Men and Boys - The Way Way Back

There have been scores of studies that talk about the need for positive adult male influence in the development of boys.  My own experience points to the accuracy of those studies.  I can point to a number of adult men who were critical in my development, without whom, I would have become a very different man.  I am so thankful for them... especially two that I will name publicly - Charlie Appel and Earl Creps.  There were others and of course, my father played a significant role although father/son dynamics being what they are, it wasn't until I was an adult that I began to appreciate George Donkin.

Yesterday, Cheryl and I saw a wonderful film that highlights both the positives and negatives of those relationships between adult men and teenage boys The Way Way Back.  The relationship between Duncan and Owen is critical in both of their lives and both come out as better people in significant ways because of the ways they touched one another.  I highly, highly recommend this film and invite any adult readers to think about the teens in your life and the ways that you can be a positive influence in their lives.  Know that it will impact them in ways you cannot imagine and will likely change your life too.

Great movie

We rented a great film the other night - The Visitor.

I highly recommend it. Themes of friendship, unexpected change, where we find meaning... and it deals with illegal immigrants in a human way.

3 films

over the last few weeks we've seen three films that were really wonderful, each of which dealt with impossible dreams.

The first was The Amateurs, starring Jeff Bridges. It is a sweet movie with an odd cast of characters and an unlikely story. Jeff ridges plays a character not unlike many others he has played - a lovable loser. He comes up with an idea... their little town will be the first town to produce a full length porno film. The porno film is a disaster but everything turns out in the end.

The second was King of California. Michael Douglas plays a character recently released from a mental hospital who has a dream of finding buried treasure. He pulls his daughter into this crazy scheme and they go searching after the treasure. You'll have to watch it to discover whether they find it.

The third is a completely different take on impossible dreams - Trade tells the story of a teenage Mexican boy trying to rescue his sister who has been trafficked into the US. Against impossible odds, Jorge goes after his sister Adrianna as she is sold in this strange new land of the United States. He is helped by an American police officer who is searching for a daughter he fathered via an affair some years earlier and who was sold into sex slavery by her mother. It is a glimpse of the darkest hell that human beings can create contrasted with love that will endure anything.

The three films point to the most beautiful aspects of the human spirit and in the case of Trade, the ugliest as well. I highly recommend all three films.

Ten Canoes

I watch a lot of movies because I use clips in many/most of my sermons. So, I am always looking for interesting films that might have a 2 or 3 minute clip that I can use to underscore a theme in a sermon.

Yesterday I rented Ten Canoes, a wonderful little film directed by Rolf de Heer that tells a traditional Australian story within a story. The film is slow and quiet but worth seeing in itself. When pared with the documentary on the making of the film in the special features, it is as life enhancing as any film that I've seen in a long time. I highly recommend it.

I Laughed... I Cried

well, I didn't really cry at all, but I laughed a lot. I saw the Simpsons Movie and it was one of the funiest films I've seen in a long time.

film

In the last week I've rented two little films that were fantastic and which I would highly recommend seeking out...


The Beauty Academy of Kabul is the first. Yes, it sounds like and is an oxymoron - a beauty academy in Kabul. What it also turns out to be is a quiet and gentle lesson about every day acts being subversive, about unintended consequences of international policies, about the power of the human spirit.

The second film is one that you'd likely never hear about. 10 Items or Less is an intimately scaled film staring Morgan Freeman as an actor researching a part and Paz Vega as a checkout girl in a grocery store. The film follows the two of them for the better part of day as they interact with one another. The characters are wonderful. The story is human. When the film ended, I wished they could both become my friends. But as Freeman's character and Scarlet acknowledge near the end of the film... they'll never see one another again. We'll never see these characters again, but it was certainly worth spending a short 82 minutes with them.

Amazing Grace

I finally saw the film Amazing Grace this past weekend. We took some members of the youth group to see it. While the film wasn't as good as I hoped, there were a few pieces that really struck me. William Wilburforce worked for
years and failed again and again and again at abolishing the slave trade. Yet, he stuck with it.
It seems to me that were he engaged in this activism today, we would label him a failure and move on to the next rising star. We asked the kids whether they would hang in there and keep battling for a cause after failing it for so many years. They gave a great answer - "it depends on the cause." So the question comes back to me... what causes are important enough that I'm willing to be a failure again and again but must not abandon no matter what?