Posts tagged ‘movies’

Feb 11

Movie Quote Monday – Warm Bodies

It’s another MQM first: this movie is still in the theater. You should go see it! Right now!

You guys, I loved this movie and I’m so glad I didn’t wait for the dvd. I hadn’t planned to see it in the theater because I was sure it couldn’t be as good as the previews looked, and I hate to be disappointed. But a few people whose opinions I trust said it was awesome, so I went. And it was.

Two of those guys called Warm Bodies a Zom-Rom-Com, and I guess that’s right. The basic plot is that a zombie called R meets a girl named Julie, a girl that he just can’t kill; it’s zombie love at first sight. As R and Julie interact, R starts to change and become human again. The comedy in this movie is what I think of as quiet humor, subtle and smoothly woven into the fabric of the film rather than big jokes and gags that make you laugh out loud. I smiled most of the way through this movie – for being a zombie film, it’s sweet and charming and funny. Having said all that, while I was watching I never thought of it in terms of romantic comedy.

The powerful impression that Warm Bodies made on me is that this is a movie about being human.

In many ways it reminds me of Stranger Than Fiction, which I suppose is technically a romantic comedy. But really, both movies make huge statements about life and what it means to really live. They just wrapped it all up in a sweet and quirky romantic story, with humor and characters you can’t help but like and root for.

There were so many quotes that I could pull out of this movie, and so many topics that we could explore. Warm Bodies touches on friendship, the power of love, the importance of nurturing one another, letting go of the past, not knowing who or what we are, acceptance, redemption, and the possibility of being so far gone that your life is irredeemable. One moment that made an impression on me is how R reacts when he sees himself from a human’s perspective. I mean, what would I see if I were faced with that “truth”, with literally seeing myself through someone else’s eyes? And a big part of the movie is how the changes happening in R start spreading throughout the zombie community. R and Julie’s connection is like an anti-zombie virus. It makes you think about the power we have to effect positive change in other people’s lives.

In the end, this is the quote that stood out to me the most:

Julie: I can see you trying. That’s what people do. They do their best.

To me, that pretty much says it all. We don’t always know who we are; we don’t always see ourselves very clearly. We don’t always act in loving and accepting and nurturing ways. But there is very little – if anything – that we can’t come back from, from which we can’t be redeemed.

It’s not the end of the world if we don’t always get life “right”.

We just have to keep trying. We just have to do our best.

♦

Items of Interest:

Warm Bodies & The Meaning of Life
– Clay talks about Warm Bodies’ “complex philosophical wanderings” (while in zombie drag and eating brains)

Film Review of Warm Bodies
– JR’s overview and thoughts on Warm Bodies (with movie posters and a clip of the first 4 minutes of the film)

Warm Bodies – a (Quasi) Movie Review
– Chad sees “hints of the Gospel story” in Warm Bodies (a great analysis)

Can People Change?
– Sherideth asks 5 questions about change and redemption (interesting answers in the comments)

Warm Bodies Trailer

Feb 4

4 Comments

Movie Quote Monday – Total Recall

Matthias: The past is a construct of the mind.

This is a MQM first, but I haven’t actually seen Total Recall; what I saw was a couple of Faithgeeks videos discussing the movie and the questions it made them ask. Like last week’s Blade Runner, it was based on a story by Philip K. Dick and takes on some similar themes about humanity. Pretty interesting stuff! Of course, you guys know I think everything is interesting.

Here’s Clay:

So, questions:

What does it mean to be human? At essence, what are we?

Does the past really matter to who we are today?

Can we even trust our memories of the past?

Clay: “Who we are is not dictated by who we’ve been. We should be careful to not let the past rob us of our present.”

Here’s Karl’s response to Clay:

Questions:

If given the chance, would I add false memories or alter existing ones?

Have I moved on from my past mistakes?

Am I too focused on the future?

Karl: “I’m not defined by my past. I’m not defined by my character defects.”

We have discussed many of these questions and thoughts already over the last almost two years here at the blog, and pretty much always come to those same conclusions: that the past informs who we are but does not confine us to a specific destiny.

What I don’t remember talking about very much is how accurate our memories are. I consider conversations my sister and I have had about our childhood and how much our memories can differ. Certainly some of that is due simply to our individual perspectives. But I know that many of my memories have either magnified or mellowed with time. Or flat out changed. If my views of myself, other people and the experiences we shared are based on memories that I have “constructed” in a way that best suits me, then what does that mean for my present?

