BEFORE: Now that I'm back from North Carolina, the next goal is to get to Father's Day, and I've got two particular films in mind, plus there will be a few other father-related films before and after that holiday weekend, June 15 and 16. The rest of May is going to be filled with the as-yet unseen films of Mark Wahlberg and Kevin Hart, and one film with both of them in it. I accidentally stumbled on to an alternate path to Father's Day, because I want to watch that soccer comedy "Next Goal Wins", and I could have linked there from yesterday's film, and followed a different set of movies to get to the SAME Father's Day films.. That other path goes through a very appropriate film for Memorial Day, "Thank You for Your Service" so I was severely tempted to switch to that path. But then a little more research determined that the original plan was still better, because I could drop in a few more Wahlberg films than originally planned, and also this new comedy "Unfrosted" that just made it to my Netflix list, and thus I could reduce the number of non-movie watching days from 6 to just 3. Sure, OK, less downtime is fine, I'll get to 300 movies for the year faster, and I'll worry about the extra downtime later in December, I guess.
Jacki Weaver carries over again from "Penguin Bloom".
THE PLOT: Follows the life of Stuart Long, a boxer-turned-priest who inspired countless people during his journey from self-destruction to redemption.
AFTER: Eh, this isn't really my kind of movie, I mean it had me at "boxing" but then it lost me at "priest". I know that there are a lot of religious people in this world, I'm just not one of them. And I broke up with the Catholic church about 35 years ago, though I still got married for the first time in a church, it was a Presbyterian church, which was my first wife's religion, and I still went through the motions of getting the marriage approved by the Catholic diocese, but that was just for my parents' sake. And then by my second marriage I didn't care about religion at all, so we got married in a restaurant, and no church people were involved.
So I guess my story is kind of the opposite of Father Stu's, he found religion (after boxing and acting) and I gave it up (after filmmaking and having sex). Look, I think we all need things to believe in, and those can be different things at different times in our lives, it's OK. For me going to a movie theater is a bit like church, you go in, you sit down, you hear a story, pay either the collection plate or the concession stand, and then you go back home to your life, maybe with a new perspective. And I equate my movie theater job right now with the deacon job my father had to do at church - get there early, open up, get everything ready, watch the congregation file in, they hear a story, they pay either the collection plate or the concession stand, they go back home to their lives, I lock up and go back to mine. Repeat as necessary until I quit, get fired or die.
I can't understand or explain why some people feel the urge to join the priesthood - my father was considering it years ago when my mother got sick, like if she hadn't survived he could have dealt with it by re-entering seminary school and studying to be a priest or a monk or something. OK, good luck with that, only it didn't happen and now he's too old. Look, if you want to help people or counsel people or make people feel better about themselves there are better ways, ones that don't force them to believe in the big man in the sky who's going to punish them with eternal hellfire unless they follow his rules, and also he loves them very much, but he's got a way of loving them that we can't possibly understand, because it looks also a lot like he's also ignoring them. But I think it only looks like God is ignoring us because he doesn't exist, and you have to admit those two things would probably look very very similar, so pick whichever. The good news is by the time you find out that God doesn't exist, you'll be too dead to appreciate it, so you'll never even know.
Anyway, Stuart Long was a real person who had been an amateur boxer and an aspiring actor when he had a bad motorcycle accident (are there good ones?) and along with his injuries came a version of the Virgin Mary, so after he recovered he set his sights on the priesthood, and then he got very little encouragement on this path from his mother, father and girlfriend. Yeah, telling your girlfriend you want to be a priest is probably a tough thing to do. He applies to the seminary and is rejected at first, but then accepted after an appeal. Shortly after this, however, he was diagnosed with a rare muscular disease similar to ALS, and this throws a big wrench into the works, because he can't be ordained as a priest if he doesn't have the use of his motor skills, to use his hands to celebrate the Sacraments.
So he moves back to Montana to live with his parents, and his muscles start to decay, he gains weight and depends on others for his day-to-day care. However the bishop of the diocese in Helena agrees to ordain him, so I guess there must have been a shortage of priests in Helena, Montana or something. Though he lives in a nursing-care facility, he still continues his ministry and people line up to visit him and take confessions with him. Hey, whatever.
Again, not my cup of tea, but if it's yours, that's OK too. At least it demonstrates that you can change careers when you're in your 40's or 50's, and there's no shame in that, that's a message I can get behind because I've also lived it.
Also starring Mark Wahlberg (last seen in "Uncharted"), Mel Gibson (last seen in "Dragged Across Concrete"), Teresa Ruiz (last seen in "The Marksman"), Aaron Moten (last seen in "Top Five"), Cody Fern, Carlos Leal (last seen in "The Last Thing He Wanted"), Malcolm McDowell (last heard in "The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two"), Jack Kehler (last seen in "Zeroville"), Alain Uy, Tenz McCall (last heard in "Scoob!"), Annet Mahendru (last heard in "Penguins of Madagascar"), Patricia Belcher (last seen in "Over Her Dead Body"), Niko Nicotera (last seen in "The Purge: Anarchy"), Tony Amendola (last seen in "The Meddler"), Valente Rodriguez (last seen in "Instant Family"), Colleen Camp (last seen in "Loser"), Winter Ave Zoli (last seen in "Tristan + Isolde"), De'Aundre Bonds (last seen in "Dope"), Bo Cleary (last seen in "Proud Mary"), Eric Weinstein (last seen in "Contraband"), Jim Holmes, Betsy Moore, Davey Johnson, Michael Fairman (last seen in "Mulholland Drive"), Molly Baker, Nick Mead (last seen in "Babylon"), Roberto Montesinos (last seen in "We Bought a Zoo"), Ronnie Gene Blevins (last seen in "Dog"), Annie Lee, Sean O'Reilly, Ned Bellamy (last seen in "Blonde"), Penny L. Moore, Jorge-Luis Pallo, Clay Wilcox, Alan Bagh, Jacob Allen Inman, Crystal Richards.
RATING: 4 out of 10 Hail Marys
No comments:
Post a Comment