Reviews
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
If you want a nice little foray into the naval battles at the time of Napoleon, here's a film that portrays that well.
I'm not going to give away the plot, but that's okay since honestly there's not much of one. It's very simple: British captain Aubrey played by Russell Crowe is assigned to intercept a French vessel. There's lots of fighting in the beginning and the end, and in between we get to know the various crew members onboard Aubrey's ship. They go all over the Pacific, trying to hunt down their enemy and have a stopover at the Galapagos islands where they get out and study the exotic animals. There's also various scenes where some of the crew members, who we have come to know, die and it is supposed to be sad, but it seemed like too cookie-cutter and therefore didn't do very much for me. All in all, I came out of there with a general impression of "Eh... it was okay."
If you're into naval warfare and history in general though, I recommend this film, as it seemed very accurate and really puts you into the atmosphere of that period.
The Passion of the Christ
I'm not a Christian, first of all, but I had to go see this since I've heard a great deal about it all over the Internet. I didn't expect it to convert me to Christianity, and it didn't. What it DID do was simply left me in a completey drained state, yes I was trying very hard to hold back my tears as I came out of the movie.
What it is: an EXTREMELY GORY account of the last 12 hours of Jesus Christ and the crucifixion. Now I'm VERY desensitized to gore, but there was ONE SCENE, in that scene ONE SHOT (and if you've seen it, you know what it is...) that is still disturbing to me even now.
Yes, this movie is very sad... especially because Mary has to watch them torture and kill her son. And to those devout Christians, it is probably a very religious experience - nevertheless it is still a very moving film.. although there were a few scenes that seemed out of place, for the most part this is very coherent and not to mention extremely "shove-it-down-your-throat" with the various methods of torture that they subjected Jesus to.
I recommend this movie no matter what your religion is - but it's not something I would recommend seeing twice, or taking young kids to, because its value is completely depending on both wrenching your gut and your emotions.