Movie List

Movie Reviews

The HighWay

by Doug Hodgkinson

Doug Hodgkinson retired as a parish priest in the Anglican Church of Canada in 2002. He has an MA in Adult Education from UBC (1973) and worked in the National Office of the Anglican Church for 16 years as a trainer and designer of educational events, and was a consultant in clergy continuing education and director of a department of educators. He was also on the steering committee of the Faith Development and the Adult Life Cycle Research Project. Doug was a "founding father" with other colleagues in Toronto of the journal The Practice of Ministry in Canada. As the name suggests it was established to foster writing of Canadian experience in ministry and to foster Canadian writers. He completed the Pacific Jubilee Program in Spiritual Direction in 1999 and continues to offer spiritual direction in the Central Okanagan. As a "movie buff" Doug has been a regular contributor to The HighWay, and offers a Via Media perspective to a secular art form. He believes that all the great questions in life are answered in the movies.

  1. About Schmidt
    Directed by Alexander Payne and starring Jack Nicholson (Schmidt), 124 minutes, 2002. Nicholson plays the ordinary man Schmidt with subdued charm. In his search for meaning, his life review and pilgrimage, he is like those at the edge of the crowd to whom Jesus said "In as much as you have done it unto the least of these…"
  2. After The Wedding
    Directed by Susanne Bier, starring Mads Michelsen (Jacob), Danish with English sub titles, 119 minutes, 2007. People struggle with important questions of meaning in this complex story, such as questions of fidelity, wealth, truth, forgiveness and the fear of death. Despite your now knowing the plot and outcome you will find this a gripping story that will repay in thoughtful moments that will persist long after the final credits.
  3. Afterlife
    Directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu, starring Erica Oda, Japanese with English subtitles, 118 minutes, 2008. This is a delightful and clever movie which gives a provocative image of what The Afterlife might consist of; a memorable moment of our lives, of our own choosing, preserved as the only memory for us to enjoy for eternity.
  4. All Or Nothing
    Directed by Mike Leigh, starring Timothy Spall (Phil), 2 hrs 20 min, 2002. This Ironic story yields no enduring happy ending. What it does chronicle is the striking of Grace in the stuff of ordinary and apparently unreligious lives, lives that are not, in the details, far distant from our own.
  5. Amazing Grace
    Directed by Michael Apted, starring Ione Gruffudd (Wilberforce), 111 minutes, 2007. The anti-slavery movement has become a paradigm of movements towards freedom and inclusion. There are many links between the story in Amazing Grace and contemporary movements driven by values of inclusion and liberty.
  6. Around The Bend
    Directed and written by Jordan Roberts, starring Christopher Walken (Turner Lake), 82 minutes, 2004. This is a funny, touching movie with a great sound track. Jonah Bobo (Zack) is a wonderfully natural actor with none of the contrived cuteness of a six-year-old. The rascally Henry proves to be both wise and wily in his plan to bring son and grandson, Prodigal and Elder, together. There is a marvelous commentary on Resurrection by the writer/ director as a special feature to the CD.
  7. Atanarjuat (the fast runner)
    Directed by Zachariahs Kunuk, starring Natar Ungalaak (Atanarjuat), English subtitles, 2 hrs 47 min, 2002. This is a compelling love story with a heroic figure at its centre. His suffering is redemptive and his soul's capacity for forgiveness points us to Good News.
  8. Babette's Feast
    Directed by Gabriel Axel, starring: Stephane Audron (Babette), Danish and French with English subtitles, 1 hr. 45 mins, 1988. Babette is clearly a Christ Figure who transfigures the world of the main characters through a loving act of self-giving. In the end she does not go away to "the city of light", Paris (Heaven?) but stays with the community.
  9. Bee Season
    Directed by Albert Berger, starring: Richard Gere (Saul), based on a novel by Mila Goldberg, 138 minutes, 2005. The story contains deep reflections on mysticism (don't be afraid!) as well as a touching story of a family's search for wholeness.
  10. The Believer
    Palm Pictures, starring Ryan Gosling, Rated R, 99 minutes, 2001. He's bright and articulate with all the certainty that only a post modernist deconstructionist adolescent can bring.
  11. Bend It Like Beckham
    Directed by Gurinder Chadha, starring: Parminder Nagra (Jess), 108 minutes, 2003. This is a funny and poignant movie that could easily be used in confirmation, intergenerational dialogues, and youth group conversations about truth telling, social issues, personal dreams and "breaking away". Good music.
