Recommending Movies

One of the things that sucks about being a minister is you're not really able to recommend movies. If you are a minister, your chin is already smacking your chest. I have made this mistake more then once.

The first time was with my parents. I had just seen the best movie. And the ironic thing was, there was minimal violence, no swearing, no birthday suits and it actually got good reviews. So the next time my parents came to town I said "you guys gotta watch Primal Fear, then I added "Richard Gere" is in it, which secured my mom's support. My dad's a pussycat, and is usually good with whatever. I just pictured my dad as a little fluffy pussy cat, tee hee. Giggle. Anyways, we all sat down, started the show and 40 minutes later the previews ended and the show began. By the 10 minute mark I had already counted 13 tisks, felt 28 eye rolls and even witnessed a full body figet. A few minutes later my dad was on his way to the video store. I was so embarassed yet at the same time. . .strangely impressed. Fitting 26 F words and 1 bloody death into a 10 minute block takes careful writing and precision planning, somebody had logged some serious overtime to craft that kind of brilliance. Ha. Hmm. Anyways, I tried to explain, which as you know is impossible at that point, what can you possibly say, although to this day I am still confused because it was so clean when I saw it on the plane.

The second time I recommended a movie was to some teens in my youth group. Actually this was not an "official recommendation" I just mentioned the movie in a talk I was giving. Well, that night 2 girls rented my mention and within 48 hrs I was trying to explain myself to parents who walked in just as the main characters were snuggling in thier birthday suits. Apparently the characters even snuggled more then once. I tried to apologize telling the parents "I forgot there was full frontal and backal nudity" but they weren't as understanding as you might think.

Anyways, you'd think I've learned but here I am about to mention two movies that I found to be earth shattering. Brilliant actually. I will say - there are some questionable parts - I love that phrase by the way "questionable parts" - what's that mean? "Parts of the nudity are questionable, but just parts, so no biggie" Anyways, its more then questionable in these 2 movies, its there, but not at all the point of the movie just background scenery, so to speak, not saying nudity is scenery, shoot, I'm going to just tell you the movies.

Dogville. Manderlay. They are the first two parts in a 3 part series. They will make you think and think and think for a very long time - think in a good way. I still think about them. Anyways, Ang and I tend to enjoy the non mainstream stuff so if you're a fan of the artsy you'll like it. If your more of a "You Got Mail" kind of person then I would stay away.

Actually I would quite enjoy entering into a "you gotta see this movie" kind of discussian, so tell me what you've seen recently that hit you between the eyes or resonated with your heart.

John