Film Flash: Rental Family

  

15 words or less film review (full review to follow soon)

Heartfelt film that almost makes sin seem virtuous (but it's more complicated than that)

Film Review: Predator - Badlands

 

Sexuality/Nudity Acceptable

Violence Acceptable

Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Acceptable

The original Predator is one of the greatest action movies of all time.  It is pure masculine mayhem in the best possible way.  It is unlikely that any movie will be able to come close to capture that lightning in a bottle.

In the years since, there have been several sequels that have attempted to recapture that magic, with varying degrees of success.  The latest attempt, Predator: Badlands, decides to do something radical: make the Predator the hero of the story.  As the sage once said: "It's a bold strategy, Cotton, let's see if pays off for 'em."

The movie centers around a Predator named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatanji) who is the runt of the clan.  Because of this, he needs to prove himself by going to the most dangerous planet known as Genna and kill the unkillable creature known as the Kalisk.  Dek crash lands on the planet and soon discovers that everything here is deadly from the animals to the flora and fauna.  Along the way he encounters Thia (Elle Fanning) a Weyland-Yutani android who is is missing everything below her torso.  She makes a deal with Dek to help him find the Kalisk if he gets her back to her people.  What follows is the standard reluctant partnership that slowly turns into friendship as the journey changes both of them.

If that plot summary sounds like this is a kinder, gentler Predator movie, that's because it is.  This looks and feels a lot more like a Marvel movie than a standard Predator film.  The tone, the humor, the action, the characters, and the violence feel like the could have come out of Guardians of the Galaxy spin-off.  

And here is the catch: if that is a deal-breaker for you, then this movie is not for you.

If, however, you are like me and can accept this change in tone, then Predator: Badlands is fairly enjoyable.  There is something lost when you remove the mystery and mystique of the Predators.  But what you get instead is a fairly straightforward reluctant friendship adventure.  Some people I have read found Thia cloying and off-putting.  However, I found her to be the right counterbalance to Bek.  Her constant chattiness and optimism are foiled against Bek's stoic silence.  

Plot-wise, the film is fairly standard with no real depth.  But that doesn't mean that it is bad.  The chemistry between the characters is fairly decent.  And the movie does one of the things I really like which is that it has good payoffs in the 3rd act that are set up in the 1st act without you realizing that they are being set up.  The movie rewards you for paying closer attention to how this world operates.  And it is fun to see Bek adapt to the surroundings, going from barely surviving to thriving.  It echoes Dutch from the original Predator, but the callback works.

The special effects work nicely in this film.  You get a strong sense of the ever-present danger of the planet.  The overall look of the Predator suffers by bringing it directly into the light and not keeping him in the dark shadows.  The action is very competently executed, with excitement and flair.  Bek can't rely on the normal bag of tricks that we've seen in other Predator films, but has to get creative, which adds to the enjoyment.

As I mentioned, the story's simplicity is reflected in its themes.  But those themes are still pleasing to see play out.  Bek's clan hates weakness and sees mercy as poison.  But in finding friendship and cooperation, Bek becomes stronger and better.  Again, it isn't revolutionary stuff, but the writers understand what their assignment is and they hit the correct thematic notes throughout.

No Predator film has lived up to the original.  But Predator: Badlands is not a bad way to spend a couple of hours of sci-fi adventure.

New Evangelizers Post: The Purpose of Penance

                                 

I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.  

This post might seem more appropriate for the Lent. However, Advent is also a penitential season in the Church. We tend to forget that because of all the gifts, shopping, parties, and food during this time. But just like Lent, Advent should be a time of penance in preparation for the holy day of Christmas.

Here in this article by “penance,” I do not mean the Sacrament of Penance, also known as the Sacrament of Reconciliation. By “penance,” I mean those spiritual works we do after we repent of sin.

I have often puzzled about the true meaning of penance. For many years, it felt like it was some kind of spiritual punishment. After we receive absolution in Reconciliation, we do our penance. For many people this feels like the spiritual debt that we pay for our sins. Sadly, that is how I treated penance for many years of my life.

But the idea of penance being spiritual punishment doesn’t quite jibe with our faith. Christ paid the debt of sin on the cross. We therefore do not earn our salvation by contributing to the payment of that debt. That isn’t to say there isn’t a need for reparation. All sin causes damage to the community. That damage, even if forgiven, needs to be repaired. If I break old Mrs. Krestel’s window while playing stickball in the street, I have an obligation to repair the damage done, even if she forgives me.