  12. Big Fish
    Columbia Pictures, starring Albert Finney, 125 minutes, 2003. This movie with an all star cast presents a fantastic tale with several levels of interpretation. On one level it is about the power of Story and fairytale; a metaphor of the ways we make sense of our experience in a post post-modernist world.
  13. Bobby
    Film by Emilio Estevez featuring an all star cast of Anthony Hopkins, William Macy, Sharon Stone, Helen Hunt, Harry Belafonte, Ashton Kutcher, Lindsay Lohan, Sharon Stone, Elijah Wood, Martin Sheen, Laurence Fishburn, Demi Moore and Emilio Estevez, (Whew!) 119 minutes, 2006. The movie catalogues the events of June 6, 1968 in the Ambassadore Hotel where Robert F Kennedy was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan as he was diverted through the hotel kitchen after giving a speech to his supporters in the ballroom following his winning of the California Primary.
  14. Bonhoeffer
    Journey Films; Director; Martin Dobelmeier; 90 minutes, 2000. This documentary tells the story of a tragic romance, espionage and a heroic search for justice. It is a compelling story of an obscure German theologian who was executed by order of Hitler at the very end of World War 2 and whose writings have been required reading for Christians in the West since the Fifties. Among his disciples are Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King Jr.
  15. Born In Absurdistan
    Directed by Houchang Allahyari, starring: Karl Markovics (Stefan Strohmeyer), German and Turkish with English subtitles, 138 minutes, 2000. This is a funny but very touching story in a time when all Western countries are very concerned about the security of their borders; the "threat" of Islam and governments are sensitive to the effect of immigration policies.
  16. The Boy In The Striped Pajamas
    Director, Mark Herman, based on a novel by John Boyle; starring Asa Butterfield (Bruno) 94 minutes, PG, 2008. Bruno is eight and his life is perfect. He lives in Berlin in a big house in a loving family. His father is a rising star in the SS.
  17. Breaking the Waves
    Coscient/ Astral Films, Starring; Emily Watson (Bess MacNiel) and Stellan Narsgard (Jan), 112 minutes, 1996. This is a love story with a dark, comic side to it. Bess lives in a small island community in the north of Scotland. The community is now dominated in its social life by the oil industry and is a staging area for the off shore rigs.
  18. Cinema Paradiso
    Directed by Giuseppi Torantore, starring: Phillipe Noret (Alberto) Salvatore Casca (Toto), Italian dubbed into English and French Winner Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, 121 mins, 1988. The story is told as a long flash back to the childhood of Salvatore (Toto) who is a young boy in a small town in Italy. His father is off to war, in fact is killed and he and his mother are active in the local parish. Toto is an acolyte.
  19. Crash
    Directed by Paul Haggis, starring Don Cheadle (Graham), Terrence Howard (Cameron), Thandie Newton (Christie) and Matt Dillon (Officer Ryan), 100 minutes, 2004. Fear pervades the lives of these disparate characters who intersect in random ways. However, the miraculous shimmers just below the surface of these random encounters providing a sense of meaning through the choices they make.
  20. The Confession
    Directed by David Jenks, starring Ben Kingsley (Harry Fertig), Franchise Pictures, 114 minutes, 1999. Harry Fertig is a pious Jew the devoted father of Stevie his 5 year-old son. Sarah Fertig, wife and mother is devoted to Stevie but less strict in her moral rectitude. Following a birthday party for Stevie he gets sick in the night, runs a high fever and they rush him off to the hospital.
  21. The Crime of Padre Amaro
    Directed by Alfredo Ripstein, starring Gael Garcia Bernal (Amaro), Destination Films, Spanish with English subtitles, 117 minutes, 2002. Padre Amaro is newly ordained, something of a favourite of the local bishop and headed for a career as an academic. We meet him on a bus headed for his first curacy in Los Reyes, Mexico.
  22. Dark Knight
    Directed by Christopher Nolan; starring Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne), Heath Ledger (The Joker), 2 hrs, 33 mins, 2008. Batman flic that transcends the comic book superhero genre to become a politically charged meditation on the problem of evil and sends us away mulling over spiritual questions.
  23. The Da Vinci Code
    Directed by Ron Howard, starring Tom Hanks (Robert Langdon), 149 minutes, 2006. Langdon is a Harvard 'Symbologist' who is called to the scene of the murder of the Director of The Louvre. He is joined at the scene by Sophie, a member of the Paris police force and as it turns out, estranged niece of the victim.
