Gray country. Gray sky. Gray little man, in a gray suit. With a gray little soul, perhaps just coming alive. The film is “The Lives of Others.” It’s East Germany, 1984. Stasi intelligence officer Capt. Gerd Weisler is assigned secret surveillance of acclaimed playwright Georg Dreyman and his girlfriend Christa-Maria Seiland. Weisler does so, the [...]
Let’s see, I laughed out loud several times at the over-the-top antics; smiled frequently at the clever movie parodies; giggled when the lads turned a tired cliché inside out; and had a great “aha!” moment at an especially subtle inside joke, so I guess you can say I found Hot Fuzz amusing. Hot Fuzz is [...]
No, I haven’t set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, but the Fundamentals in Film class finally completed the Band of Brothers mini-series last week. There were 10 episodes, plus the documentary “We Stand Alone Together”, in the mostly true-to-life story of E company, paratroopers of the 101st Airborne in World War II. With our [...]
I was among the 90 percent male audience at a 9:00 p.m. showing of 300 over the weekend. Some of the guys there were younger men and a few looked a little geeky and there were one or two older ones I might have pegged for still being in residence at their mom’s house, but [...]
Last month I posted a brief review of the move Everything is Illuminated because I like the unexpected, unconventional and beguiling nature of the story, the well-crafted scenes and performances, and the human insights that lingered in my mind for days afterward. I hadn’t expected to like the movie all that much yet I was [...]
I’ve been leading the bi-weekly “Fundamentals in Film” class for the current group of teenage boys for about a year now, and my focus has been to feature movies with strong, positive male role models demonstrating character, honor, courage and grace under fire (physical, mental, spiritual fire) and especially an ability to put others ahead [...]
The Mall Diva is interested in just about any movie that features Elijah Wood so awhile back I placed Everything is Illuminated in our Netflix queue. I hadn’t heard of the movie when it came out in 2005, the on-line synopsis didn’t tell me much and the cover art was kind of weird, but I [...]
I’m going to take a little bit of a different approach with this FiF entry in that I’m not going to delve so much into the character themes in a particular movie, but I do want to call your attention to some treasures you might be overlooking. I was doing some channel surfing the other [...]
The family watched Over the Hedge the other night. It was amusing enough, but I couldn’t help but notice a certain fable-like quality to the story. I wouldn’t exactly put this movie into the Fundamentals in Film series, I thought I’d share my observations. If you haven’t seen the movie, the latest animated film from [...]
Secondhand Lions is both a great addition to this blog series and a well-received film by the young men in our bi-weekly viewing group. The viewing group has largely followed the order of the original class I taught a few years ago while the blog series has gone on to feature additional movies. This week [...]