This is partly the meaning of penance. When sin has been done, there must be something done to repair in the world that which is damaged. I was speaking with a priest recently about one of his mission trips. While he was there, someone had desecrated the Blessed Sacrament at one of his churches. When Rome reached out to them regarding what needed to be done, one of the things that was required was that the entire community do penance. To be clear, the person who desecrated the Eucharist was apparently outside of this community. Nevertheless, the Vatican said that the community was required to do penance for the outrage. The penance was partial done because the community had failed to properly evangelize or witness to the perpetrator.

But the main purpose of penance is to live out your holiness.

In penance, I live out the life of Christ in me. When I do this, I voluntarily take up the cross. I don’t do this so that I can “earn” credit towards my salvation. Instead, by doing this I am uniting myself to Jesus, my Savior. And in doing so, I make my life more like His.

A penance can be passive. For example, fasting during Lent is a way to passively not partake in our desire for food. We can also passively accept some trouble or misfortune that comes our way and offer it up in union with the cross.

But you can also have an active penance. In this way, you can take on an activity like feeding the hungry or visiting the sick. The missionary priest I mentioned earlier asked his community what penance they wanted to do. They chose to perform an ancient tradition where each person picked the heaviest stone they could carry and bring it up the nearby mountain. He said that this penance was done as a community and the event was actually quite joyous. In carrying the penance together, the whole community drew closer to the joy of God.

And key to penance is that it should be done for God. This means that if you take up a penance of cleaning, it should be done as if you are doing it for God. This particular penance would be difficult for me, because my method of cleaning is basically to shove everything in a closet or cover it with a blanket. If I did it as a penance, I wouldn’t do it in such a slip-shod manner. Instead, I put all of my best efforts because I am not cleaning for myself, but for God.

A penance can be many things: it can be fasting, writing letters to the homebound, gardening, giving an hour of your expertise to help anohter, working a food bank, going to mass at a shrine, attending a funeral mass for someone, memorizing a new prayer, studying a book of the Bible, wake up at an early hour to prayer, a technology fast, domestic cleaning, going out of your way to help someone feel special, going on pilgrimage, etc. As you can see, there are many varied ways to live out your holiness so you can find one that is best at bringing your closer to God.

There are three things a penance should have:

You can read the whole article here.

Sunday Best: 100 Funniest Movies Of All Time

 

Recently, Variety published their 100 Greatest Comedies of All Time.  I saw a lot of websites comment on the list on how right or wrong they were.

This made me think of what would put on my own list.  However my mine is different.  Instead of "The 100 Greatest Comedies of All Time,"  these are the "100 Funniest Movies of All Time."  A comedy movie can be great without being the funniest.  For example, Life is Beautiful is one of the greatest films I have ever seen and it is at times very funny.  But the reason it is so great is that it uses the humor tell a story that is beautifully heartbreaking.  In the same way, Wag the Dog is a brilliant movie that uses comedy to make incisive commentary about modern politics.  But I usually don't watch specifically for the laughs.

So my list consists of the 100 movies that make me laugh the most.

A few notes:

1. Comedy is SUBJECTIVE.  You may not find my list of movies funny.  That is fine with me.  There are several movies that are comedy classics that didn't make my list (like Dr. Strangelove) that others think are hysterical, but really don't make me laugh.

2. This is indifferent to the MORAL CONTENT.  I know a number of devout Catholics who cannot help but laugh at movies like Blazing Saddles.  This does not mean that the movie is morally good.  It just means that the jokes are funny, even if they are inappropriate.  You will find some raunchy comedies on my list, only for the simple reason that they honestly make me laugh.

3. This list is in FLUX.  Because comedy is subjective, there are times when some of these movies make laugh a lot more than they do now.  This isn't just a matter of age, but it could be a simple matter of mood.  There are times when the old timey comedy wit really hits my funny bone and sometimes I just want some insane slapstick.  I don't imagine that if I make this same list in 5 years that it would be exactly the same.

So below is my list.  Anything highlighted in yellow are films that are also found on Variety's list.  

