I just watched, “Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street,” a documentary on Netflix. Many times I had heard the basics of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, which robbed innocent people of billions of dollars for decades. It was nice to learn the details of the what happened. I found the documentary series fascinating and well-made, though it was quite long and heavy, at over four hours. I binged it this afternoon. The tragedy was quite sad, but I appreciated* learning about what happened. I am reminded of movies like “The Big…
Category: Movies
Day 186: Long Live the Movies
My wife and I are both equally enthusiastic movie-goers. By “movie-goers,” I also mean “movie-watchers,” since we don’t always go to the movies that we watch. During the Pandemic especially, there was a two year gap between going to the movies, though we watched many of them at home Happily, in the past year we returned to movie-going, and have done a fair amount of it. In the first half or so of 2022 we saw the following movies in the theaters: In the past two months, we’ve added to…
Day 117: Sort of Funny…
So I was sitting here a few hours ago, trying to write a blog post and in no state to do one. In fact, I was pretty misaligned. I realized that I needed to get up and take a break. I shouted as much to my wife in the other room, and then tried to reassure her that I wasn’t upset at her, but just needed to get up from my desk. “I’m going to watch a movie!” I said. “Fine, you do that,” she replied. It was about 5pm.…
Day 53: The Unexpected Gem that is “Top Gun: Maverick”
Note: I originally wrote this movie review back in May, a month before I re-started this blog. I didn’t know it was going to be huge hit, I just knew I loved it. I saw “Top Gun: Maverick” again last weekend with a friend and knew the time is right to post this. Second Note: There are plot spoiler alerts in this review!! When I was kid there was one man who was the coolest man on Earth, and that man was Tom Cruise. Specifically, that was Tom Cruise in…
Day 2: That Time I Got Jealous of Idris and Dwayne
Today my wife and I went to see “Jurassic World: Dominion.”* I enjoyed watching familiar faces from the legacy “Jurassic Park” movies–Laura Dern, Sam Neil, and Jeff Goldblum–on screen with the newer “Jurassic World” actors, Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard. All in all, I came home a happy moviegoer (I wish I could say the same for my wife. She found the movie excessively stressful, and I see why–the characters spend the entire movie trying to escape being eaten by dinosaurs). What I want to write about is not…
Day 247: I’m so glad they invented movies!
It’s Sunday night, late. Tonight my wife and I went out and saw an excellent movie: The Best of Enemies. We got to the movie theater about an hour early in order to see something else, but they didn’t have any seats together except in the first two rows. So… we bought tickets to The Best of Enemies, which was also playing forty-five minutes after the first movie… So we had about an hour and half to wait before the show! And it was worth it! The Best of Enemies…
Day 221: Ride the Roller-coaster!
I would say that I consider myself a fan of certain catch-phrases, aphorisms, or words of wisdom. There’s a reason some of these sayings get used to the point of practically sounding meaningless. For example, there are many common expressions which try to explain or shed light on the often bitter-sweet nature of life. We’ve all heard them: “Take the good with the bad,” “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” “No pain, no gain.” Another one: “Life’s a roller-coaster.” These are sayings may seem like meaningless cliches. But are…
Day 94: The Glorious Possibilities of Personal Fearlessness
Last night my wife and I saw “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the new movie about Freddie Mercury and Queen. It was an awesome treat, I highly recommend it. And what was so inspiring about it was that Freddie was such an awesomely confident creator. He allowed his dreams to come true in a big way, and while life may not have been perfect, he succeeded on a great scale and created his art with such fire and gusto that he is remembered with great love nearly three decades after his death. The…
Day 90: At Home with “11/22/63”
So tonight at home I got a bug in me to re-watch the Hulu mini-series “11.22.63,” inspired by the Stephen King novel of the same name. As I have alluded to in the past, Stephen King is one of my favorite novelists from my childhood, when he already had a rich catalog of novels going back twenty years. Now it goes back forty-five-plus years. I have always admired artists with an extensive, multi-decade catalog. Beethoven is another that comes to mind. I tend to be loyal and go deep with…
Day 40: The Spirit of Generosity
I just watched the movie “The Same Kind of Different as Me.” Have you seen it? Great movie. It is the tale of a woman whose generosity of spirit touches the lives of all around her, including her husband and two children, the homeless mission she and her family serves, and in particular, a homeless man she and her husband befriend. As it happens, I have been thinking about generosity a lot lately. Some call it “tithing,” some call it “being of service.” There are infinite ways to be…