The Men Who Stare at Goats

Netflix has been recommending that I watch The Men Who Stare At Goats for months now, so tonight I decided to give it a shot. It is based on a book by the same name and stars George Clooney (of course) and Ewan McGregor.

The basic premise is that a journalist whose life falls apart decides to go to Iraq in order to win his wife back. He meets a "super soldier jedi warrior" who was trained by the US military to have psychic and other paranormal powers. The point was to create a new military based on spreading 1960's style peace and love called the New Earth Army. As you can tell, the plot line is absolutely bizarre, even for George Clooney.

The movie claims that more of it is true that you would believe, which is incredibly creepy. It really is a very odd movie, mainly based on the commentary style, which I'm guessing is taken directly from the book. Despite its strangeness, the movie is still really funny. It also contains subtle commentary on the privatization of the Iraq war and the Bush administration's misguided Iraq policies. Overall it isn't for everyone, but for those with an open mind, I highly recommend it.

Movie Review: La Vie en Rose

I'm currently trying learn French. I've been watching French language movies on Netflix to help me pick up the language. I recently watched La Vie en Rose, a movie about the life of French singer Edith Piaf. I chose the movie at random, so perhaps I wasn't the target audience. As someone who knew nothing about Piaf before watching the movie, the movie seemed choppy.

The movie tells us the story of Edith Piaf by jumping back and forth through time, showing us important moments in her life. It is an effective way to understand Piaf's spirit, to understand the sorrows and achievements that made Piaf a great singer. If done properly, this could have been very powerful, but the scenes came off as random. It was hard to understand what was going on for a lot of the movie. Halfway through the movie I looked up Piaf on Wikipedia to help me put scenes in context.

The movie also fails to show the audience how young Piaf was when she died. It also depicts her as a completely unlikeable person, who spent little time doing anything but singing. This maybe true to life, but it makes for a terrible movie.

I will say, however, that the acting was superb. I also fell in love with Piaf's voice. Regardless of how she's portrayed in this movie and despite my introduction to her being mostly negative, her talent is undeniable. Her voice is absolutely beautiful.