"Secretariat" movie review

An enjoyable movie for anyone who enjoys horses! The racing action is very exciting, and all the more thrilling for Secretariat having really done it!

The only real downer, to me, was that Penny (Secretariat's owner) seems to put her horse responsibilities above her family responsibilities, and, isn't depicted as having a very close relationship with her husband. They treat each other more like politely kind brother and sister. It's partly the fault of the husband being a very bland actor, I believe, and another of the movie's focus being on her and the horse, thus leaving little time for development and better understanding of her family life. So no real objections, just a sense of dissatisfaction with that aspect. Watch the movie for the horse story, not the human story, and you'll be fine.

As far as genuine objectionable content, all I have to say is that in one sequence, one of the daughters is wearing a pair of pretty short shorts. The movie is rated PG for "brief mild language" but I'm honestly not sure what that refers to. I didn't catch it, wherever it came up.

The cast in the "horse world" is excellent. The trainer, the groom, and the jockey "make the movie" in my opinion! And I was pleased to find out the actor who portrayed the jockey is a Christian! I was told that the director is a Christian, too, but I haven't researched it for myself. Scripture does open the movie! A passage from Job, concerning horses. It is the best movie opening ever! So cool how they did it! You should watch the beginning, if no more. :)

This movie goes down on my "recommended" list, for the sake of the clean content and exciting horse action.

Inception (PG-13)

First, my completely biased opinion: one of the most amazing, thought-provoking, well-filmed and fascinating movies that I have ever seen. I immediately wanted to go back into the theater and watch it again. The plot is so detailed and unique. I really enjoyed it. I highly recommend it to the older teen/adult who enjoys that sort of mysterious science-fiction.

I really don't want to spoil the plot, so unless you're unsure about seeing it and want to know the gory details of all the negatives in the plot, don't read any farther. The first negative is the amount of violence. Much of it is in dreams, so the "people" being "killed" are actually just projections of the dreamers subconscious, and not actually "real" people being killed. It still looks like real violence, though. Second, God's name is abused, and there are several other curse words, but it wasn't the worst language that I remember for a PG-13 movie. Third, there aren't really any good guys, as the main characters are thieves, trespassing in and stealing from people's minds. The main issue for me, though, was the suicide aspect. In dreams, suicide "wakes you up." One character, having experienced the effect of suicide in a dream, comes to believe that real life is still a dream, and to really wake up and see their "real" children, decides to commit suicide again, and tries to convince the spouse to do the same. The character succeeds in suicide, but the spouse doesn't try and tries to save the other character unsuccessfully. As you can imagine, that is tragic. Also, the effect that this movie might have on people of suicidal tendencies or just people in general who might not have a Christian viewpoint on life, death and the afterlife is worrying. However, all that aside, I would still recommend this movie to anyone sane who wouldn't have an issue with the violence and language. It was pretty clean for a PG-13 movie, but I don't recommend it for children under 13 at all.

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

All the well-known superheros have been revamped, CGI-ed and epic-ified. And so, they moved on to the well-known detective, Sherlock Holmes and his side-kick, Watson. Sherlock was played by Robert Downey Jr. and portrayed in much more of an "awesome" light than ever before.

I thought the movie was very well filmed. I liked the angles, the lighting and the CGI shots (which I guess qualifies as filming?) immensely. It had a good mystery feel, although I thought the plot could have had more depth. There were some disturbing images (involving some scenes that contained apparent witch craft) and one not-so-modest scene, but amazingly, a pretty clean movie.

I recommend it for anyone old enough to deal with witch-crafty stuff. It's not the most fantastic movie I've ever seen, but it's really near the top of my "fun-to-watch-not-really-deep" movies list.

Jane Austen

I read Pride and Prejudice first at age 12. That was just the kind of thing I did. I am a homeschooler, and my mom began teaching me to read when I was five. She always bragged about my reading skills, and I took pride in reading books that were supposed to be over my head. I usually didn’t understand them on the level they were meant to be understood, but I could grasp the story. Since Pride and Prejudice was a rather long and boring story in my 12-year-old opinion, I didn’t bother reading anything else by Jane Austen. Most people were awed enough by my having read Pride and Prejudice, anyway. However, when I was 13, I watched the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice (and that was before the Keira Knightley version was filmed) and decided to read the book again.

By age 14 I had begun to understand the nuances of human interaction enough to be enthralled by Austen’s amazing descriptions and understanding of her characters. They didn’t just come to life, they leapt off the page and turned my world into theirs. I didn’t stop with Pride and Prejudice, I read all her works, and I finished them all too soon. I watched the movies, but couldn’t enjoy them unless every detail was as she’d described it.

I went with trepidation to see the “new” Pride and Prejudice movie starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen. I was certain they couldn’t possibly have done Austen’s work justice, but I was wondering how horribly it had been butchered. At the conclusion, I determined that it completely destroyed Jane Austen's story; it had been turned into just another sappy romantic movie that wasn’t for intellectuals, but for females who needed something to watch while they sipped sodas, munched popcorn and devoured chocolate.

But then, on April 1st, 2009, the worst disgrace of all was released. “Pride and Prejudice and ZOMBIES?!?!?!” I screamed, “ZOMBIES?! Really?!?!?” How could anyone so maliciously disgrace Jane Austen’s most popular novel by mixing ZOMBIES in with her classic, genteel story? Some of my friends read it, and tried to tell me about it, but I couldn’t listen.

That’s when I declared myself what I have been, and always will be: A loyal Jane Austen devotee.