1	Monty Python and the Holy Grail
2	Airplane!
3	Noises Off...
4	UHF
5	A Night at the Opera
6	The 40-Year-Old-Virgin
7	Without a Clue
8	Ted
9	Ed Wood
10	The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad
11	Clue
12	The Court Jester
13	Top Secret
14	Animal Crackers
15	Duck Soup
16	Brain Donors
17	Ghostbusters
18	Spies Like Us
19	A Fish Called Wanda
20	Spaceballs
21	What's Up Doc?
22	Shaun of the Dead
23	Dodgeball
24	Game Night
25	Airplane 2: The Sequel
26	The Naked Gun 2 and 1/2
27	Stripes
28	Three Amigos
29	Foul Play
30	Dragnet
31	Couples Retreat
32	See No Evil, Hear No Evil
33	Real Genius
34	Sleepless in Seattle
35	Swingers
36	Much Ado About Nothing (1993)
37	Black Dynamite
38	When Harry Met Sally
39	Coming to America
40	Better Off Dead
41	One Crazy Summer
42	The Simpsons Movie
43	Ghostbusters 2
44	Shaolin Soccer
45	The Gold Rush
46	Hot Shots Part Deux
47	About and Costello Meet Frankenstein
48	The Big Store
49	A Day at the Races
50	Deadpool and Wolverine
51	Scrooged
52	Beverly Hills Cop
53	Beverly Hills Cop 2
54	3 Idiots
55	Kung Fu Panda
56	Groundhog Day
57	What Women Want
58	Grown Ups
59	Twins
60	Kung Fu Hustle
61	Galaxy Quest
62	Wayne's World
63	Billy Madison
64	Get Smart
65	Father of the Bride
66	Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
67	The Golden Child
68	Back to School
69	History of the World Part I
70	The Odd Couple
71	Seems Like Old Times
72	Father of the Bride 2
73	Sopadish
74	Arthur 2: On the Rocks
75	Bad Medicine
76	Room Service
77	Deadpool
78	Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
79	Hot Fuzz
80	Kindergarten Cop
81	This is Spinal Tap
82	Blended
83	Grumpy Old Men
84	Harlem Nights
85	Fletch Lives
86	Who's Harry Crumb
87	Men at Work
88	Horse Feathers
89	The Cocoanuts
90	Happy Gilmore
91	Liar, Liar
92	Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
93	Office Space
94	Young Frankenstein
95	Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
96	Good Morning Vietnam
97	Tommy Boy
98	While You Were Sleeping
99	The Great Muppet Caper
100	The Hangover

St. Andrew Novena Starts Tomorrow - 2025

 Much of what is below is a repost from years earlier.

I think about St. Andrew quite a bit.  He was one of the first four called by Christ.  It was James, John, Andrew and Andrew's brother Peter.  But of that quartet, only the trio of Peter, James, and John ended up being Jesus' closest friends.

I wonder if Andrew was like us and got jealous.  According to the Gospel of John, it was Andrew who brought Peter to the Lord, and the Lord seemed to like Peter better.  How often have we introduced a sibling or friend to our inner circle only to have them become more popular or have a greater aptitude for what you enjoy?

But I bet that Andrew was better than most of us.  He was probably a model of humility.  I like to imagine that he was happy for his brother and he was content to have others loved and esteemed more than himself.

My favorite story is about when he died.  They tied him to the cross, but for days and days he preached non-stop to the point where the officials realized it was doing them more harm than good.

But when they came to take him down, Andrew looked at Jesus and told him he was tired and he just wanted to go home to heaven and be with Him.  So the soldiers were unable to take him down and Andrew finally went home to the Jesus and his brother Peter on November 30th 60 AD.


Tomorrow is the feast of St. Andrew.  And there is a special novena prayer that is prayed between now and Christmas.  It goes as follows:

St. Andrew Christmas Novena

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment in which the Son of God was born Of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in the piercing cold. In that hour vouchsafe, I beseech Thee, O my God, to hear my prayer and grant my desires through the merits of Our Savior Jesus Christ, and of His blessed Mother. Amen.

That prayer is prayed 15 times a day until the ends.  My wife and I pray this together every year and have found many graces through the intercession of St. Andrew.  I pray that all of you do as well.

God Bless.

Thanks for Nothing (repost 2025)

    

 I am very grateful for all of the wonderfully positive feedback on this essay, so I thought I would share it again.

While the challenges of every day life don't stop coming, it can be so easy to get lost in the daily work.  So often we "just get through" the day, but when we do that, we don't pay attention to all the blessings that the day is providing.  

