A Couple Movies

During the past couple of nights, I saw District 9 and Crazy Hearts. Since I have nothing else to do right now (except write up some HW), I suppose I'll write about them.

District 9 was the first anti gun control movie I think I've ever seen. The message was very subtle; so subtle that I doubt it was intentional. The movie depicts these aliens that, as the movie progresses, are shown to be very sympathetic. They are almost human in temperament, but way smarter. The humans, while in the beginning trying to be humane, wind up sticking all the aliens in a ghetto. To control the alien population, the humans monitor the aliens by not allowing them to reproduce (unless they have a license) or own weapons of any sort. The message is right there: if you want to completely control a population, take their guns away and restrict their reproduction abilities. The only problem I saw with the movie was that they tried to help the aliens. If a giant alien spaceship showed up over my town, I'd want to blow the living daylights out of it. A historical parallel to this is the Europeans showing up on the shores of America. If the natives killed off the more advanced Europeans, the native Americans would probably still exist. Instead, they have small pieces of land designated to them by the US government. That is what they get from being helpful and welcoming the incoming Europeans. I would hope that humans would learn from history and not make the same mistake the Native Americans did.

As for Crazy Hearts, that was just good acting. Both Harry and Chris thought the story was formulaic and overdone. It may be overdone, but I thought there were enough differences to say that it wasn't formulaic. I also don't really know what they mean when they say formulaic - but I don't care enough to try defining it. I think they meant that after Ray and Walk the Line, there were enough movies about country/southern musicians and their drug problems. To quote Mark: "Screw you!" It was a good movie and enjoyable (though uncomfortable at times) to watch. You really feel for Bad Blake (played by Jeff Bridges). I also thought the end wasn't very predictable, mostly because I was waiting for a twist and there really wasn't one (a twist in itself? who knows...).

So that's what I've been doing with my life. And eating Skyline. I've got to get as much Skyline as possible before I leave next August. Since I have a place to go, I can legitimately say that. :)