Austen’s stories are not romantic stories; they are studies of human character. She understood people, and she describes the reasons behind her characters’ behaviors clearly. So clearly that you realize you’ve seen the same behavior in people that you are around, and your vague feeling about their motivations is exactly explained by Austen’s gently mocking narration.

The very first sentence of Pride and Prejudice is the well-known line “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man of good fortune must be in want of a wife.” Out of context, that first sentence appears to be Austen’s own view of single men of good fortune. But the very next sentence reads, “However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering the neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.” If you do not instantly comprehend the sarcasm overflowing from Jane’s pen, then you don’t deserve to read another word of her book.

Jane Austen did not write flat, surface stories, like many novels are today. There’s the story, and then there’s the development of her characters, the intricacies of the plot, and her own sardonic explanations of the way life was “supposed to be.” And yes, they all contain romances, because romance is a big part of living. And the hero and heroine get a happy ending because it’s supposed to be entertainment… and what good is entertainment if you end up sad? But the point of the story is not the romance; the point is seeing Lizzy overcome her prejudice and Darcy overcome his pride. Or watching Emma learn the problems with matchmaking, Catherine growing up and Elinor trying to take care of her family after her father's death. And that is what makes every Jane Austen worth reading at least 3 times.

~Lizzie

Marley and Me

I watched this a couple of weeks ago, on DVD.  My guess is that most everyone has already seen it, but I am going to write a review anyways, whether you like it or not.  It just took a while to get the time to do it, and then figure out exactly what I am going to say.  Actually, I'm still not sure exactly.  Oh, well.  Here goes nothing!

WARNING: MANY, MANY SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!

The Plot:

Owen Wilson plays John Grogan, a married man who was not prepared for his new wife's ticking biological clock.  To hold off Jennifer Grogan's (Jennifer Aniston) longing for a child, John takes her to go pick out a new puppy at a local farm, as suggested by John's bachelor, womanizing friend Sebastian (Eric Dane).  The puppy they end up taking home was the "clearance puppy", the one who was significantly cheaper than all the rest.  They soon learn why.  The dog, Marley, has behavior problems from the start, and grows into a very large, completely untrained Labrador Retriever.  Meanwhile, John, a reporter, gets a job offer at his local Florida paper - his boss offers him a column, believing his writing style to better fit that of a columnist.  John slightly reluctantly accepts, but soon learns to love his new position and uses Marley as the inspiration for many of his pieces.  After a while, the Grogans resolve that they are ready to have children.  Unfortunately, their first success ends in a devastating miscarriage, but soon Jennifer becomes pregnant again, and gives birth to a baby boy named Patrick.  They go on to have two more children, Conor and Colleen.  There are many difficulties at first, a lot which Marley seems to be at the bottom of, and throughout the beginning there are fights and avoidances and everything you could expect to find any couple going through.  One day, John gets a job offer at a paper in Pennsylvania, and after discussing it with his wife, they uproot and make the move to a big, old house on a beautiful piece of land right outside of the city.  There John truly grows into a family man, even when he is put down by his old friend Sebastian when he runs into him one day on the way back from work.  But, as all dogs do, Marley is getting old.  After years of destroying everything in sight, making as much noise as possible, romping around uncontrollably, and all around being the "world's worst dog", Marley is slowing down significantly.  After a repeated case of Marley needing surgery, John finally makes the decision that his beloved family dog must be put down.  Marley is, and the family mourns, knowing that Marley has a special place in their hearts and has made a big impact on their family, for the better, even if he was, as John called him, "the world's worst dog."  

What I liked:

It was realisticly written.  I found out just now, doing a little research to remember the people's names, that the movie is actually based off of an autobiography of the same title, by the same John Grogan.  Jennifer Aniston actually did not annoy me too much with her acting.  I liked how it pushed the idea of family and purposefully made John's friend Sebastian's way of life look unfulfilling and purposeless, unlike most Hollywood films, which do just the opposite.  

What I didn't like:

I did not really like, in the beginning, how John Grogan had just gotten married, and here he was trying to manipulate his wife into waiting a year or two to have kids!  And it worked!  And everyone was fine!  I really, really detest that Sebastian guy...what a loser.  First of all I am quite adament about couples talking about "when to have children" before getting married so that there is no misunderstanding, and secondly, I really hate it when guys are portrayed like that.  It is the norm, possibly, but that kind of gives the impression that it is manly to want to still be independant and not tied down after marriage, and that is not the case.  There are guys who agree with me....right?  

And another thing.  This movie, though PG-rated, contained way more sexual implications than it should have, dialogue and otherwise.  Sure, it was all between a husband and wife, but that stuff should still be kept between married people and not broadcast for the entire non-married population to see, especially kids that parents thought they were bringing to a family movie.  Fortunately, I watched this with my grandma, screening it before everyone else in my family, who, from my oral reviews, have decided not to watch it.  Still, it was too much than even a simple scene or two that could be fast-forwarded; it was prominent in the plot and kept coming back.  

The last thing I did not like about it was that it contained a bit of crude humor here and there, some not appropriate for anyone under the age of 15 or so.  I know the screenwriters just threw it in there for a few easy laughs, so it bugged me.  

My Overall Impression:

It made me laugh at most of the "right" parts and definitely did a good job a drawing tears. Altoghether a very well done film, really.  I just did not find it as appropriate for a family audience as I had hoped, as I had gone into Blockbuster that afternoon looking for something that would specifically allow me to watch it through without having to keep my hand on the remote the entire time and fastforward half of it, and I thought that "Marley and Me" was the ticket.  It would have been fine, I think, had it not been so littered with sexual innuendos and whatnot.  A real tear-jerker, though.  If you don't want to be sad and/or cry uncontrolably, don't watch it.  :)