In a recurring Groundhog Day tribute of their own, the editors of National Review annually post Jonah Goldberg's excellent 2005 paean to the classic Harold Ramis movie, Groundhog Day. Here are the closing paragraphs of Goldberg's article, A Movie for All Time.

Ultimately, the story is one of redemption, so it should surprise no one that it speaks to those in search of the same. But there is also a secular, even conservative, point to be made here. Connors’s metamorphosis contradicts almost everything postmodernity teaches. He doesn’t find paradise or liberation by becoming more “authentic,” by acting on his whims and urges and listening to his inner voices. That behavior is soul-killing. He does exactly the opposite: He learns to appreciate the crowd, the community, even the bourgeois hicks and their values. He determines to make himself better by reading poetry and the classics and by learning to sculpt ice and make music, and most of all by shedding his ironic detachment from the world.

Harold Ramis and Danny Rubin, the writers of the original story, are not philosophers. Ramis was born Jewish and is now a lackadaisical Buddhist. He wears meditation beads on his wrist, he told the New York Times, “because I’m on a Buddhist diet. They’re supposed to remind me not to eat, but actually just get in the way when I’m cutting my steak.” Rubin’s original script was apparently much more complex and philosophical — it opened in the middle of Connors’s sentence to purgatory and ended with the revelation that Rita was caught in a cycle of her own. Murray wanted the film to be more philosophical (indeed, the film is surely the best sign of his reincarnation as a great actor), but Ramis constantly insisted that the film be funny first and philosophical second.

And this is the film’s true triumph. It is a very, very funny movie, in which all of the themes are invisible to people who just want to have a good time. There’s no violence, no strong language, and the sexual content is about as tame as it gets. (Some e-mailers complained that Connors is only liberated when he has sex with Rita. Not true: They merely fall asleep together.) If this were a French film dealing with the same themes, it would be in black and white, the sex would be constant and depraved, and it would end in cold death. My only criticism is that Andie MacDowell isn’t nearly charming enough to warrant all the fuss (she says a prayer for world peace every time she orders a drink!). And yet for all the opportunities the film presents for self-importance and sentimentality, it almost never falls for either. The best example: When the two lovebirds emerge from the B&B to embrace a happy new life together in what Connors considers a paradisiacal Punxsutawney, Connors declares, “Let’s live here!” They kiss, the music builds, and then in the film’s last line he adds: “We’ll rent to start.”

Read the whole thing.

I think Groundhog Day is one of the best movies ever made. I remember watching it on VHS with my wife, years ago; though it does not have an explicitly Christian message, the movie is brimming with redemption. Watching it for the first time surfaced in me an exquisite sense of joy. (And, in my one beef with Goldberg over this article, I thought Andie MacDowell was plenty charming).

If you haven't already watched Groundhog Day, I highly recommend it. If you have, get with the spirit of things and watch it again (and again, and again, and . . .)

Last Monday my wife and youngest son saw Courageous.

It's a relatively low-budget film ($2 million) made by the same Georgia church that produced Facing the Giants and Fireproof. As a piece of cinema, it has its flaws. I thought it was a little too long, and it had the same jumpy, episodic nature that Fireproof had, including some quite funny comedy relief (I was laughing out loud during some of the bits) that seemed, at times, randomly thrown in.

In other words, this won't compare very well to the best that Hollywood can produce, from a cinematic art standpoint.

That being said, I really liked this movie. It deals with a modern societal sickness that generally receives little or no treatment in the arts: that of Fatherlessness. This film contains gut-wrenching scenes of every parent's worse nightmare, heart-splitting regret, and the violent jarring of an apathetic soul into action. It deals straightforwardly with the subject of Christian hypocrisy, and the redemptive power of God working through tragedy.

I highly recommend the movie. It's worth seeing, especially if you are a parent or planning on becoming one someday.

EW's Owen Gleiberman reports:

I went to a showing of From the Sky Down, a documentary about U2 directed by Davis Guggen- heim, with more or less one thought in my head: Do I really need to see another U2 documentary? . . . I would probably have skipped the film entirely were it not for the fact that I’ve greatly enjoyed Davis Guggenheim’s work — An Inconvenient Truth (2006) and Waiting for “Superman” (2010), and also, maybe especially, It Might Get Loud (2008), his marvelous ode to rock & roll guitarists. (If you’ve never seen it, you really should.)

