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| DVD Shorts: PARADISE NOW- WEATHER MAN
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Paradise Now. An amazing poignant movie. It looks like a documentary but feels like a movie. Hany Abu-Assad's disturbing, yet moving, tale finds two young men at a critical juncture deciding whether to become suicide bombers. It is sad beyond means.
I continually thought while watching the movie but for fate there go I. To be among a people without hope or their perception of hope and caught in the eternal struggle of their own lives is unfathomable for most of us.
One guy, Said (pronounced Say ah), decides to become a bomber and the other guy, Khaled, is conflicted. What was the difference? I never really figured it out.
Throughout there's a message of hopelessness. In two ordinary days, in a land forsaken by hope, in a culture searching for its place, these two Palestinians struggled with an impossible choice.
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Weather Man is an ideal movie to watch on a rainy, melancholy day; this movie is dark, somewhat over the top, and; at times, unintelligible. How's that? Chicago weatherman Dave Spritz (Nicholas Cage) gets one step closer to fame and fortune when he's invited to try out for a spot on a morning show. All he has to do is pull himself together. His former wife is marrying another man, his father is dying; his two kids are spiraling out of control.
Spritz is somber beyond belief; symbolism is everywhere, even if we don't get it. Michael Caine, the father, is acting somewhat akin to Bill Murray on a good day: Caine, like Murray, underplays many of his acting roles. The movie screams: what is the redeeming quality here.
Dave soon learns that while he may be able to occasionally predict the weather, he can't stop life from raining on his parade. There were so many times in this movie when you would think, "OK, now he is going to get some "ah ha" moments. Even when he did, it was very unconvincing. The great moral to this story is one of perspective: anger is a total waste of energy.
If you think your family is dysfunctional, watch this movie for comparison. One parachute.
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Movie Reviews 