    24. Directed by A priest is suspected of pedophilia in a Roman Catholic school in The Bronx in 1964.
  24. Defiance
    Director, Edward Zwick, starring: Daniel Craig (Tuvia Bielski), Liev Schreiber (Zus), Jamie Bell (Asael), 2 hours, 9 minutes, R for violence, 2008. True story of three Jewish brothers living in the Stankenich region of Poland, now Belarus. In 1941, the two older brothers return to their family farm to discover their parents betrayed by collaborators and murdered by Nazis.
  25. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
    Directed by Julian Schnable, starring Matheu Amalric (Jean Dominic Beauby 'Jean Do'), French with English subtitles, 112 minutes, 2007. Jean Do is an egocentric high flyer in Paris; wealthy, editor of Elle Magazine, charming and well liked. One day, while driving with his eldest son he has a 'focused stroke'.
  26. Dinner With Friends
    Directed by Norman Jewison; starring Andie MacDowell (Karin). HBO Home Video,based on a play by David Margulies, 97 minutes, 2001. Gabe and Tom have been friends since college. Karin and Beth have been workmates for years. Shortly after Kari and Gabe were married they arranged for Tom and Beth to meet.
  27. Divided We Fall
    Written and directed by Jan Hrebejk, video, Czech. with subtitles, 122 minutes, 2000. This is the story of Josef and Maria, a childless couple in a city in Czechoslovakia during W.W.11. The Jews have been driven out in the years previous and their friend Horst who had been subordinate to Joseph in the shoe factory owned by the Weiner family is now a Nazi Collaborator.
  28. Dogville
    Written and directed by Lars von Trier; starring Nicole Kidman (Grace, John Hurt (Narrator), 177 minutes, 2003. Dogville is a mythical town in the Colorado Rockies during the Depression. Edison is a young and earnest philosopher trying to get his town, the site of an abandoned silver mine, to adopt a higher moral tone.
  29. Doubt
    Directed by Edward Zwick, starring: Daniel Craig (Tuvia Bielski), Liev Schreiber (Zus), Jamie Bell (Asael), 2 hours, 9 minutes, R for violence, 2008. True story of three Jewish brothers living in the Stankenich region of Poland, now Belarus. In 1941, the two older brothers return to their family farm to discover their parents betrayed by collaborators and murdered by Nazis.
  30. Enlightenment Guaranteed
    Directed by Doris Dorrie, starring: Gustav-Peter Wohler and Uwe Ochesanknecht, subtitles, Atlantis, 1 hour 49 mins, 2002. This is a story about physical journey and inner journey and it is very funny. Gustav is married with no children. He meditates and follows various New Age Thoughts. His work is to help people organize the "energy" in their lives so that it provides the right vibrations.
  31. Flags of Our Fathers
    Directed by Clint Eastwood, starring: Ryan Phillippe (John Bradley), Screenplay by Paul Haggis and William Broyles, based on a book by James Bradley, rating R (language and violence), 132 minutes, 2006. The film weaves together three strands of story around a concept, the concept of "heroism".
  32. Garden State
    Camelot Pictures, starring: Zack Braff, (Andrew), Natalie Portman (Samantha), Ian Holm (Dr. Largeman), 97 minutes, 2004. At their best, Parables are unfinished stories without a specific moral point. So, imagine that after the party The Prodigal Son goes out to see some old buddies from schul and only plans to stay a couple of days. In Garden State (Paradise or New Jersey?).
  33. God is Brazilian
    Directed by Carlos Diegues, starring: Antonio Fegundes (Deus), Wagner Moura, (Echvaltercio/ Tauca), Paloma Duarte (Mada), Bruce Gomlevsky (Quinco, Director, Carlos Diegues,(Portuguese with English subtitles), 110 minutes, 2005. As a Brazilian, God suddenly appears to Tauca who is trying to escape the clutches of a gangster to whom he owes money. God, it turns out is looking for a saint to whom he could turn over the universe for a short time so that He could take a little vacation and escape the pressures of dealing with humankind.
  34. The Golden Compass
    Directed by Chris Weitz, starring: Dakota Blue Richards (Lyra Malaqua), Nicole Kidman (Mrs. Coulter), rated PG, 113 minutes, 2007. This movie is based on the first story of the trilogy His Dark Materials. Lyra sets out on a Hero's Journey to "The North" to try find her uncle and to determine what has been happening to disappearing children, captured by "Gobblers" or General Oblation Board who take away the children’s daemons (animal manifestations of the human soul).