I’m glad I listened to my instincts. From the Sky Down looks back at U2′s career through the lens of the band’s single most dramatic transformational moment: the recording of Achtung Baby in 1990-91. Sure, I already knew that that album — a great one — marked U2′s early-’90s reinvention of itself into, ironically enough, a “rock band.” (That’s when Bono started to wear sunglasses, and also when they exchanged the thumping drive of their rhythms for dance grooves, industrial-funk grooves, soft-rock grooves. Simply put, it was when they started to groove.) But From the Sky Down captures how a moment like that one doesn’t just happen. The band members didn’t simply wake up one day and look at each other and say, “Hey, dudes, let’s rebrand!” In fact, Bono and the Edge, by the end of the ’80s, knew that they had pushed their politics, their sound, their stoic po-faced album covers, their indie-band-gone-arena-rock mode as far as it could go, and that they couldn’t just keep doing it anymore.

But what to do instead? From the Sky Down, without being at all overblown about it, presents the recording of Achtung Baby as a moment when the band was trying, in essence, to get from one side of a canyon to another, only they weren’t at all sure that there was a bridge they could walk across, because only the album they hadn’t made yet could be that bridge . . .

The movie is startlingly intimate — and honest — about the fears, the personal and musical tensions, the artistic chaos, the grinding work and discovery that went into the recording of Achtung Baby. It is, quite simply, one of the most transcendent close-up looks at the process of creating rock & roll I’ve ever seen.

I know U2 purists disagree with me, but I think Achtung Baby is their best album, and it's certainly one of the ten best albums by anybody in the last 20 years. Looking forward to the doc.

Skye Jethani has a neat piece at Out of Ur today reflecting on Leadership Lessons from Superman's Underpants. You should read the whole thing because it's interesting and neat. But I want to pontificate on a point only tangential to his aims.

Commenting on the fanboy rage erupting in the discovery that the new Superman reboot will depict the Man of Steel sans those iconic red undies -- he won't be nekkid, of course, he'll just have the blue jumpsuit that's underneath them -- Jethani writes:

[W]hen Warner Brothers handed the responsibility for penning a new Superman script to Christopher Nolan and David Goyer, the same team behind Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, they wanted to bring the same realism to the Man of Steel they had brought to the Caped Crusader. But the Superman character, unlike Batman, is utterly unrealistic. He’s an alien who can fly, repel bullets, and fire lasers from his eyes. If we are to accept all of that, is it really too much to ask a modern audience to believe Superman would wear red underwear over his pants?

First, I think it's a good thing that Nolan and Goyer are taking over the Superman reigns. Their storytelling chops, cinematic instincts, and mythological depth can give the Superman mythos the gravitas it deserves.

But I honestly think one of the worst things that can happen is if they turn Superman into a brooding, gray-toned Dark Knight-esque mope-athon. The problem with the Superman reboot of a few year's ago was not that it tried to stay colorful and maintain the iconic Superman look/feel, it's that it failed as a movie. It was stupid, campy, poorly acted, and misfired on all cylinders of internal logic. But it did not fail because it wasn't gritty and "realistic." It was a terrible script and was handled by a hamfisted director.

I like the Nolan Batman movies a lot. The second one in particular is a towering cinematic achievement. But as a comic book fan, I still think Spider-Man 2 is the best *comic book movie* of all time. (Although this year's Captain America really wowed me.) To repeat and clarify: I think Nolan's Batman films are better than Raimi's Spider-Man films. The Dark Knight is clearly a better movie than Spider-Man 2. But if I want a movie that captures the wonder, the sparkle, the adventure, the razzmatazz of the days this ten year old couldn't wait to get Batman, Spider-Man, and Superman with his allowance from the spinner rack at Carl's Grocery Store in McAllen, Texas, Spider-Man 2 wins hands down.

And it didn't hurt that it was written by award-winning literary novelist Michael Chabon and directed with frenetic genius by Sam Raimi.

So, you see, Superman reboot honchos, you don't have to turn Superman into an emo kid with seasonal affective disorder or give him a bastard child to hand-wring over or even, God forbid, ditch the red undies, to make a good Superman movie that people will love. You just have to have talented people who will be able to capture the spirit of the Superman mythos. It better have color; it better have life; it better totally buy into the ridiculousness of the Superman premise; it better honor the standard backstory; it better move, baby. If you botch this again, we will hatess you forever, preciousss.