Over this past year I've tired to be more aware of those blessings as they are happening so that I can be more present to God and others.  I don't know how successful I have been, but on a day like today, I will redouble my efforts.

With that in mind, please enjoy this repost.

Happy Thanksgiving!

(originally published November 22, 2012)

Thanks For Nothing

When I was 15-years-old, I got a little sick.  In what was obviously an over-reaction on his part, my dad took me to the Emergency Room.  As it turned out, I had pneumonia and my blood oxygen level was down to about 50%.  If he had waited much longer to take me I might have died.

I share this with you so that you will understand why I am a little bit of a hypochondriac now.  I don't freak out at every sneeze or obsessively lather myself in Purell.  But whenever I have chronic problem, I begin to have a persistent fear of the worst.

For the past 4 weeks I've had a persistent cough.  I cannot remember having one that has lasted this long.  So of course, my mind helplessly gravitated to the worst case scenarios, despite the constant assurances from my long-suffering wife.  After weeks of fretting, I went yesterday morning for a chest X-ray.

After they were taken, I was asked to wait for a moment alone in the exam room.  I stood there for 5 minutes in that room with its claustrophobic white walls and antiseptic smell and thought about all those people who came to that room and got bad news that resulted in a lot more time between claustrophobic white walls and antiseptic smells.

Finally, after hours of fretting (and trying to distract myself with a viewing of Wreck-It Ralph) we got the results.

And what did they find?

Nothing.

They found nothing.  I was worried about nothing.

I was put on some new medication and I've been feeling a bit better.

I didn't realize how much the storm clouds had been hovering over me until today.  I was walking around, doing chores and errands with such a light heart.  It was because I knew that my cough, though a bit annoying, was ultimately nothing.

Nothing.

Today is Thanksgiving.  It has always been one of my favorite holidays, and not because I eat enough turkey to put a man twice my size into a literal coma (although that is a plus).  I love that we take time out of our year to appreciate the blessings of life and give thanks to our Provider.

My boss, a man I greatly admire, once said to me that you cannot be truly happy unless you are truly thankful.  Happiness only comes when you acknowledge that everything thing you have is a gift from God.

I have tried to take those words to heart and be thankful for everything I have.  I have an holy wife, a loving family, loyal friends, a fulfilling job, and more action figures than you can shake a stick at (if that's your idea of a good time).  Bing Crosby sang that we should count our blessings instead of sheep.  But I never get to the end of count because God has been so very generous to me.

But all this time I have been overlooking something else to be thankful for.

Nothing.

I wrote earlier about how much I have come to realize what a blessing it is to feel normal.  But I did not take it the necessary step further.

There is nothing wrong with my lungs.  But it could have been something.  And that something could have been not-so-bad to catastrophic.  But God, in His goodness, gave me nothing.

About 2 years ago I was on the highway on my way to work in the middle of winter.  I was in the left lane when I noticed a car had skidded off the road.  I tried to get a better look, but I must have not been paying attention to the road.  Because I then hit a patch of ice and my car spun out and did a 180 degree turn that hurled me across the other lane.  And do you know what I hit?

Nothing.

For one of the only times I can remember, there were no cars around me on that part of the road.  I skidded off to the right embankment facing the opposite direction.  But I was fine.  Nothing happened.

A few weeks ago during Hurricane Sandy, the wind was so strong it blew down a tree in my back yard.  What did it hit?

Nothing.

A little to right and it would have destroyed my shed.  If it fell in the opposite direction it would have caved in the roof and crushed my wife and I.  But instead, nothing happened.

This world is so full of darkness and danger, disease and disaster.  Some of it falls on us.  But a lot of it doesn't.

So today I'm going to give thanks not only for the all of the things God has given me this past year, but I'll also praise Him for the "nothings" too.

No sudden falls down the stairs that break a limb.  No food poisoning from that new restaurant.  No angry student deciding to respond to his detention with his fist.  No home burglary in the middle of the night.  No careless accident to hurt anyone I love.

I do have my share of crosses, many of them of my own making, but I have not been crushed by them. And I am not saying that any of the aforementioned catastrophes won't one day be mine to bear.  One day, an X-ray may find something.

But not today.

Today, I am thankful for nothing.

Film Review: Wicked - For Good

 

Sexuality/Nudity Mature

Violence Acceptable

Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Mature

Wicked: For Good is an emotional and ultimately satisfying conclusion to this epic movie musical.

