movies update

Inside Job: Charles Ferguson, Academy Award winner, Documentary
This movie is remarkable mostly for explaining clearly what lead to the financial crisis--and making you very very angry about it. I was one of those people who had heard about "subprime loans" but didn't really understand the ins-and-outs of the crisis. I also gave the benefit of the doubt to "wall st" thinking people's anger was probably misguided, and we had ourselves to blame for building up credit and buying things we can't afford. But if you watch this movie, you will start to see some disturbing trends that had the wall st bigwigs interests, and ONLY their interests, in mind. It's hard to sleep after this one, especially thinking about how the entire world was affected by the greed of one corrupt industry. This movie is especially worth watching for the interviewees, who get irate, clam up, or become idiotic as they try to talk their way out of blame.

Of Gods and Men: Xavier Beauvois
This movie retells the story of Christian monks in Muslim North Africa who decline to leave despite growing violence against non-Muslims in the region. The pace of the movie was incredibly slow, and most of the movie is silent. They are monks after all! What should have been captivating was the indisciion between the monks about whether to stay and possibly be martyrs, or whether to leave and return to France. However, the characters, although supposedly torn, seem quite one-dimensional to me, and it's obvious they will follow their leader's decision in the end. There is the quintessential old man who is cute but feisty, the sick doctor who cares for his Muslim neighbor patients by curing them and giving them shoes... the leader of the pack is supposedly the most torn, but for some reason I just felt he was putting on a show for the rest of them. John says what he didn't like about the movie is that the director kept doing the same thing over and over, and that it wasn't working. I'm not yet able to see movies at that level, but I was able to say that for some reason, this epically slow movie did not hold my interest. I wanted more about the townspeople other than that they were sick and needed a Christian doctor. I wanted more about the rebels (there is one actually atrocious scene between a rebel and a monk, with the most horrifically cliche writing in the movie) and their motives. In short, I nodded off a few times. The singing was nice.