  35. In My Country
    Directed by John Boorman, starring Juliette Binoche (Anna Matan), Phoenix Pictures, 103 minutes, 2004. Anna, Langston and Dumi are all reporters covering the Truth and Reconciliation hearings in South Africa. Anna is an Afrikaans poet; Langston is a black American journalist with an attitude and Dumi is a black South African with insider experience of oppression as well as status as an accredited journalist.
  36. Indian Summer
    Touchstone pictures,directed by Mike Binder, starring Alan Arkin, PG 13, 98 minutes, 1993. Eight grown-ups return to a camp in Algonquin Park where they had spent many summers as teen-agers, twenty years ago. They bring all the tragedy from the previous years: divorces, deaths of spouses, lost loves and previous camp experiences.
  37. Innocence
    Directed by Paul Cox, starring Julia Blake, 1 hour 38 minutes, 2001. Andreas Borg (Tingwell) has been widowed for 30 years and somewhat on a whim contacts Claire (Blake). They were young lovers forty years ago and had separated in a very painful way.
  38. Iris
    Miramax, directed by Richard Eyre, starring Judi Dench, 128 minutes, 2001. This is a memoir of the relationship of Iris Murdoch and John Bayley. The story chronicles Iris' long slow decline into dementia and Bayley's devoted care for her.
  39. Italian For Beginners
    Directed by Lone Scherfig, starring: Andreas Berthelsen, (Danish subtitled) 1 hour 39 mins, 2002. Andreas goes to a small congregation to fill in while the pastor is under suspension. He arrives bearing some tragedy since his wife has recently died after a long illness. The parish assistant is an ex-junkie and robber who had visited Andrea's wife in hospital.
  40. Joyeux Noel
    Written and directed by Christian Carion, starring Alex Ferns (Officer Gordon), 118 minutes, 2005. A Christmas classic based on the historical phenomenon of a truce that slowly broke out on the 500 mile line of The Western Front during the first Christmas of World War 1 in 1914.
  41. The Kite Runner
    Based on the book by Kaled Hosseini, directed by Marc Forster, starring: Zekeria Ebrahimi (young Amir)Dialogue is in English, Dari, Pashtu, Urdu, Russian; 128 Minutes; 2007. Young Amir and Hassan are childhood friends in Kabul, Afghanistan.In this story "the way to be good again" is through a dramatic and costly Rescue in which Amir makes up for his childhood cowardice and shame by plucking his nephew from the Hell of his confinement at the hands of a Taliban sadist and "bringing him home."
  42. L'enfant
    Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, starring: Jeremie Renier (Bruno), Deborah Francois (Sonia), Palme d'Or Award 2005, French with English subtitles, 96 minutes, 2005. Bruno is a small time hustler who runs a group of child criminals who commit robberies and street crimes. He and his girlfriend Sonia temporarily live in a hovel beneath a bridge with their new born child, Jimmie.
  43. Le Grand Voyage
    Directed by Ismael Ferroukhi, starring Nicolas Cazale (Reda), Mongrel Media, French/ Arabic with English subtitles, 108 minutes, 2004. This is a funny, bittersweet Road Movie with a twist for Westerners because it ends in Mecca. It is a Romantic Tale that involves a 3,000-mile journey with many twists and diversions until the travelers arrive at a true understanding of Life itself.
  44. Letters From Iwo Jima
    Directed by Clint Easwood, Written by Iris Yamashita, starring: Ken Watanabe (General Tadamichi Kuribayashi), Kazunari Ninomaya (Saigo), b and w, 141 minutes, 2006. This is Eastwood's sequel, or more correctly, parallel companion piece, to the earlier film Flags of Our Fathers reviewed previously in these pages.
  45. The Man Who Sued God
    Directed by Mark Joffe, starring Billy Connolly (Max Myers), 98 minutes, 2001. This is a rollicking Australian comedy (don't be mislead by Connolly's broad Scots accent) with a quite serious religious message.
  46. The Man Without A Past
    Directed by Aki Kauristmaki, starring Marku Peltola (M) and Kati Outinen (Irma), subtitled, 97 minutes, 2002. The story begins on a train. "M" arrives in Helsinki and falls asleep on a bench outside the train station where he is set upon by thieves and left for dead at the side of the road.
  47. Mostly Martha
    Bavaria Film, starring Martina Gedeck (Martha), English subtitles, 106 mins, 2002. Martha is Executive Chef at Lido a very high end restaurant in some port city in Germany. She describes herself as 'precise' but in reality she is driven, obsessive and very up tight.