"If you have faith, anything is possible. Anything at all."

That's a line from Soul Surfer one of the more recent "Christian movies" to enjoy some measure of success. The good news is that it is a fair bit better in quality than most films that bear the modifier "Christian." With a cast that includes Dennis Quaid, Helen Hunt, Kevin Sorbo, and Craig T. Nelson, you can be guaranteed some serviceable performances, even if the script stunk. And the script isn't great, but it doesn't stink.

There are a few maudlin moments, where the movie loses its tone for real life, but in general it is easily watchable, which is a rarity for this genre. The only exception is the performance of Carrie Underwood who plays a youth minister. Underwood might be able to knock the crud out of a song, but she is a huge acting fail.

Anna Sophia Robb plays Bethany Hamilton, the real life teen girl who loved surfing until a shark attack took her left arm. Then she loved surfing more. Hamilton and her family are devoted Christians, and their faith -- and its motivation in Bethany's life to relearn surfing and compete -- is the basic plot of the film. It is a story about triumph over the odds.

But is it a Christian movie?

Here's my beef, and I'm sure I will take some flack from somebody for this. Bethany Hamilton's story is inspiring and encouraging, and I'm sure she has real saving faith in Jesus Christ, but the message of the movie Soul Surfer appears to be "I can do all things through moralistic therapeutic deism which strengthens me." This doesn't make it a bad movie; it just makes it as easily a Mormon or Jehovah's Witness movie as it does a Christian one.

The quote that opens this blog post is a line that closes the movie. It is a good summation. But it begs the question: faith in what? At one point in the movie, as Bethany is summoning up the courage to reenter the water with one-armed gumption, she quotes Philippians 4:13. Well, not the whole thing. Just the first part that says "I can do all things." Not, you know, how.

There is plenty of God talk in the movie, actually, but I don't remembering hearing the word Jesus once. I could've missed it, but the overwhelming point appears to be that if you work hard enough, God will bless you with being able to do cool things like surf with one arm.

When I was a kid I had a poster on my wall of a dude dunking a basketball with Philippians 4:13 as a caption. I got pretty good at basketball as I got older, but I'm sorry to say that, despite my earnest faith, not literally everything is possible.

I don't think that every movie (or book) created by Christians ought to have the clear plan of salvation in it. That is not how I discern a movie's "Christianity." BUT. If you're going to put explicit faith-in-God talk into a movie -- and call it Christian -- I think you ought to go all in and have the courage to make it Christian talk.

Of course, the way Soul Surfer approaches faith is exactly how many Christians in real life do. This is a real problem and it's not the movie's fault. But in the end, if the explicit message about God you're communicating is that believing in yourself can help you succeed because of a benevolent God, you ought not call your movie Christian. Soul Surfer posits a quote-unquote "God" palatable for any religious soul itching to be inspired without any uncomfortable gospel of Jesus stuff. It's for the same "evangelicals" who don't understand what the big deal is about Mormons being considered Christian. (None of us has perfect theology, right?) And it's for the Mormons too.

I am guessing Bethany's remarkable story deserved much better.

Just a little something in my eye, that's all.

These are some of the movie scenes that get me every time:

- When "Rain Man" (Tom Cruise) puts his brother (Dustin Hoffman) on the train to say goodbye at the end of Rain Man.

- When the French patrons at Rick's Cafe Americain drown out the German officers' singing with a rousing rendition of "La Marseillaise" in the greatest film of all time.

- When Frank T.J. Mackey (Tom Cruise again) is weeping at his father's deathbed in Magnolia.

- When Chas (Ben Stiller) tells his dad (Gene Hackman) it's been a rough year in The Royal Tenenbaums.

- When Truman (Jim Carrey) stands in the middle of the road and stops traffic, realizing he's the center of his universe.

- At the end of Sense and Sensibility, when Elinor (Emma Thompson) realizes Edward (Hugh Grant) isn't married. Oh my goodness. This scene slays me.

What movie scenes put a little dust in your eyes?

Do you have a favorite speech from a movie that you share with a friend, spouse or family member? You know what I mean. Where at the appropriate moment, something happens, and one of you cites the first line, and then in glee the two of you finish the speech together. Or one of you starts it, and the other finishes it. And in that moment, you've bonded. :-) Or maybe it makes the two of you laugh out loud every time. At the very least, it's an inside joke that makes you smile.

