Movie Review of Oblivion with Tom Cruise

Not a fan of sci-fi personally, but it was free, and I thought it looked like it would be tolerable. Tom Cruise is not bad looking, either, although he’s off his rocker spiritually speaking. But I digress.

So you see a futuristic world, where a couple are living in a home on a stick, from which he leaves in his flying machine each day to do patrols and service some drones, while she mans the comm and reports back to the mother ship.

While out, he is attacked and taken to a hideout, where some people tell him his reality is not what he thinks it is, but they let him go to find it out for himself.

Without giving away the whole plot of the movie, the underlying theme is what’s interesting. It’s the old, old story. Man discovers that the world he lives in has some forbidden places. He sees the prohibition rather than the provision.

His character, Jack (like all American leading men are named Jack, but that’s my rant for another day), is not allowed to cross a line in his flying machine. But of course he does, and discovers a cabin by a stream, which he returns to many times. His creator has been keeping him from something good.

Then eventually, he returns to the people who told him the “truth” and he helps them to find their god, in the mother ship, in order to kill it.

You see what I mean about it being the old, old story? Of course, it’s not exact, because the world he was living in wasn’t a paradise at all, like the Garden of Eden was, and their Creator wasn’t good, like ours is. But the idea of wanting to be autonomous, to make their own decisions, to cross borders and boundaries, to decide right and wrong on their own terms, is the nature of our rebellious hearts.

Man rebelled against the goodness of his Creator, spurning His goodness and provision, and wanting to establish his own moral compass. What did that original trespass lead to? Man killed his God. Jesus Christ, the Creator, was put to death by His creatures.

“There is nothing new under the sun.”  Ecc.1:9b

Passchendaele

I liked that this was a World War One movie done from a Canadian perspective. There are so few movies about WW1 compared with WW2. This was a lengthy battle for Canadian soldiers. They did well to bring out the main feature of that particular battle: muck and rain.
The love story was okay. Not likely that a nurse would be addicted to morphine, or that she "gets over it" by just being held for awhile.
The brutality of the hand-to-hand combat with bayonets was enough to make me close my eyes more than once.
It would have been great to get a better sense of the soldiers' lives in the countries in which they fought. I think that came out much better in the actual WW1 footage they showed at the end of the movie. People stayed to watch that as the credits rolled. You look at the faces on the live footage, and you see people like us, and you wonder what they were thinking about.
It was sad that after so many lives were lost to win Passchendaele, it was so quickly and easily retaken.

And Loving It!

I came home from school every day and watched Get Smart! I hate to admit there were times when I actually worried about him (the time he almost drowned in the phonebooth, or when he had a tarantula crawling on him), but I digress.
This movie had all the standard lines and jokes you'd know if you had watched the show, as well as the cone of silence (updated, of course), Laraby, the agent who hides in the tree, the shoe phone and Hymie.
The new things were a smarter Agent 99, and two nerdy techies.
The downside was, as in every show and movie made now, they bring in the gay stuff, and have two men kissing. Pretty gross. Otherwise, it was fun to watch.

