectural landscape. It lives on in generational perpetuity gumming up the works in our attempt to create a more perfect union. Through this excellent film one can see the nature of our racist roots, the brilliance of Lincoln as he overrules many in his own party to force Congress into passing the 13th Amendment. One can see that which divided us then still divides us now albeit in different form through a quite different Republican Party hardly, now, the party of Lincoln.

This is a must see for those who love watching the arc of history as it bends, slowly, towards justice. The film's creators spared us the view of Lincoln's assassination but rather cut to an announcement of its occurrence at another Washington theater. We hear Edwin Stanton, Secretary of War, at the president's bedside uttering history's memorable quote: "Now he belongs to the ages." And so he does as history marches forward from then to now and our election of the first African American president not once but twice resoundingly so. Not surprisingly it made me cry as I thought about my own efforts to support our first African American president and how thrilled I am to be apart of this nation's efforts to perfect this union.

This film presented the Civil War era and the Lincoln presidency as a reflective mirror of our nation's past that lives today and is not only relegated to the south but occupies a major wing of a major party continually seeking immense power in every state taking advantage of the lesser angels of our nature to do so. It is up to us, in my view, to make sure they do not attain power so as Lincoln in his Gettysburg address so artfully said about the massive amount of Civil War dead … "that these dead shall not have died in vain!"

We rented this film from HBO last week and STILL have not erased it because we love it so much. When so many films are cookie-cutter adaptations of ingredients that work to make oodles of bucks this film was unique and took chances most do not. Brad Pitt, I believe, is one of our country's national treasures. His excellence in film is matched by his excellence in life.

The film grapples with the eternal questions of man. I do not know if The Tree of Life solves what is for me unsolvable but at least it makes an attempt at differentiating the science surrounding the facts we know about the etiology of the earth with the yearning of man to still ask the eternal why of his suffering.

It is about the Biblical Book of Job in that it is about suffering in the face of the perfect creation of earth. It is about the majesty of the earth's construct and the less than perfect man within it. The cinematography is gorgeous and the sound magnificent using many classical works to emphasize the grandeur of life that simply is.

I loved the complexity of the relationships and the ambivalence of the mother toward the father, the grief they both endure and how they endure it. Pitt's relationship with his sons was profound, angry, loving, loathing and deep.

We keep playing and replying this film to see, hear, and watch the beauty of the anthropological formation of earth and those in it who crave answers to their suffering juxtaposed against the beauty that is existence. We are a division between earth's scientific creations and within it the etiology of man with his frailties.

One scene depicting early earth and the age of dinosaurs showed one dinosaur's victory over another. It keeps its talons on the subjugated wondering, it seems, whether to kill it or not. It does not. Was this some nascent element, albeit minuscule, of altruism compelling the victorious dinosaur not to eat his spoils as he, unexpectedly, lifts up his talons off the defeated one and walks away? Who knows? One can only speculate.

Who are we, where did we come from and most importantly why? We live with the grandeur of the earth's beauty and alternatively the suffering ugliness it sometimes visits upon us. We live in its uncomfortable harmony as the two are inexorably and inextricably linked yet a separate part of man's existence. This film attempts to reflect on the eternal questions that have plagued human existence since the beginning and probably will never be sufficiently answered even at the end of it all.

I lived during the Marilyn Monroe era but never knew this particular episode of her life. She was the film sensation of the 1950's and reflected much about the crushing superficiality of that time. As a child I could not appreciate her artistry because she was used mercilessly by Hollywood and the public who sold her as a piece of ornament or satisfaction for the lust of men and as an object of envy of women for Hollywood to make a buck. She was, in the final analysis, only human; the product of her childhood which was empty of love and absent parental care.

Looking as an adult at the artistry of Marilyn Monroe I see something quite different and lament the fact, as I do about all film and theater genus who die before their time, that we are deprived from enjoying more of their excellence. Other films Marilyn did outside of the ones of fluff had substance. Her roles in Niagara, The Misfits and Some Like it Hot reflected her once in a lifetime talent.

I walk away from this non-fiction film sad because Marilyn Monroe WAS sad. She was intrinsically sad. I thought the film quite accurately showed that sadness. The role of Marilyn was played, I thought, as perfectly as it could by Michelle Williams. It is difficult to play larger than life figures.

Some of the other characters were to me forgettable because Marilyn absorbs one's attention whether in real life or fantasy like a sponge. Marilyn oozed beauty and vulnerability. It is only natural that men and some women too must have desired to rescue this damsel in distress. Alas, maturity tells us only we can be the rescuer of us.

There was no Oprah show then to show us how to overcome the impossible obstacles placed before us in life. I wonder what Marilyn would have been like if she could have experienced the social revolution of our time. We will never know. The child in Marilyn never got to become an adult and we as the adults never get to see her morph into one.