nobody asked me, but....

Back when I worked for a living, every Friday was 'movie day'. In any given year I'd go to 40+ movies, mostly Friday matinees because Friday was my day off and I honored it by turning off my cell phone and going to a movie.

Since I retired, even though I do lots of things and actually get paid by the Middlesex Area Cluster Ministry for being their interim missioner (frankly, since 1975 I've been rather shocked that a three churches and now a Cluster actually paid me to be who I am! What a toot!) I have lost the routine of going to movies. I've been to a dozen or so movies in the past year. But in the last two weeks I've reinvented 'movie day'. I think I have it down. I can have a day off even though I'm retired and what I'll do to honor that is turn off my cell phone and go to a movie.

The first two movies I've seen--last week and this week--make me want to tell you about them. Nobody asked me to, but I'm going to. If you are a movie person at all these are 2 'don't miss' movies.

The first is RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES. Now, if you weren't into the original string of 'planet of the apes' movies (and they got progressively worse--like the novels of American suspense writers like Patricia Cornwall) you probably want to pass of this. But if you can still see that final scene of the original movie where Charlton Heston approaches the nearly buried Statue of Liberty (which was actually shot on a beach near Malabo) and screams "you blew it up!"...then you're going to love this prequel. This movie tells the story of 'what happened' to earth. It is remarkable and speaks to a much more contemporary fear than the 1968 fear of nuclear destruction. Franco and Pinto--the male and female love interest--are rather vacuous, even though in the plot they are both remarkable scientists. John Franco raises the chimp who is named Caesar by Franco's father, John Lithgow (who is amazing) as a man suffering from Alzheimer's . The actor who plays Caesar as an adult is remarkable. I forget his name. The technology is so advanced from 1968, but remember, Heston and the others had been on a 2000 year trip that aged them only 18 months when they landed on the Planet of the Apes. (By the way, if you remember, we all figured out it was earth long before Charlton did....) The special effects are riveting and the plot is tomorrow on steroids. The world as we know it, we find out from RISE, ended not with a bang but with a whimper.

Must see for Sci-Fi fans and people who were alive and going to movies in 1968.

This week's movie was THE HELP. I read some reviews, which were mixed, but I think it was a remarkable achievement. Emma Stone, Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer should all be considered for Oscars. I went because I wanted to have a good laugh at the stupidity of white people in Mississippi in 1963. I got that, but what I didn't expect was the undercurrent of real danger and possible death in the Jim Crow South. Bryce Dallas Howard (maybe she should change her name) deserves award consideration for doing something that is incredibly hard to do: play an utterly charming and totally evil character. Not since Hannibal Lector has a screen presence made me to anxious as hers. This is, in the end, a woman's movie (not a 'chick-flic) but a movie about the dignity, integrity, strength and tenacity of women in a world turned against them. (Remember, in the south in those days, the only person less respected than a Black man was a Black woman.) There's not a single male character (except the quirky newspaper editor who can really dance) worth the oxygen that keeps them alive. And many of the women aren't worth much more--but the ones that are are heroines, remarkable creatures, the best that human beings can be.

Go see it. Even men, if they're anything like me, will come away feeling better about being human (and regretting how awful humans can be....)