The Book of Eli

The Book of Eli is a vastly underappreciated film that mixes martial arts swordsmanship, a post-apocalyptic setting, and a biblical narrative.

A war, over thirty years ago, killed off many people in the United States. Others were blinded from the blast. This creates an interesting disparity between those over thirty years of age who received an education and those under thirty who know nothing of the modern world (at one point, one of the thugs asks, "What's a television?").

This is an unpleasant world. Cannibalistic brigands ambush unwary travelers, identifiable by their shaking hands. Water is at a premium. Batteries are hard to find. The Book of Eli makes it clear that there's no currency, only barter.

Roaming the land is Eli (a subdued Denzel Washington), carrying a book with a cross on it. This book is greatly desired by Carnegie (a greasy Gary Oldman), who is also old enough to remember the power such a tome can have over the people. While Eli has been wandering for thirty years in pursuit of such a destination, Carnegie has been sending illiterate henchmen to retrieve every book he can find. The encounter between the two has all the fire and brimstone of a battle between heaven and hell.

Thrown into the mix is Solara (played beautifully by Mila Kunis, who finally sheds her trademark accent), a young, attractive girl who has grown up under Carnegie's protection but, as she flowers into womanhood, is about to become a bargaining chip, a piece of meat, and a lure. When there's no one left to protect her, she becomes a wanderer in Eli's footsteps.

From a religious point of view, it's educational to understand who Eli was in the Bible. In the Bible, Eli's children are cursed for behaving wickedly, a parallel for the war that destroyed civilization in the movie. God's curse assures that all men will "die by the sword" – in the movie Eli expertly cuts a bloody swath through his enemies with his machete. In the Bible, it was the job of Eli's sons to guard the Ark of the Covenant – the pact God made with man – just as Eli guards the holy book in the movie.

There's a twist ending that's not a twist of all if you read up about Eli in the Bible. But don't – watch the movie, then do some research, then watch the movie again. Like Eli, the experience will be rather eye-opening.

The Wicker Man

This is a weird movie.

It's a good kind of weird, an anachronistic kind of weird, a religious hysteria kind of weird. But make no bones about it, this is not your average movie. Mundanes, move along.

Are they gone yet? Okay good. You're in for one hell of a freaky ride.

The Wicker Man is about an island, run by village folk who harken back to the old ways. And we're talking old ways: sucking on frogs to cure sore throats, dancing around maypoles, dressing up as fools, sacrificing maidens to keep the crops bountiful...oops, I've given away too much.

Enter an incredibly uptight, prudish, extremely Catholic, British police officer. Mix well. Add in some really bad 70s music, Christopher Lee, and a lot of bad photography and you get this movie. Which is not quite a horror movie, although it was released in the tradition of the Hammer horrors. Heck, to date, nobody really knows what to do with this flim. If you're a Christian or worship a non-traditional religion, this movie will likely rattle your cage. And it rattles cages in a good way, raising some thought provoking questions about who is in the right -- the religion that works for the majority, or the established hierarchy of the rest of the world. And really, who's the "established" religion anyway? Which came first -- the pagan chicken or the Christian egg?

What a lot of reviews don't mention is the rampant Anglocentricism throughout the film. We have a typical British officer casting aspersions on a Scottish community. For the American equivalent, it might be like a fundamentalist Christian minister visiting an all-black community. There's a lot of history there.

If said blacks suddenly started reenacting African rituals, most people (the reasonable ones anyway) might suspect it of bias. After all, African-Americans, just because of their heritage, didn't hop around shaking spears and dancing around flames. So why, then, are the poor Scottish folk shown as believing in all kinds of pagan beliefs, some of them randomly selected from other cultures?

To Americans, this may not seem like a big deal. To Europeans, or at least to the British, it might seem quaint. To anyone who is Scottish or pagan, it's blatant prejudice. I should know, Maleficent's a pagan, I'm a Roman Catholic, and we know all about the differences between the two religions. This movie does not.

At heart, the Wicker Man was an observation by Julius Caesar about the Gauls. See my Druid History article for more information. Julius was a conquerer, talking about people he defeated -- he was by no means an accurate representation of druidism. And modern Scottish people aren't any more affiliated with druidism than African Americans are affiliated with nature spirits.

