Transcendence Review

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Rotten Tomatoes: 19%

Opening Weekend: $10.9m

Rated: PG-13
Sexual Content: 2/10
Violence: 6/10
Profanity: 7/10 F one time, some uses of S, B, A, and D.
Drugs/Alcohol: 4/10

IMDb: As Dr. Will Caster works toward his goal of creating an omniscient, sentient machine, a radical anti-technology organization fights to prevent him from establishing a world where computers can transcend the abilities of the human brain.

Transcendence explores the dangers of technology.  This could have been a great, but everything that was built up to be awesome, withered and fell apart.  I really wanted to like this movie!  Even the love story between the two was interesting until about the middle.  In my opinion they would have done better to split this story into two or three movies.  That would have made the third act much more enthralling and interesting.

Transcendence also tries to show the power of love.  Evelyn Caster will stop at nothing to save her dying husband even if it means uploading his conscious to a AI system.  When it proved to be a success there was the question of whether or not the system was really him.  That question lingers until the very end of the movie.  Once he is online then he essentially becomes a perfect being and you wonder if the AI version of him has the capability to love Evelyn back.  

With seeing what Will Caster does with his new power, I found myself pondering human error and what a good thing that is.  If we all were able to upload our brains to the internet so that all the information out there was accessible from our minds, would there be room for human error?  A fourth grader could access all the answers to his multiple choice questions on his math test.  If you wanted to be a helicopter pilot, you could just find the files on the internet that contain all the information about the helicopter and how to fly it and there you go; they are in your brain instantly.  Part of the joy in life is being able to learn, grow, stretch, reach, mess up, start over,and finally complete our goals.  This makes us better people.  If we take out the experiences we go through and we reach our goals without that I think that we would become unsatisfied.  Hard work, effort, and human error; all these things are there for us to struggle through this life and ultimately live a life that would bring us joy.

Transcendence is a 4/10

The Other Woman Review

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Rotten Tomatoes: 44%

Opening: April 25th

Rated: PG-13
Sexual Content: 7/10
Violence: 4/10
Profanity: 6/10 - 1 F mouthed not voiced.  Various S and A and B.  A man is flipped off once.
Drugs/Alcohol: 9/10 - Lots of drinking.

IMDb: After discovering her boyfriend is married, Carly soon meets the wife he's been cheating on. And when yet another affair is discovered, all three women team up to plot mutual revenge on the three-timing SOB.

I'm not a fan of movies about people cheating on their spouses.  That being said I thought it was respectable to see Carly (Camron Diaz) drop the guy she had been dating after she found out he was married.  She was falling in love with him, yet he was married so she dropped him.  She had a line drawn and would not cross it showing that she had some moral standards.   

So, as you can probably tell, this got me thinking about boundaries.  When I was a kid I didn't have to have my own boundaries because my parents set them for me.  They were known for a different name, and I didn't particularly like them, but they did keep me safe. Yep, Rules! As an adult there are no boundaries so we set them for themselves.  Why do we do this?  Well, I suppose it is to keep ourselves safe.  That is what Carly did when she dropped that guy in the movie.  If only she was a little more stricter with her standards she could have saved herself a lot of embarrassment.

Nicki Minaj was annoying, but we knew that before she was even in movies right. I give this one a 5/10.

Bears Review

Rotten Tomatoes: 91% so far

Opening: April 18th

Rated: G

IMDb: A documentary that follows an Alaskan bear family as its young cubs are taught life's most important lessons.

This movie is about a mama bear, and it made me think about moms.  So I want to dedicate this post to my mom who is my favorite mama bear.  Happy early Mother's Day mom!

The love of a mother is one of the greatest things in life.  There is no doubt in my mind that I would not be where I am today if it wasn't for my own mother who encourages me.  The mama bear in this movie has to protect her cubs from danger, find food for them in harsh environments, and teach them how to open clams for the tasty bite (its not as good as salmon).  Much like the life of people, it is nice to have a mom there to teach you things, keep you safe, and prepare your food.  The mama bear's job was not an easy one, and neither is the job of our own mothers.  I recently saw a job interview on youtube.  I decided to share that video here:

After seeing that little video, I wanted to take my chance and thank my mom, and moms everywhere, for the job that you do.  You truly are remarkable people.  Oh, and mom, I love you.  See you at the Mother's Day brunch in a few weeks.

