The Impossible -- Haunting and tragic, with heartfelt performances

The Impossible (2012)
Director: Juan Antonio Bayona
This story revolves around a family vacationing in Thailand for Christmas, when a tsunami strikes and they are separated. It zeroes in primarily on the struggles of the mother (Naomi Watts), father (Ewan McGregor) and the oldest son (Thomas Holland, in his debut). Very powerful performances from these three, as well as the supporting cast, with gripping, disturbingly realistic footage. It is hard to look past the suffering surrounding the characters, the physical and emotional pain the family experiences and the despair they feel, realizing the likelihood of the others being dead. What does prevail throughout this film is their determination to never give up on finding each other. Though there are many films out there with this type of storyline, this single story is a vivid one depicting the strength of the human spirit and is well worth watching. So, look this one up, have Kleenex handy and hug your loved ones!

Finding Forester-- I didn't think I'd like it. Thought it might be cliche, but it was thoughtful, soulful, confronting, and inspiring.

Sean Connery doesn't over act or rest on laurels.   He plays his recluse and disheartened talented but broken masterful writer with a steady tempered pace.  Rob Brown plays his role as jock and passionate word smith with the verve expressed in the musical score, replete with riffs and jams of a jazzy soundtrack. 

The Music Never Stopped is a movie about love, breakdown, being stuck on it, and getting off of it in time to experience big love before it's too late

A movie about a dog that had me balling! Yes, I got a lot. Dams brokes, water gushed forward.

Tonight we started out late, to watch a movie.  We'd been working on the latest changes we're making to the kitchen, during and following a delicious meal prepared from leftovers, some fresh broiled loin lamb chops, and a fresh salad. 

We started out to watch a Netflix DVD of October Baby, but that movie got the hook after giving it a good shot and then we picked Hachi- A dog's tale.   Dan says he put it on the list.  I had picked the bomb we'd tried earlier.  
Well, maybe he did, and I've no reason to doubt... But I could see having put it on the list as well.   I love Joan Allen.  And I generally like Richard Gere.  

Hachi is a dog.  A very smart, noble dog, with characteristics that  are so deep, he suffers out of his loving devotion to the master he chose and which his master chose back.  

We were both in tears, when we weren't laughing over the delight-fulness of their love for each other, and of the love Gere's character had in his life in general.   

The Magic of Belle Island is beautiful, and magical.

Morgan Freeman's Monte Wildhorn waltzes in the realm of imagination and beautiful lines of wisdom, humor, grace and charm, along with pangs of hurt, loss, disappointment and bitterness, that have long had a hold of him.  I loved this film.  I want to see it again.    

Welcome--

"When authorities forbid young Kurdish refugee Bilal (Firat Ayverdi) from crossing the English Channel to reunite with his girlfriend in England, the 17-year-old resolves to swim to his love -- and finds an unlikely ally in the form of swim instructor Simon (Vincent Lindon). Facing an inevitable divorce from his wife (Audrey Dana), the middle-aged teacher takes the resolute youth under his wing in this stirring, beautifully acted French drama." Netflix

JKF Special Edition

I was a self identified libertarian conservative.   Why I held on to the notion of being conservative was the fear of being out in the frontier of political thought, and choosing instead to be where there was lots of company, even though the camp I chose was tenuous, and based on a lot of inexplicable contradictions and tenets based on faith--Faith in the overall triumph of goodness and integrity within our powerful government institutions of intelligence, defense and national security.  

When the film came out in the theaters I wouldn't even consider watching it.   I read the reviews in the conservative blogs and took on faith that it was left wing propaganda, a damning view of our country and our government, and never even studied the case, and the writings of dissenters who protested the official report of the Warren Commission's investigation.  

I follow several blogs and bloggers on my Google Home Page, and one is Lew Rockwell.  I saw a post titled "Why Three Kennedys Were Assassinated" and my first instinct was to keep browsing, and not give it a second thought.   Then I wondered who was this author, what were his credentials?   Was this figurative or literal?   I read the piece.  It was a transcript of a radio interview conducted by Lew Rockwell, interviewing Dr.  Donald Miller.    There are ads on the pages at LewRockwell, and one was for the movie, JFK, Special Edition, sold at Amazon.   I clicked on it, and read the review.  Then I went to Wikipedia and read more about the movie,  and then I decided to watch it.  

I am really troubled by the fact that I didn't have the slightest desire or interest to watch this film when it came out in the theaters.  I found an essay by Murray Rothbard which best addressed why I had no inclination to watch the film.  

In his essay, The J.F.K. Flap, Murray writes:

The most fascinating thing about JFK, as exciting and well-done as it is, is not the movie itself but the hysterical attempt to marginalize, if not to suppress it. How many movies can you remember where the entire Establishment, in serried ranks, from left (The Nation) through Center to Right, joined together as one in a frantic orgy of calumny and denunciation. Time and Newsweek actually doing so before the movie came out? Apparently, so fearful was the Establishment that the Oliver Stone movie might prove convincing that the public had to be thoroughly inoculated in advance.

I felt as if I had removed blinders from my head, and for the first time, knew, beyond a doubt, that our President had been murdered with the complicity of government agents at the highest levels of power, and that it had been covered up.   Today, there is so much work available to read, that anyone who wants to know the truth about what happened to President J.F.K. need only seek out the body of research and documents.    There is evidence that we may never see, that has been locked away from public view for decades, and some that has disappeared.  The implications of what happened are pivotal.   Our current course of history took firm hold at that point.