Movie Review –
Inside Out – an 8 out of 10 on the JWO scale.
One the challenges of not having young children in my
household anymore is that I feel awkward going to animated movies without
children. I usually have to wait until
the movie comes out on Cable or Pay per View. So when I was spending some time
with my 6 year old granddaughter this week, I asked if she wanted to see “inside
out” and I was thrilled when she said yes. I think much of the beauty in this movie is
that it works for both adults and children. In fact I would say it is geared
more for older children (over 10?) but really it is geared for adults who struggle
with sharing their emotions. Even
through the eyes of my 6 year old granddaughter the movie has a strong message
about the importance of sharing your feelings. I think most of the complexities
of the movie were over her head and I don’t think she understood towards the
end, why her grandpa started choking up
and crying. I think the movie was
extremely clever in showing how our mind and memories work. Its characters were 5 key emotions of one
young girl. Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust are the five emotions that
are highlighted. It shows how all of
them play a part in our development. It shows the danger when we are led by
fear, Anger and/or disgust. What was so
important was the acknowledgment that sadness is an important part of what
makes us whole. If we ignore it, or subjugate
it, we do so at our peril. The movie
shows how humans just try to soldier on with joy in the face of sadness and ultimately
how fruitless that can be internally. It also shows the ying/yang of sadness
and joy. How we need to acknowledge the
sadness in our lives to fully appreciate the joy in our lives. At the end it shows the mingling of sadness
and joy as part of our core memories that shape our lives. I think it raised an
interesting question as to whether we need to let go of old memories/ideas in
order to create new memories and ideas.
How old memories (Bing Bong) in this example sacrifice themselves for
the greater good of the mind. I want to think about that one. If we had the
power to eliminate traumatic events from our memory (in the movie the clown)
should we? With neuroscience advancing
as far and as quick as it is, it is an ethical question we will have to address
(A question the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” I thought addressed
interestingly). But for now this is a complex, fun movie with a powerful
message of acknowledging the sadness in our lives and sharing our emotions with
those we are closest to. A good message
and a good cry.
Terminator Genisys
– a 6 out of 10 on the JWO Scale
Arnold Schwarzenegger in his catch phrase promised he would
be back, and he is. I have forgotten how many terminator movies this has been. The
movie pays homage to the original Terminator series. This one puts a clever
twist on the old story, and I thought for its genre it was cleverly written. I have stated before (I think in regard to
XMen) I think movies that use time travel as part of their plot shows a
weakness in the writing. In this movie, time travel was a major plot line of
the whole original storyline. However, I
never understood the logic that machines and humans could only send one traveler
each through the portal. That to me was a fatal flaw in the original logic. Clearly they agreed with me as now there are
people and machines travelling all through time multiple times. What I thought
was clever was how other characters who did not travel in time lived their life
either affected by it, or waiting for future events to happen. Because of changes
to the world due to time travel we have alternate realties that are
created. This always makes things
confusing and requires a lot of explaining.
Potential Armageddon, Great
Special Effects, Time Travel, Lots of things blowing up. If you like that, this is a good date movie. If
you are looking for something with depth, well maybe something else then.
No comments:
Post a Comment