SUCK MY DISC

DVDs and Blu-Rays for the week of July 5th, 2011

OF GODS AND MEN

3.5 STARS

 

“Of Gods and Men” is essentially “West Side Story”, without all of that annoying singing and snapping. Here, the Jets are Albanian monks who spend their days doing monk like things. They garden, they heal, they meet in rooms and talk, they pray. And then they pray. And then they pray. If their God is their girlfriend, he is the neediest bitch I’ve ever seen. No one knows what God will do if they don’t check in every hour to let Him know that they love him, and Girlfriend only knows they’ll never find out. Everything is peaceful, and life is good for Brother Christian (really?), the newly appointed leader of the monks.

 

 

 

And then we get to the Sharks of the story. They’re terrorists. Fucking middle eastern terrorists. Now, right away, we’re being told who to root for. Maybe the movie could have given us more of a chance to choose which jersey we’re going to wear, but they chose not to. They make the monks the good guys and the terrorists the bad guys. Real ballsy, movie. The problem is that the terrorists need some medicine. Terrorizing, even twenty years ago when this movie takes place, can get a little dangerous. But the monks don’t want to give up their medicine. They think it should be used to heal non-terrorist people. Got it? Monks medicine. Terrorists none. Monks good. Terrorists bad. And then wackiness, as it always does, ensues.

 

 

 

The movie takes a little bit to get going; it has the same slow and methodical pace that the lives of the monks do. Once the monks come to the realization that the countdown is on, and they have a limited time to decide whether they should abandon or defend their post before the terrorists get there, the pacing of the movie doesn’t change, but you can still feel the tension dripping through the walls. This is no small feat. Although I don’t think that “Of Gods and Men” is easily appreciated by your average action film fan, for the audience that can hang with the pacing, the second act then becomes exponentially more rewarding. But a tightly wound second act barely scratches the surface of what this movie has to offer.

 

 

 

Any movie that handles religion, or characters whose lives are religion, automatically brings up questions and controversy. The questions don’t even have to be as black and white as is there a God or not, but also what is an appropriate degree of faith. Are these people taking their religion too far? One man’s atheist is another man’s evangelist. When they use religion to make their decisions, are they rationalizing, or do they really believe what they are saying? It’s especially tricky when you think about how interpretive religion is.  Without giving any spoilers (although it is a true story. You could just look it up), the monks meet early in the movie to decide whether they should flee their home base or not. Some of the men think they should leave, some don’t. But each of them use God as their lawyer in defending their case. The film does hold the monks in a heroic high regard, certainly more than the terrorists, but it also allows you to make your own comparisons regarding the beliefs and convictions of the monks and terrorists without ever jamming it down your throat.

 

 

 

A good movie will pose a question for their audience, and show the audience all of their options without holding their hand into making a decision. A great movie allows the audience to pull their own question from it, offering dozens of moral and ethical quandaries. None of them are as easy as monks good terrorists bad. But allow yourself to jump to conclusions as soon as possible. That way you can let the movie fuck with your brain as it moves along. If the movie still seems slow after the first thirty minutes or so, then you’re just not paying attention.

 

ALSO RELEASED

RATATOUILLE, WALL-E, AND UP

3.5 STARS

Disney is re-releasing all three of these movies this week, because it looks like they haven’t re-released them in a couple months or so, so it must be time. These three are perfect choices for people who can’t understand why Pixar would even make a sequel to cars, much less make it be so dumb. It doesn’t look like there is any added extras to this, except these new covers, which I’m sure Disney believes is worth at least $24.99.

 

OVERBOARD – 2.5 STARS

THE CUTTING EDGE – 1.5 STARS

If you ever meet someone who says that one of these movies is their favorite film of all time, there are really only two scenarios: 1) This person is roughly my age, and a girl. 2) This person was in some sort of war and had most of their brains blown out of the back of their head. “Overboard” is O.K., and it’s timeless themes of fraud, lying, and rape still hold up today. “The Cutting Edge”, however, has almost no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Thankfully it’s now on Blu-Ray, where you can wish you were dead in HD.

Oh wait – this movie does have one redeeming quality. When you say leading man’s name D.B. Sweeney, it sounds like you’re saying “D.B.’s weenie”. Always hilarious.

 

-Ryan Haley