Travels With Susan

Save your money.  This movie is supposed to be about saving the planet from trash.  The characters are tremendously appealing, two super cute robots who fall in love.  I don't really have a problem with that.  It's a fantasy, after all.  What I have a problem with is the real stupidity of the underlying premise.  Here we have a supremely capitalist entity, Pixar, making a movie about the evils of capitalism.  Strike one.  In the movie, due to evil giganto corporations, the entire planet is covered with trash.   Now-- how they managed to continue to feed the population of the earth if it was completely covered with trash, is not explained.  Strike two.  The entire population of the world-- which looks pretty American to me, lives on a gigantic space ship which regularly dumps trash into space-- here's the problem.  If you are on a space ship, cut off from earth-- where are you getting the metals and water and all that other stuff (like paper and oil and plastic which are pretty much only found on earth) to turn into trash?  All the space ships we have today (called shuttles and stuff) recycle everything-- not because they are worried about cluttering up space but because they HAVE NO NEW SUPPLY.   Strike three.  

really.  The problems that I cite are huge in this movie because they seriously undercut the lesson the movie is supposed to be teaching and that turns the movie into one big cheat.  Sorry.

So if you like movies to be at least internally consistent, don't waste your money.  On the other hand, if you like cute robots and don't require that heavily political messages make any kind of sense.  Go for it.  The graphics are great.

This is a somber movie with a somewhat happy ending.  Based on a novel by P. D. James it presents a world in which women are no longer able to conceive.  When the movie opens it has been 25 years since any baby has been born anywhere in the world.  The world is falling apart.  England, which remains somewhat calm under a dictatorship which promises to shepherd the world's inhabitants to a quiet and peaceful end, is the scene of the movie.  The movie doesn't really explore all of the implications of the lack of children, but rather focuses on the plot line when a woman turns up pregnant.  She is a young black woman who doesn't know who the father is.  In the meantime we see the horror caused by a an unjust society which uses and abuses immigrants who have come to England seeking order.  The plot and the motivations are confusing.  And the message of the movie is radically changed from that delivered by the book.  In the movie the heroes are seeking an island where the best and brightest minds in the world are seeking a solution to the problem-- a thoroughly humanistic view of what is happening and who can solve mankinds problems.  In the book, it is explictly made clear that the the best and the brightest have no idea-- that government has been completely helpless to solve the problem.  In the movie, all refugees are banned from England.  In the book, more sensibly, enough refugees are welcomed to to the work that the English prefer not to do.  In the movie the women are infertile, in the book, it is men who are infertile. ******** warning plot spoiler______ And in the book the father of the baby is a priest.Nevertheles both the book and the movie provide a warning of where European and to some degree all Western Civilization is heading.  A world in which narcissism has so taken over that we have not taken the time to breed.  The movie is well acted and sobering.  

Jaden Smith almost steals this movie from his Dad in this inspiring movie.  The movie is about the true story of Chris Gardner, a black high school graduate with a lot of ambition and not a lot of resources, who decides to become a stock broker.  And, not to spoil the ending for you-- he does.  In the meantime, he and his son go through a lot while he is earning his place at Dean Witter.  Will Smith portrays a somewhat different character than he usually does.  He is, however, his very charming self.  He portrays a man who is determined to succeed, not in an angry arrogant way but in a power of positive thinking way.  When he sees an obstacle, he figures out how to go over it or around it.  There are scenes where his middle aged upperclass white bosses seem to be taking advantage of him.  Places in other movies where we would expect the lead black character to make a stand and assert his unwillingness to be treated like somebody's servant.  Chris Gardner doesn't object.  He is not servile, but he does what is asked with cheerfulness.  And, in the end, against all odds, in competiton with white college graduates from good schools, he is the one intern out of 20 who is invited to become a partner in the firm.  The message of the movie is he was invited because he worked harder, worked smarter and wanted it more than they did.  There is a priceless scene at the end of the movie where he is leaving the exam and a slightly condescending classmate asks him if he finished the test.  Gardener responds that he finished but the essay question on the back of the exam book gave him a challenge.  The white classmate gets a startled look on his face and exits the elevator at the next floor.  somebody didn't realize there was a question on the back of the exam book and that somebody wasn't Chris Gardner. 

Nobody wants to say it but I will.  By making this movie, it is entirely possible that Will Smith has done more than Bill Cosby has to ask Black America to refocus on the basics.  

More importantly, this lovely movie is about the relationship of a father and a son.  It may well be that the fact that Jaden and Will are father and son helps but one suspects that Jaden has inherited more than his looks from his parents.  He has a lot of acting talent too.  While the success story is wonderful, the story of the love of a father for his son and a son for his father makes this movie truly a treasure.  It is an important thread in the story, but it is more a kind of background to what else is going on like the lush background in a painting it adds tremendous heart to this story of true grit.  Go see this movie.  it is worth the price of admission. 

This movie by the Billy Graham organization tells the story of the Ten Boom family in World War II.  The only member of Dutch family to survive  long after the war was Corrie Ten Boom who was released from a Nazi concentration camp as a result of  a clerical error. 

The ten Booms were a Dutch family who believed, after the German occupation, that their Christian duty and pleasure were to be part of an underground railroad rescuing Jews and helping move them out of occupied Euope and Holland. The ten Booms built a walled in room as a hiding place for Jews and for members of the underground.  Eventually the Ten Booms were found out.The frustrated Gestapo, unable to find the Jews they were looking for in the house,  arrested the ten Booms for having extra ration books and other minor violations and sent them  to concentration camps and prisons.  There are many scenes in this movie of life for the prisoners at Ravensbruck where Corrie was eventually sent with her sister and where her sister died.   Much of the movie is  obviously Corrie Ten Boom's tribute to an older sister she regarded as more spiritual than she, Corrie, was.  The scenes in the concentration camp are so real and so well acted that, when I saw this in a theatre in Beverly Hills, the entire audience sat in stunned silence when the movie was over.  It is a story of great faith and great love.  Because of the graphic scenes in the concentration camps it is not suitable for young children, but it is another must see movie for teens.

On VHS if you can find it-- is shows up on eBay.  This movie stars Ben Cross as Padre Ruffino, James Mason as the Bishop and Maximillian Schell as a Captain in the Wehrmacht.  It is the story of the collaboration of churches, convents, monasteries and non-believers in the town of Assissi to rescue Jews from Hitler's S. S.  The story revolves around one group of refugees in particular who include a prominent scientist.  The Nazi's want to find him in particular to prevent him from aiding the Americans. 

There are many wonderful scenes in this movie you will remember later as examples of the heroism that everyday people can be capable of.  The mother superior who stares down German soldiers who want to search the convent where the Jews are hidden. I don't want to spoil the story, which is a true story by giving away the ending, but it is a story of intrigue and danger and, yes, of what is right and what is wrong.  I wish this movie would be required viewing in every teen's Sunday school.   "This" , I would say to them, "is what it really means to be a Christian. You must train yourself to  be this courageous if ever called upon. "   At the end of the movie an interesting statistic is revealed-- the vast majority of Italian Jews survived the war, unlike the rest of Europe.

You can't get the movie from Amazon  but you can still get it from eBay.