Movies are really a way of relaxing for me.  With no effort I can be carried away into another world- into another person’s life- into a new experience.  I can do the same thing reading a book, but it takes more effort.

So here are my recent reviews-

Waitress

It is wonderfully acted and I really enjoyed it- during the movie.  The story is of a waitress in a small town diner who makes unusual pies.  She has an abusive husband she wants to leave but suddenly finds herself pregnant.  It was a funny and fairly lighthearted movie.  But afterward I couldn’t help but think about all the women in similar circumstances who don’t have the loving doctor or the kind old man in their lives.  How do they escape?  It was very formulaic and had a happy ending.  It just wasn’t very real.  I recommend it for a good escape.

Away from Her-

This movie is absolutely wonderful.  Talk about being real, this is it.  The story is a man and wife as the wife enters the twisting corridors of Alzheimer’s.  It is funny and sad and frightening and angering and touching.  The love that is demonstrated in some unusual ways is so moving, I cried through most of the second half of the movie, not all from sadness but it was just so touching.  I highly recommend this to everyone.

Into Great Silence-

You may have heard my description of this one in a recent sermon.  It is a documentary on the lives of monks in a French monastery.  There is almost no dialogue or speaking in the movie.  I loved it.  The movie took me back to the silent retreat I did a year or so ago.  I loved the pictures of the countryside, the faces of the monks, the importance of the small, simple, daily tasks.  I found the film to be full of theological images and themes.  Marry Tarbell just told me she found it to be more of an experience than a movie.  Good description.  If you want to be entertained this is not the show for you.  If you want to be carried into another place and time and way of life and see God in the ordinary- try this film.

Now for a book-

I just finished The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks.  It is a fictional account of an actual Civil War battle in Franklin, TN.  Carrie McGavock lives on a plantation outside Franklin with her husband and two children.  She has buried three other children there and seems to be living in a depressed state of eternal mourning.  Her home is taken over as a hospital for soldiers wounded in the battle of Franklin.  Approximately 9,000 soldiers died in that battle.

I found the book riveting.  I had to keep reading.  The story of this woman and how her life was changed by the lives and deaths of those around her.  An amazing story and a great read..