That's Why I Don't Read Movie Reviews

I saw Inception last night, and apart from some bright spots, I was mostly bored with the movie during the second half. Its about these spies that go into people's dreams - an implausible thing in reality, but I buy it for the movie - to collect secrets or plant ideas. In the dream state, you can still feel pain, but if you are killed you just wake up - that is until the characters are in the first stage of the main dream state of the movie when we get the "oh, wait, we need more suspense" addition to the movie where people killed in the dream now just enter a limbo state as their real brains melt. At that point, I rolled my eyes and started eying the time.

Like most action/heist movies, this one starred mostly men, which is part of the reason that I don't like such movies (the other part is that the typical heist plot bores me). A couple of the things I did like about this movie were the addition of a female character playing a role in the team on the heist who never becomes romantically attracted to any of her co-workers and the Cobb's realization that he can't create an accurate representation of his dead wife because no one's perception of anyone can match the complexity of an actual human being.

Andrew O'Hehir's review review of Inception mostly mirrors my own take on the movie, except for one detail. He never mentions the second thing I liked about the movie, and that being such a tiny, unimportant scene, I don't care about that. He does, however, refer to Ellen Page's character as "genderless" and refer to the dead wife character as "all the female, erotic energy" that is missing from a universe of professionals. Apparently, Andrew must be reminded that women are different from men and only exist in a sexual space lest he forget to be attracted to them. He never refers to DiCaprio's character as genderless, even though he has all the sexual masculinity of a cardboard box throughout the film - just like most male movie characters. This is just another reminder of how most movie reviewers can't see women as people. When one is presented not as window dressing, but as an average woman, they claim she is androgynous. It's as if Andrew never met a woman in real life.

At the Expense of Others

The movie Leap Year asks if women should propose marriage. That begs the question of if women should be making decisions at all. Really, should women be leaving their homes or even spending money?

The only people that think this way are narrow minded idiots that think "tradition" is a valid reason to continue bad policy. Unfortunately, these people also happen to be the majority of the population. So, sorry gals, looks like you're not in charge of your own lives.

Who Doesn't Love Waterworld?

I see one, two... oh, everyone hates it, that's probably a good thing. Have I spoken of my irrational love for the Kevin Costner bomb before? It is simply a bad movie - the acting is bad, the plot is full of holes, and they are smoking filtered cigarettes after any such means to make such things were long gone. Who knows, maybe there was a Phillip Morris ship around when the world flooded. I also wasn't aware that oil tankers came equipped with refineries.

But I’m a Mystery Science Theater fan and liked Kevin Costner when I was a kid. It wasn’t a crush, I was too young to be sexually attracted to anyone, much less some actor in his 30’s, but I enjoyed Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Field of Dreams, Dances with Wolves, and some of his other not-as-bad movies. I also really liked the premise of the movie, and the things that stuck with me were some of the metaphors that I identified. The biggest one was the presence of motorsports on the Exxon Valdeez. The smokers were the obvious metaphor for all the polluters and their love of motorsports just highlighted how stupid they were – using the one thing that kept them going for something completely unnecessary. It is the kind of metaphor that hits you like a brick and then keeps smacking you around.

That is why news like this, despite the layoffs, really makes me smile. Just one more sign that our cowboys in spaceship mentality is finally being smacked down a little bit. Could it be that civilization is leaving adolescence? Don’t get your hopes up too soon, you haven’t yet heard my Best Buy story.

I Guess I Have to Get to Bed Now

I was the first to arrive at the YAG meeting tonight, explained that I had just come from the gym, people trickled in, pleasantries were exchanged, foody items brought, and Facebook etiquette discussed. Then we started up the movie where we had left off, with all of the non-Rwandan people leaving The Mille Colines. Hotel Rwanda is one of those movies, like Schindler's List that could never be MST'ed. It is suspenseful and horrifying and real. Had I been alone, I would have started crying at the end.

We discussed the movie afterwards, with questions from a book. They were questions asking people to draw parallels in our lives to what had happened on the screen. When I heard the first question, I said that nothing in my life has any possible comparison to what those people went through. I mean, I've stood up for myself a number of times, but nothing in my life - nothing in the lives of anyone I actually know - compares to what happened in Rwanda back then. And we decided not to compare, just discuss the movie.

As I watched the movie, I thought about how the settings looked familiar. I remembered late nights in restaurants, those plaid bags, walking through that town after dark to the hostel. I also remembered hearing gun shots in my hostel in Paraguay during the failed coup in 2000, but it was nothing compared to this. It was easy to see myself in those white and Asian people that left - relieved that they were leaving, but horrified to leave people to die. I don't know if could have left - I would have, but I don't know if I could have left. How do you cope with that? How do you cope with a world that didn't care after what you saw? How do I cope with the memory of this as a non-event - just more Africans killing themselves - in my own lifetime? How do we stop this? At least it is over, right? Is it over? What about Iraq? What about Sudan?

And after the white people left, after the UN left, there was just the corrupt General to be fed bribes. Bribes handed out with supplies obtained by a visit to hell. Bribes fed with a visit to the diplomat's office while the hotel was left unguarded. Bribes to keep 1200 people alive, to keep them from the machetes, to keep them from the frenzy of the men whipped into a rage by a radio announcer, calling them to kill all of the Tutsi's and eventually any Hutu that helped them. Bribes and calls to family outside of Rwanda, a refugee camp with the appearance of a 4-star hotel all to keep a few people from lying dead on the road with everyone else.

Watch this movie.