Share some with me under comments and don't forget to tell me in what contexts you use the speech.

Here's one of our all time favorites. We use it every time we want to say that something stinks.

Bernice Pruitt: At home we had a pet skunk. Mama used to call it Justin Matisse. Do you think that's just a coincidence? All day long she would scream, "You stink Justin Matisse!" Then one day she just picked up a club and killed it.
Justin Matisse: Now that's a sad story.
Bernice Pruitt: If you liked the skunk, which we didn't.

From Hope Floats. The part of Justin Matisse was played by Harry Connick, Jr.

Makes me laugh every time.

Studio execs are scratching their heads over the latest unanticipated cinematic failure.

Disney’s latest 3-D animated film “Mars Needs Moms” may be one of the biggest box office bombs of all time.

Though released widely in 3,117 theaters over the weekend, the 3-D animated adventure earned a paltry $6.8 million. According to the box office tracking site, Box Office Mojo, that ranks among the top ten worst openings ever for a film distributed that broadly. Taking into account the high cost of tickets for 3-D and IMAX screens, along with the film’s reported $150 million budget, the sales numbers look downright disastrous.

Disney distribution president Chuck Viane was scratching his head on Sunday morning. “No one ever wants to open a movie this far below expectations,” he said. “We’re wondering what happened.”

First of all, it's amazing that people paid millions of dollars still can't figure out why nobody goes to certain movies. But here are my guesses as to why families stayed away in droves from Mars Needs Moms.

1. The trailer is terrible. Assuming the rule that the funniest parts of a movie are in the preview, I can assume that the movie is 15x as unfunny as what I've already seen. Clueless aliens trying to sound "hip"? Not even the Coneheads could pull that hackiness off. There's nothing about the preview that makes me think I would enjoy this movie.

2. Who can afford ticket prices to a 3-D movie right now? I've actually been more interested in this movie over the last couple of weeks after reading a few good reviews, and after learning that Rango has some crude content in it that would prevent me from taking my girls, but given that the cinema experience for a family of 4 is already expensive, factoring in the additional cost of Mars Needs Mom's 3-D format makes it cost prohibitive. Until studios get serious about lowering ticket prices -- this is largely their fault, by the way, not the theater owners', who make such a slim percentage on ticket prices that they have resorted to jacking up concessions' costs -- more and more people will only go to the theater for event-type films and wait until DVD for the rest.

3. This motion-capture "realistic" animation stuff just looks flat-out creepy. It's not attractive. Maybe it's just me, but I didn't like it Polar Express either. Make a cartoon or make a live action movie. The boy and his mom in Mars Needs Moms creep me out. It's aesthetically repulsive. I know some people don't mind this format, but I think they are in the minority. (And I know it is sometimes done better than others.)

I avoided it when i saw the post, which was really hard when it dominated "recent comments", but now that I've seen the movie I'd really like to see what people said about it. But now I can't find it.



Now that you know what this post is about, how did you like my title? Good, huh?

These are the best movies I saw last year, in ascending order:

7. Despicable Me

6. Mother and Child

5. Tangled

4. Toy Story 3

3. The Fighter

2. The Social Network

1. Inception

Movies I expect will be on the list, but I haven't seen them yet:

The Town
True Grit

(Book list coming tomorrow.)

The trailer for that new hit comedy, The Shining. Fun for the whole family this Christmas!

This is based on exactly one person's opinion, but this person is someone who I consider to be pretty smart.

"It was my least favorite of the three. It departed from the book a lot, jumped around, and had a random plot-line"

Hmmm . . .

Have you seen it? Thoughts?

Here's an amusing list of Top 10 Movie Plot Holes You Probably Never Noticed.

For all you Trek enthusiasts, check out #6:

6. Star Trek II & Star Trek III - At the end of STII, the Genesis device creates a planet out of the Mutara nebula and the USS Reliant, right? And that’s fine as far as it goes, because scientists do in fact think that planets form out of nebulae. There’s just one tiny little question, though: Where did the sun for the planet to orbit come from? It sure wasn’t there before the device detonated, and if the device could create a star from a nebula, you’d think Carol Marcus would’ve mentioned it.