The movie was a horror flick preying on the fears of the Europeans -- that Christianity DIDN'T WORK. You don't find that nearly as much these days in America. In the 70s, in Europe, this was a big deal.

However, given its background, we took the movie for what it is: a social commentary, a psychological horror, about the clash between modern and ancient times. As Carl Sagan pointed out in the Demon Haunted World...you can teach people that demons aren't real, but they'll just call them aliens instead.

This movie is worth seeing, if only to experience the crazy ending. But make no mistake: the snide British commentary about how great The Wicker Man is constitutes a good part of what makes this film a "horror."

Bruce Almighty

When Bruce Almighty first came out, we skipped it. Although I do think Jim Carrey can be funny, he's a one-note joke. Like Adam Sandler and Will Ferrell, he's funny when the script matches his particular talents. When it doesn't...he's not.

There's something of a theme to Carrey scripts: a situation gives him the ability to be crazily elastic - The Mask, The Grinch, and Batman Forever being prime examples. He's a living cartoon. He makes funny faces. He's funny, get it?

Carrey IS funny. I loved him in the Mask, hated him in the Grinch, and felt bad for him in Batman Forever. Bruce Almighty falls somewhere in the middle - it has a theme with pretty serious implications but it never rises above a Jim Carrey vehicle where he gets to be goofy and make funny faces.

The problem with Bruce Almighty is that it's about faith minus the religion. Which is fine, except that faith is now apparently vague references to God, and that's about it. Call it Bruceology.

Which is fine, except Bruce HATES GOD. He doesn't seem to have a valid reason to do so - certainly, there's absolutely no evidence that he's been brought up to believe in God or even care what God thinks. So it's more than a little forced when Bruce begins stomping around claiming, "God hates me!" Bruce seems more like an agnostic or an atheist. But he sure isn't the type to feel God has a personal hatred of him.

You can probably guess what happens next: God gives Bruce God-powers over a series of blocks in Boston. What happens next is actually an interesting guide to role-playing a deity, but only gamers think that way. Basically, it's Bruce being selfish in spectacular, God-like fashion and imitating God from movies he probably never saw (and we didn't either). Bruce Almighty smacks of condescension in a way that makes you start to suspect the producers think you're a moron and won't really remember (or never saw) The Ten Commandments or heck, even read the bible.

And yet...and yet there is one moment in Bruce Almighty that almost made me pee from laughing so hard. Ironically, the humor comes from Steven Carell playing Evan Baxer, Bruce's archrival for the anchor position on a news show. Over the span of what seems like an eternity, Bruce turns Evan into a gibbering idiot, forcing him to shout in a long, drawn out howl "NEWWWSS!" as if her were afflicted with Tourettes Syndrome. It's something you shouldn't be laughing at...you feel guilty for laughing. But hell, I'm laughing about it now.

I've come to the conclusion that someone IMITATING Carrey is actually funnier than Carrey himself.

Bruce Almighty has its moments. But it's not as funny as it should be because it doesn't take the premise seriously enough to be seriously funny.

The Demon-Haunted World

I am an X-Files fan. I shamelessly pay lip service to all manner of extra-terrestrial, supernatural, and otherwise "out there" theories about the universe and our role in it. I have to admit, some of them seemed appealing. But there was something missing - we never heard from the other side. This only provided more ammunition for the paranoid, "They don't answer because they know they're wrong!" Here is Carl's answer.

• I never knew who made electricity (John Maxwell), and that the electromagnetic spectrum was created to counter Anton Mesmer's (the hypnotist, who created the word mesmerism) theory of animal attraction (that's where that saying came from!).
• I had no idea just how much hypnosis can influence others - read about the hypnotists who unintentionally plant suggestions into their young patients minds, and the accusations of devil-worshipping and satanic sacrifice that come about as a result.
• Carl slams the alien face on Mars with some hard evidence (there is an error in photography that is one of the nostrils of the figure on Mars).
• Crop circles are FAKE! The guys who invented them came out and admitted it...so why is everyone still talking about them anyway?
  

Before you make any decisions about the New Age, aliens, or any other popular quasi-theories that exist today, READ THIS BOOK.