I think it boils down to what Clay and Karl are basically saying: we shouldn’t let our memories of the past completely define who we are today. Further, I would say that we need to cut other people some slack as well and not judge them solely by our memories of their past. I know I continue to see some people in terms of who they were, refusing to take into consideration who they may be now or give them credit for who they are trying to be for the future. But then, I do the same thing to myself.

I do believe that “the past is a construct of the mind,” because it’s power lies in how we choose to view it.

What are your thoughts on all this?

~~~~~

You’ve met Clay before, here and here. He blogs at Claywrites.com and that’s his book over there on the sidebar. I don’t know anything about Karl, but I already like him. Faithgeeks is basically those guys talking to each other, but they do it on video and strangers get to comment. Hmm. Anyway, you can like Faithgeeks on their Facebook page and subscribe to them on their YouTube channel. I think it’s going to be an interesting ride with these two at the wheel, but then I like ~~goofy~~ people who make me think.

.

Items of Interest:

How Our Brains Make Memories

Study Finds Memories Can Change With Each Recall

Peer Pressure Can Change Your Memories

Jan 28

15 Comments

Movie Quote Monday – Blade Runner

I recently saw Blade Runner for the first time:

In the future (2019, haha) a company has “advanced Robot evolution” to the point of being virtually indistinguishable from humans. These robots have super strength, naturally, and “at least equal” intelligence to their creators. And so of course they are used as slaves off-planet to do probably crappy and definitely dangerous work that humans don’t want to do.

In a big surprise to everyone, six of these “Replicants” mutiny, kill 23 humans and jump a shuttle back to Earth. Replicants “were designed to copy human beings in every way except their emotions.” It was estimated that after a few years they would start developing their own emotional responses, and so they were built with a four-year life span. These six Replicants have come back to Earth in search of a way to extend their lives.

It was pretty thought-provoking, and the first thing I considered was how many books and movies include robots or computers that have jumped the gap from being purely machine to having self-awareness. Some humans (at least in the fictional world) have a burning need to create sentient life by non-biological means, and I find that interesting. Why is this theme so pervasive in fiction? Why are we so fascinated with that idea?

Why, if this is a wide-spread fantasy and we can write stories in any way we want, does it almost always turn out to be humanity’s doom? Or at the least rather deadly.

Of course if a robot has self-awareness, but not compassion or empathy – you know, the kinds of things you develop when you have a childhood – then that would maybe not be a great thing.

Beyond that, it seems rather cruel to purposely create a being to have human emotions and then discount that being’s “humanity”, abusing it as though it were merely a machine.

At the end of the movie, the main Replicant antagonist laments his own death:

Roy: I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those…moments will be lost…in time…like…tears…in rain.

That seems pretty human to me – not wanting to lose your thoughts and memories, not wanting to let go of your experiences. Those are the things that build upon one another and help make you who you are, but once we’re gone, our own personal involvement in the world melts into a collective memory. Our uniqueness is lost in the downpour of human history.

So my question is, is it wrong for a conscious being to do whatever it has to do to protect its own existence?

Exactly what constitutes “life” for these artificial humans? And then to what extent is society responsible for protecting that life?

Who was really the monster: Frankenstein or the creature he brought into being?

♦

Dec 20

2 Comments

Which came first: the Book or the Movie?

It can be hard to tell nowadays. There are movies adapted from books and graphic novels, books “of the movie” (which I don’t really get), and whole series of books developed from a movie. Then there is fan fiction. Then there is fan fiction that the fans reject and so it turns into its own crazy phenomenon of mainstream soft porn and will probably eventually become a movie.

Anyhoo…

Clay Morgan posted about a movie supposedly adapted from a really great zombie apocalypse novel called World War Z. I say supposedly because judging by the trailers, it looks like the only thing they brought over from the book was the name. It wouldn’t be the first time that book rights were purchased simply for the strength of its name recognition. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t.

But it got me thinking about movies adapted from books. I started pondering which were my favorites, which were pure disappointments and all the reasons why. I figured that would make a good Query, so I started asking other people: “What’s your favorite movie that was based on a book?”