SPOILERS BELOW FOR WICKED: PART ONE

The story picks up some time after the events of Wicked: Part One.  Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) is an outlaw trying to expose the lies of the Wizard (Jeff Goldblum).  Glinda (Ariana Grande) is the poster girl for the regime and tries to smooth things out between the two sides when she can.  She is also engaged to the increasingly conflicted Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), with tension simmering underneath.  As all of Elphaba's efforts seem in vain, she makes a last attempt to confront or even compromise with Glinda and the Wizard, which leads to tragic results.

Just as with the first movie, what makes this film work are the musical numbers and the performance by Erivo.  Composer Stephen Schwartz even added a couple of original songs, but they don't really add much to the story.  But when the music and the performance match, it is movie magic (pun intended).  This is especially the case with Erivo's powerhouse voice in "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" and in her duet with Grande of the title song "For Good."  That last one in particular is the emotional catharsis of the entire story that got me very emotional.  For that alone, I think the movie is worth it.

The difficulty with this film is that it is Act Two of a 2-part musical.  As is often the case as in shows like Camelot or West Side Story, the first half is lighter and happier while the second is dark and tragic.  The juxtoposition of the two creates a pwerful and balanced emoitonal experience.  But splitting the film into two movies, most of the fun numbers (e.g. "Popular," "The Wizard and I," "Dancing Through Life," etc) are in the previous film.  As a result, this film is a little lopsided towards the tragic.

The other performances in the movie are a mixed bag.  Grande is better in this film than in the first.  There is one part in particular where Elphaba asks Glinda to look at her "not with your eyes, but with theirs," refering to the crods that hate her.  There is a subtle and strong emotional shift that occurs in Grande's experession that I didn't think she was capable of doing, but there you are.  Bailey does a good job of showing Fiyero's emotional arc and his chemistry with both Grande and Erivo is good.  Michelle Yeoh as Madame Morrible was tolerable in the first film, but as this movie requires more of her, she does not seem connected to ramping emotionality of the piece.  Goldblum plays the humbug as well as in the first film, but you can see him getting wrapped up and spun around in his own machinations.  The Wizard needs a powerful emotional turn to his character, but he is given very little to work with from the script, but Goldblum does it like the pro that he is.  Ethan Slater as Boq and Marissa Bode as Nessarose turn in good performances, but their characters feel so different in emotion from the first.  It would have been nice to spend a little more time on this slow devolution, though this is a problem that the stage musical has as well.

Returning to Boq and Nessarose, I love how the movie shows how love is corrupted by possessiveness.  There is no doubt that Nessarose has deep affection for Boq, but instead of being moved to selflessness, she turns inward to selfishness, trying to capture the feelings from when she originally fell in love.  This turns the person who is loved into an object of obsession, there only to service the emotional needs of the lover.  The movie captures this corruption very well.  

And as with the first movie, I think this is a wonderful example of female friendship.  Despite all the ways that their choices spilt them apart, Elphaba and Glinda really do love each other.  And it is a clear love of friendship, without it being mixed with romance.  There is a power to seeing this type of friendship, which has its ups and downs, but ultimately transforms into charity.  In the end, Elphaba only seeks the good for Glinda and Glinda seeks the good of Elphaba.  When Nessarose tells Boq that she loves him, it feels hollow because it has been tainted.  When Elphaba and Glinda declare their love, it works because it is pure.

I was a bit annoyed that they introduced sexuality into the Oz universe.  I know that this film is supposed to be a more mature and darker take on this universe.  But it felt a bit unnecessary, considering how many little children were in attendance in the show I saw.  It isn't graphic, but it is very clear that two characters are moving towards sex as the sing and slowly undress.

Director Jon M. Chu was overlooked for Oscar awards last year, but I'm hoping the Academy does not make the same mistake.  The production design is as good as the first and he is able to incorporate the CGI in a way that brings Oz to life in a way that is believable.  As I said about the original, he stages the musical numbers in a way where it doesn't feel like you are watching a music video, but he captures the big, bold choreography of the stage.  He also knows how to frame a scene and when to linger.  There is a moment between the two main characters and closed door that holds for an unusually long time.  But the composition punctuates the entire tragic emotion of the scene and gives the characters a proper and poignant farewell.  But as with the first one, the main critique I have is that it could have been tighter and feels just a touch long.

The two parts of Wicked really should be seen and experienced as a whole.  And as the final act of the Wicked saga, Wicked: For Good satisfies.