So many movies, so little time!
Bella was one of the winning films at the Heartland Film Festival last October. I tried three times to see it then and it was always sold out. So now it is at College Park Theaters and it is definitely worth seeing.
The movie is about a star soccer player who quits playing because of a serious tragedy. He cooks in his brother’s restaurant. It is in the restaurant that Jose meets Nina, a waitress. Nina is shocked by a discovery and Jose reaches out to her. They spend a day in New York trying to resolve both their issues.
This is the most amazing love story I have ever seen. But the love is not between Jose and Nina. I kept thinking about the Apostle Paul and his image that we are God’s adopted children and what that means. This story demonstrates exactly what that means. The family love and relationships are heart warming and so real.
The film company that made Bella is called Metanoia. Metanoia, a Greek word meaning a change of mind. A radical revision and transformation of our whole mental process. Metanoia means a new mind about who we are, how we relate to God and others. We translate it as “conversion” but I am not sure that carries the intended impact.
Anyway, this is a film about adoption as a child of God and about conversion or transformation.
Charlie Wilson’s War is very entertaining, until it is over and you think about the fact that it is a true story. Tom Hanks, as wonderful as ever, plays a Congressman from Texas who drinks hard and plays hard. Through a series of events he decides we (America) need to help the people of Afghanistan fight the Soviet invasion in 1979. The covert war between the Soviet Union and the United States is negotiated in hot tubs, bars, and bedrooms involving Philip Seymour Hoffman as a CIA operative and Julia Roberts as a rich, conservative Christian.
In our democracy founded of the people, for the people and by the people, it always surprises us how little the people really know about our involvement in the world. This movie is a good set up for the book I recommended last year- Three Cups of Tea. Both stress how much more we can accomplish in the world by providing education and human services than we ever will by war. But they also both show the problem being that nations are willing to fund war, but not basic human services.
This is one of those movies that I leave wondering how we ever got to this place as a nation and if it will ever change.
If you are going to see The Savages, plan it carefully. I went after visiting my 78 year old mother for a day with my brother and sister. Not good timing.
Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney play Jon and Wendy Savage, brother and sister. They lead odd and somewhat lonely lives in different cities. Their estranged father, living in Sun City, suddenly needs their attention and their care. The plot is all about the children adapting their lives to meet their father’s needs as they move him into a nursing home.
Like so much of life, the movie is so sad and so funny at the same time. My guess is that it will appeal most to Baby Boomers as we are in the stage of aging parents. If selfishness and family dysfunction bother you, skip this one. I found the movie touching, honest and real.
More to come…Atonement and Kite Runner….