Amazing Grace

This movie was released to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in England. It is about William Wilberforce, a politician who became a Christian. He wondered whether or not to stay in politics, but was persuaded to by his friend, John Newton. Newton was a former Captain of a slave ship, who was graciously converted by God. He wrote the hymn, Amazing Grace, among others. It is his best known hymn. When you read his biography, you see what he means when he says, "Amazing grace...that saved a wretch like me." He wasn't exaggerating.
The real William Wilberforce was a small, diminutive man, but of course, for the movie they chose a tall, handsome actor to play him.
Although I love to see movies done about famous Christians, I find they don't always stick to the real story.
First, though, some things that were accurate. Wilberforce was a Calvinist. When he was converted and someone mentioned that he had found God, he remarked, "I believe God found me."
He was good friends with John Newton and was much encouraged by him. His good friend, William Pitt, became Prime Minister. He worked most of his life to rid England of slavery, against much opposition and apathy. He did this because of his beliefs. He did suffer from bowel disease and had great pain. He did see slavery abolished before he died, although I think he was close to death at the time.
However, many facts were misrepresented. When his friend, William Pitt lay dying, and said to him, "William, I wish I had your faith," I doubt he would have just stared mutely at him, as he did in the movie. Wilberforce was a strong Christian and he would have shared his faith.
Most surprisingly in the movie, was the portrayal of John Newton. If there was ever a man who loved to prclaim the joy he found in the assurance of forgiven sins, it was Newton. If ever a man knew he could do nothing to earn his salvation and that it was all due to the grace of God, it was Newton. Read his biography, his hymns, or his sermons. He is nothing like the way he was portrayed in the movie. He was happily married to Mary. He wore regular clothes and a powdered wig and lived with his family.
In the movie, they show him barefoot, without a wig, wearing rags, mopping the floor of the church, giving the impression that he lived there and was trying to atone for his sins. He talks in the movie about being "a monk" and living with thousands of "ghosts" who continued to haunt him. When Wilberforce reminds him of his hymn, he asks, "Did I write that?" Again, such a Roman Catholic view from a cheerful Protestant, I could not believe. And finally, when in the movie, he writes about his days on a slave ship, he feels exorcised of his ghosts, as if this work freed him. Nonesense! John Newton was a wretch. True. He was a wicked man. But once he was converted, he did not try to add to the work of Christ with his own works.
The best line in the movie was by Newton, when he said, "I don't know much. But I know two things: I am a very great sinner, but Christ is a very great Saviour."
In the movie theatre, someone said, "Amen!"

Anti-War Poet

The 1997 movie, Regeneration, (sometimes called Behind Enemy Lines), is set in a psychiatric hospital for shell-shocked and insane soldiers during WW1. It's also about two famous anti-war poets, Sigfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Wilfred Owen admired Sassoon almost to the point of hero-worship, but the focus of this movie is mostly on the life of Wilfred Owen and the development of his poetry and its' encouragement by Sassoon. Owen is generally considered a greater poet than Sassoon. Owen is in the hospital for shell-shock. Sassoon is sane and brave, having received the iron cross for bravery, but because he wrote a pamphlet criticizing the war, he is hospitalized and encouraged to recant or stay in the sanitarium for the entire war. Neither Sassoon nor Owen is particularly opposed to all wars, since they both enlisted, but they feel this one is hopeless and needlessly prolonged.
We are so accustomed to people protesting against issues, that it's hard for us to really understand how controversial it was for these men to speak out against war during these times, even in free countries. This was at a time when according to Owen, the thinking was "It is great and glorious to die for one's country."
Owen, as a soldier, was not a pacifist, but he did see the horrors of war and wanted the world to wake up. He wrote about trench and gas warfare. At one point in the movie, as the men are arguing about whether they should even be fighting at all, Dr. William Rivers challenges them angrily, "And what if everyone believed like you? Do you think the Germans will just go home?"
Owen wrote a poem from the perspective of a recently killed soldier, and another where he talks to an enemy soldier, that in other circumstances, they may have had a beer together.
Sadly, Wilfred Owen was killed in the war, at age 25, one week before the armistice. The news of his death reached his hometown just as the bells where ringing in celebration of the end of the Great War.
The most poignant scene in the movie is at the end, when news of Owen's death reaches Dr. Rivers. In the letter is a poem of Owen's, which he reads aloud. It is based on the Biblical narrative of Abraham's near sacrifice of Isaac.

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac, the first-born spake and said, 'My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt offering?'
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son,
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him, thy son.
Behold! Caught in a thicket by it's horns,
A Ram. Offer the Ram of Pride instead.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

You can also google Wilfred Owen, and hear his poems narrated to music and pictures. The above poem is very powerful heard this way.