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Life at the Movies

Why is Lincoln important? It’s obvious. Abraham Lincoln has got to be, as he puts a stop to slavery, at the end of the Civil War, 1865. Daniel Day-Lewis Daniel Day-Lewis plays Abraham Lincoln. Day-Lewis first appeared in feature films in Gandhi (1982, Britain) as the guy on the street who stops Gandhi in his…

In Cocoon (1985, USA), esoteric aliens leave their planet to come to earth. The aliens come to pick up their own kind, who are in cocoons at the bottom of earth’s ocean, and take them back to their alien planet.  Undercover as human beings, they employ the services of a fishing boat captain and dive…

Pele: Birth of a Legend (2016) highlights “ginga”–which means the beautiful game. Ginga was a style of soccer by the subject of this film, Edson Arantes do Nascimento. He is famously and affectionately known as Pele, the Brazilian soccer team forward. Pele’s Brazilian teammates also preferred ginga. The film tells us that ginga’s history goes as…

When Star Trek was funny.  I have written about how Star Trek crossed into the environmentally friendly. That environmental theme was in Star Trek IV The Voyage Home (1986, USA). It was an appropriate theme for the Star Trek series, which looked at life idealistically. The message was to look after the environment, particularly whales, before…

Which Star Wars film should we see…if we only have one choice? Would A New Hope do? What about The Empire Strikes Back? We may imagine what life would be like if there was only one Star Wars film ever. But among all the choices we now have, what is the essential Star Wars to see?…

Revenge of the Sith, the third episode of Star Wars, is a ‘primal’ fantasy. By primal I mean a type of basic human experience, in the form of a fantasy. Entitlement and power The experience of entitlement in Star Wars is based in power. Senator Palpatine (who later becomes the Emperor) is really a dark…

One’s a hardened cop, the other a lonely widow. It sounds like a heart-to-heart in a pulpy romance novel. But in Witness (1985, USA), it’s not. Detective John Book’s sister says having kids will do him good. The unmarried Book (Harrison Ford) does not seem the type. The detective work has taken him to another place, a…

Harrison Ford in Witness in a ‘serious’ film. After swashbuckling in Indiana Jones and being cool in The Empire Strikes Back, Harrison Ford took on the role of a detective in Witness (1985, USA).     If we know Harrison Ford the actor and star, his transition to a ‘serious’ film is smooth. The serious Witness…

I’d like to see another sport included at the Olympics. What about cricket? If the Olympiad can keep on adding sports every four years, why not another? Not that everyone has heard of the game cricket. But if you are one of those people, then I recommend seeing Fire in Babylon (2010, United Kingdom) to…

Sydney Schanberg died in July 2016, aged 82. Schanberg was an award winning New York Times columnist who covered the war in Cambodia in the 1970’s. His experiences reporting in Cambodia was featured in a very well regarded film in the 1980’s. The film received three Academy awards and swept the British Academy awards as…
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