Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Finally, Some Good Movie Choices!

When selecting movies, I am not always the best chooser. I have seen some pretty bad movies, and usually if I see a really good movie, the next one is "just ok" or horrible. I'll use for example, mine and Aleksy's recent choices of movies to see in the theater. We have seen quite a few movies in the past month or two: Life as We Know It (a pretty good movie), Easy A (not so good), Due Date (good movie). This is a pretty fair representation of how I usually choose movies. But. It all changes because of the past three days! I watched 3 movies in the last 3 days: Inception (Sunday), Eat, Love, Pray (Monday), and Shutter Island (Tuesday). All great choices, which I highly recommend!


Inception: I had heard from several people that this was a good choice in movie, so it was easy to choose this one. I did not know what the movie was about when choosing it. It gave me new perspective on reality, and how significant one's subconscious is to their thought process. Since watching this movie, I think about the stuff that's lingering around my subconscious that makes me make the decisions that I do more often. Also, it occurs to me that one's thought process before going to bed is very much connected to one's dreams overnight. If your looking for a movie to give you new perspective, this is a goody!


Eat Pray Love: a movie which I recommend to women! A definite "chick flick", which I was happy to watch in the presence of my dear friend Nikki, who I plan to travel with to Australia in May :) This movie gave me an incredible urge to travel, meet new people and experience new things. I wonder what it would be like traveling internationally independently. In this movie, it occurred to me that the main character "Liz" who traveled to 3 different countries found an individual to befriend in each country who was of a different culture than the country she was in. If you are in Indonesia, why wouldn't you connect with the local people to learn new things (not the man from Texas!). Although there were some bits of the movie that seemed "off" to me, it still was very good and gave me motivation to do things for me, travel, be constantly meeting new people, and not fall into the "rut" of the plain and simple life of keeping to one's self in their hometown, where all their family lives, where their husbands family lives, where they work and went to university, where everything that they know is. I understand that some people choose that, but it's not for me. I have a fear of getting bored of life, of not being challenged enough, and falling into a "rut". I feel like traveling is a good way to keep out of it. This movie really made me look forward to Australia in May! After watching this movie, Nikki and I also wanted to go to Bali, but after researching the additional cost, unfortunately it's too much :( Another time, for sure!


And the last movie, which I watched last night: Shutter Island! There's no other way to explain how this movie makes you think: it fucks with your mind. It made me see just how vulnerable a person's thoughts are, how persuasion (and drugs) can make you think something completely different than what you know. At the end of the movie, I did not know anything about the main character Edward, or Andrew... since that may have been his name. I do not know if he was a patient, or a US Marshall under experiment.

On a completely different note, the representation of the "insane" in this movie was supposed to reflect the views of this population from the 1950's. I know a little bit about the history of individuals with developmental disabilities and mental health issues through school, so I know that there was a very medical view that this population of people can be "treated" and perhaps "fixed". It occurs to me that this movie could have the potential to perpetuate existing stereotypes of people who have disabilities, and while I do not think the movie was completely inappropriate (since it was re-creating the views that people actually had in the 50s), I can't help but think that those stereotypes are still in our subconscious and could be re-ignited with the language and portrayal of the people in the asylum in the movie.

I do still recommend this movie, it was also a goody!

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