So if you enjoy bears in nature or you enjoy moms, check out Disneynature's Bears.  I give it an 8/10

Heaven is for Real Review

Rotten Tomatoes: 50%

Opening: Today!

Rated: PG
Sexual Content: 2/10
Profanity: 1/10
Violence: 2/10 (medical situations)
Drugs/Alcohol: 0/10

IMDb: A small-town father must find the courage and conviction to share his son's extraordinary, life-changing experience with the world.

Heaven is for Real is based on a book written about actual events that took place in a small Nebraska town.  The book was published in 2010 and was a New York bestseller.  It was written by Todd Burpo (The little boy's father) and Lynn Vincent.  The book tells how the boy began saying he had visited heaven.

Have you ever been afraid?  I recall instances when I was young and finding myself in the dead of night, scared hoping for something to soothe my nerves.  I've grown out of that kind of thing now, but as an adult I have experienced different kinds of fears.  My thoughts turn to times of great need, when life seemed to be out of my control and there was intense uncertainty of my future.  Right now my life seems to be a little more balanced. I look back at those times of uncertainty and fear, and I almost feel like much of the fear that I was experiencing was unnecessary.  As long as I take a stand and march through those storms, I eventually make it through, and everything turns out okay.  At least it has so far.

I think faith is a wonderful thing, but it takes work to obtain.  As a child, I was afraid at night because of some unforeseen thing and it just seemed like morning would never come.  The hours slowly passed and eventually I would see the first rays of sunshine and know that everything was okay.  These were faith building moments.  I came to know that although it might seem that the sun would never rise, it always did, and I could trust that. 

Heaven is for Real is about the trials of developing faith in Christ.  A father asks his son if he will be afraid, and his son replies, "as long as I am with you, I wont be afraid".  The little boy already had faith in his father.  Later in the movie, after his near death experience, the boy will help his father through those trials of developing faith in Jesus Christ.  He tells his dad, "we don't ever have to be afraid".  Why? Perhaps through his near death experience he realized that heaven is like waiting for the sun to rise in the dead of night.  Whether you are afraid or not, Heaven is there so why be afraid?  It was interesting to see what trials the father had to go through to cement his faith in Christ.

I give this one a 6/10                        

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Review

 Rotten Tomatoes: 50%

Opening Weekend: $13m

Rated: PG
Sexual Content: 4/10
Violence: 3/10
Profanity: 5/10 S-1, A-2, 3^rd Commandment broken on one occasion
Drugs/Alcohol: 4/10

In my personal opinion, this movie should have been nominated for best film at the Academy Awards and maybe have even won.  I found The Secret Life of Walter Mitty to be way better than Gravity or 12 Years a Slave, but that is just me. 

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty comes from a short story written for The New Yorker by James Thurber in 1939.  It was made into a film first in 1947 starring Danny Kaye.  The 2013 version of the film is tells a very different story of the likable daydreamer.  After losing an important negative containing the picture for the cover of the last Life Magazine to be issued, Walter finds himself adventuring through unknown lands in search of the photographer.

Walter is a very imaginative guy.  He imagines himself doing astonishing things. However, his real life does not start until he jumps into a helicopter piloted by a very drunk man.  He takes a risk.  From that point in the story life becomes real; not imagined anymore.  Don’t we all come to this point in life where we need to decide to take a risk?  Jump onto that moving helicopter and leave our old self behind?  It takes courage to be that person we imagine we could be. 

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is about real life.  A profound quote from the movie is, “beautiful things don’t ask for attention”.  I noticed that there is a lot of product placement throughout the film that just seemed out of place. See how the Cinnabon compares to the homemade clementine cake his mom made. Also seeing a Papa Johns in scenic Iceland was almost an eyesore. Perhaps all this was intentional.  Perhaps it was to say that commercialism is not pretty because it screams for attention.  A life portrayed on Facebook or eHarmony is not real life and it is not the life that matters.  The life that matters is the one that is beautiful, the one that does not ask for attention. 

  

“To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel.  That is the purpose of life”.

 I rate this movie a 9/10