Just off the top of my head, I think his logic is flawed here. I believe the Genesis device made a "living, breathing planet" out of Ceti Alpha Five, which was a lifeless rock, but presumably already orbiting a star. I mean, creating life from a lifeless planet was the whole point of the Genesis Effect to begin with. I guess the writer didn't pay close attention to Carol Marcus' explanation of Project Genesis. Boy was I wrong! I just checked some Trek fan's geek site and confirmed that indeed the Genesis planet was formed from the Mutara Nebula. I guess I'm the one who was sleeping in Starfleet Academy.

The article is an amusing read. For you Star Wars fanboys out there, the writer mentions your flicks a couple of times. For example:

1. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back – Once Luke starts to figure out that the silly-acting, funny-looking little creature he’s with is in fact Yoda, Yoda’s mood changes. He criticizes Luke (legitimately, it must be said) and argues that Luke shouldn’t be trained to be a Jedi. Obi-Wan has to argue with him to get him to change his mind. Really, though, what choice does Yoda have? He either trains Luke or… what? The Empire wins? Good plan, Jedi Master.

I think the real hole in Star Wars is the fact that the Empire didn't want to spend any cash on training their Storm Troopers to shoot properly. Those guys couldn't hit the broad side of a barn.

Do you remember when Home Alone came out? Man, what a phenomenon. Was there anyone who didn't see it? I remembered it fondly, so recently while looking for something that our 3,5, 7 & 9 year old can watch with their parents that we would all enjoy we picked that one. Whoops. Forgot there were some bad words in there and a reference to porn.

I just remember it as being so innocent. I had also forgotten that the criminals getting clobbered is only the last 20 minutes of the movie. You have to wait an hour until the real physical comedy happens.

So are you really curious about where all those Home Alone people are now?

Wonder no more, click on this link.

The most interesting one to me was what happened to the actor who plays Kevin's older bully brother named "Buzz."

But his most interesting post-'Home Alone' credit is undoubtedly as himself in the mockumentary 'Courting Condi,' in which he examines his love for former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice by interviewing those close to her.

So what are your memories of the movie?

What happened to John Travolta after he was in Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" has always fascinated me.

Travolta's career was over. Finis. After his stardom and popularity in 70's hits like "Saturday Night Fever" and "Grease", all he had to show for the 80's were "Look Who's Talking" and "Two of a Kind." He was a has-been. A nobody. A footnote. A punchline.

Then Tarantino puts him in "Pulp Fiction." Tarantino, a movie fan, loved Travolta in "Blow Out" (which nobody saw) and so he gave the guy a chance. And wow. Look at what happened to Travolta's career afterwards. Hit after hit after hit. And he became so successful, that even a few duds (White Man's Burden, Battleship Earth) couldn't slow him down.

Since I was always a Travolta fan, I was fascinated by what happened. And so I ask myself from time to time, "Could that ever happen again with an actor that is really good, but Hollywood has forgotten about?"

So if you could cast a has-been actor in a critically acclaimed and financially successful movie that would put that person back on the map, who would it be and why?

Here's an absolutely fantastic, short documentary on J.R.R. Tolkien, filmed in Oxford in 1968, with numerous interviews of Oxford students and Tolkien himself. One big treat: Tolkien speaking in Elvish and also in the Black Speech of Mordor.

This is seriously fabulous. Many of the student interviews are very amusing, especially in the middle of the film when the muddled revolutionary ideas of the late 60's begin bollixing up some of the interviewees' terribly earnest monologues. There's one reprehensible chap who thinks The Lord of the Rings is a horrible diversion and escape from more important things, like politics. Hoo boy. Thankfully, there are several students (two in particular), who seem to really understand what Tolkien was getting at in the Lord of the Rings (in my opinion). I would have loved to hang out with their sort had I been in Oxford back in the day.

Another blessed aspect of this documentary is to be able to see again, with nostalgic recollection, the streets and buildings of this wonderful city. I was there last month, and much of it appears to have hardly changed in the last forty two years. In the beginning there are shots of Tolkien's house in Headington, which is the suburb I was staying in during my trip.

This is a highly recommended watch if you are a Tolkienophile.

[H/T Eldest son's facebook page]

This is fresh on my mind, because of the movie I watched on the flight back to the USA.

What are those movie scenes that stick out of you as redemptive?

The scene I'll start with is the Talent Show scene from About A Boy, which I watched on the flight back to the USA yesterday. Will sacrifices his dignity and undergoes complete public humiliation to rescue Marcus from social suicide. It becomes a turning point in Marcus' life.

I've got others. Feel free to leave any you have in the comments thread.