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JanicePf77
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Stitch (2013)
Fascinating Metaphor for Mental Illness and Depression
I found this movie to be surprisingly deep. Not the same old horror thing at all. The rating should be higher but I guess IMDb skews to a younger demographic.
I won't give away any major spoilers. But if you really look closely at the last 30 minutes, you find that the movie you thought you were watching is really something else. It's all about how people can go through their waking lives in depression, while part of their minds (the subconscious) wrestles with inner demons. What we see on screen during most of movie is really that subconscious dream - people fighting literal demons. Their "real" lives are only revealed at the end. And by the end, they are cured of their depression from the hellish dream - yet they barely remember the dream at all.
At least that much seemed clear to me.
It's kind of like how you might go to bed feeling really bad. But then you wake up in the morning feeling fully refreshed. You remember having some kind of dream that night and maybe that dream was responsible for curing your bad feelings. But you can barely remember the dream.
We have also all heard stories of people living with mental illness their whole lives and then one day - poof! They are cured. And they don't even know how or why. Was part of their mind busy working things out on a different plane of reality?
Gravity (2013)
Amazing feeling of Being There
As a space enthusiast, no other movie before has given me the feeling of being along for a space trip as Gravity. It eclipses, by far, my previous favorite of Apollo 13 (which is also a great movie).
Much has been written about Gravity so I won't rehash any of its (admittedly threadbare) plot details. I won't even talk about its fantastic technical merits.
The bottom line is that this is the closest any of us will get to actually being up in space. Isn't that alone worth the price of a movie ticket? I thought so.
For once I didn't care all that much about a deep story or deep characterizations. This is a 'day-in-the-life' disaster-experience movie and doesn't pretend to be anything more than that.
The Gatekeepers (2012)
Honest Documentary
I was kind of surprised by the candid nature of The Gatekeepers. I was expecting it to be tainted with political correctness or even overt propaganda, given its sensitive subject matter. But instead, all the former heads of Shin Bet seemed genuine to me - admitting to as many embarrassing exploits as heroic ones.
I am sure there will be people on the opposite side of the fence that will still see it as propaganda. And perhaps that is understandable given how much blood has been shed in that region of the world and just how contentious the issues are. But I for one found the perspectives honest, chilling and with a glimmer of hope that things can be better in the future.
Highly recommended.