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mt2131
Reviews
The Order (2003)
Boring and Done Before
::POTENTIAL SPOILERS::
Man, this movie was awful. A Catholic/superstitious/suspense thriller it goes over already well tread ground from previous movies.
The doubting priest. Sex and the priesthood. Politics and religion. Church hypocrisy. Conspiracy involving the church. The dawn of a new evil age. All kinds of dark magic voodoo battles between good and evil.
Pretty stupid and lame with a weak storyline to suffice. The story revolves around two concepts: Absolution, better known as the Sacrament of Anointing the Sick - the last rights a person can ask for to cleanse one's sins while on the brink of death; And Excommunication, the act of cutting a person off from the Church. Basically, an Excommunicated person can't receive Absolution. Thus comes in the Sin Eater, and I'll leave it at that. Throw in all the dopy things I already listed and you have "The Order".
I found the sex scene with the priest interlaced with shots of a picture of the Virgin Mary rather insulting to Catholics. It also ends with Heath Ledger saying (I paraphrase) "I am the redeemer and damner of sins, I live on without love blah blah blah" /cue him walking in dark alley with long trench coat alla "The Matrix".
I gave this movie a 1 for not only being crappy and unoriginal but also because it managed to insult an entire faith in the process. If you want to see something better I suggest "The Prophecy" with Christopher Walken.
The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Overkill, enviromentalism is lost in the CGI.
I'm a card carrying Sierra Club member. If not for the stupid war and the slinking economy Bush's environmental policy would be #1 on my list for why I'd not (and didn't in 2000) vote for him.
But this movie stinks of agenda: the dolt Vice President in the film might as well be Dick Cheney: the super storms only occur in the Northern Hemisphere (i.e. the realm of Western Civilization); the glaciers reach down to the 30th degree latitude (the ice reaches down to northern Texas and Florida, and all of Italy) which cannot happen but serves a political argument. Which is really what this film is, a political argument.
Emmerich is trying to say that mankind cannot continue on our course of unabated consumption and abuse of the environment we live in; which is true, nature does balance itself with impunity. But how he illustrates it isn't the truth and a total exaggeration. The tornados chewing up L.A.? I guess giant tornados destroying skyscrapers is more memorable than cornfields in Nebraska. Rabid animals? Yes, we get the point Emmerich - nature is kicking butt and taking names. It was the speech at the end about the 3rd World that Emmerich was laying it on the thickest though.
A movie like this doesn't help the environmental movement. It twists science, blows things completely out of proportion. It doesn't reach out to the people it needs to reach out to. Environmental aficionados will see this movie and feel somewhat pleased, but everyone else will see it as bordering on the realm of absurdity or silliness and leave the theater feeling entertained (but none the more aware of the problems facing humanity at present) or angry.
I give this movie a 6 out of 10 for ambition, special effects (atypical Emmerich destruction fest) and the father/son subplot.