  48. Munich
    Directed by Stephen Spielberg, starring Eric Bana (Avner), 120 minutes, 2005. Much praised and criticized, Spielberg gives us this morally ambiguous and provocative tale based on the kidnapping and murder of eleven athletes and coaches from the 1972 Israeli Olympic team and the subsequent hunt for the Palestinian assassins (militants? terrorists? freedom fighters?).
  49. Normal
    Directed by Jane Anderson, based on the play "Looking For Normal" starring Tom Wilkinson (Roy), and Jessica Lange (Irma), 108 minutes, 2007. Roy and Irma live in a small farming town in the Midwest, U.S.A. He works in a farm implement factory and she is at home. Their son Wayne has left home to play in a rock band and their daughter Patty-Anne is at home and at the edge of adolescence.
  50. No Country For Old Men
    Directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, starring: Josh Brolin (Llewelyn Moss, 122 minutes, 2007. Llewelyn Moss is a pretty regular working guy, out to supplement the family larder by hunting antelope, when he happens upon a drug deal gone badly. $2 million is left lying around so he scoops it up.
  51. Omagh
    Directed by Pete Travis, starring: Gerard McSorley (Michael Gallagher), made for British/Irish television, 106 minutes, 2004. In August 1998 The Real IRA, a splinter group that broke away from The IRA because it disapproved of the peace process, filled a little red car with explosives and blew it up in the market of Omagh, the seat of County Tyrone in Ulster. 29 adults and children were killed outright and many, many suffered grievous wounds.
  52. Oscar And Lucinda
    Directed by Gillian Armstrong, starring: Cate Blanchette and Ralph Feinnes, 20th Century Fox, 131 minutes, 1997. It is the best articulation of Pascal's Wager you will want to hear. "All of life is a game of chance. We bet our lives that there is a God and God's fundamental requirement is that we gamble our immortal souls".
  53. The Other Sister
    Directed by Gary Marshall, starring Juliette Lewis (Carla), 130 minutes, 1999. The Tates, Radley and Elizabeth are a wealthy couple living in San Francisco. They have three beautiful daughters. Carla, the youngest, has "some social adjustment problems".
  54. A Prairie Home Companion
    Directed by Robert Altman, starring Meryl Streep (Rhonda Johnson), 146 minutes, 2006. This all star cast will have you tapping your toes to the music, busting a gut laughing and dabbing your eyes at the pathos. It is grounded in the actual radio program of the same name that made Keiller famous.
  55. The Passion of the Christ
    Directed by Mel Gibson, Starring Jim Caviezel as Jesus, 2 hours 40 minutes, 2004. This film gives a very popular version of the Passion Story of Christ.
  56. Rendition
    Directed by Gavin Hood, starring Jake Gyllenhall (Douglas Freeman), 122 minutes, 2007. While one can appreciate the ironies that run through the film's two stories this is not an easy film to watch. A short documentary called Outlawed is part of the DVD and grounds the practice of "extraordinary rendition" in real life experience.
  57. Rabbit Proof Fence
    The Australian Film Commission, produced by John Winter, starring Everlyn Sampi (Molly), 1 hr 35 minutes, 2002. Three young girls (Molly and Daisy are sisters and Gracie is their cousin) are forcibly taken from their home in Jigalong and transported 1200 miles south to the Moore River Native Settlement.
  58. Religulous
    Directed by Larry Charles; Starring Bill Maher with his mother and sister, Kathy and Julie Maher; 101 minutes, Comedy, 2008. "Spoof" on Religion. Maher interviews people in Jerusalem, England, The Netherlands, Vatican City, and across the USA.
  59. 16 Years of Alcohol
    Directed by Richard Jobson, starring Kevin McKidd (Frankie), 102 minutes, 2003. The story takes place in Edinburgh, in a culture of drinking. As a young boy Frankie observes his father's infidelity and his mother's hopelessness.
  60. A Song For Martin
    Directed by Billy August, starring Viveka Seldahl, Swedish with subtitles, 128 mins, 2001. Martin Fischer (Wollter) is a brilliant and attractive composer and conductor. Barbara Hartmann (Seldahl) plays first violin in an orchestra in which he is guest conducting one of his pieces.
  61. Saint Monica
    Seville Pictures, directed by Terence Odette, starring: Genevieve Buechner (Monica), 82 minutes, 2002. Monica's big desire in life is to be an angel in The Assumption Day Procession that her old parish puts on every August.
  62. Saved
    Directed by Brian Dannelly, starring Jena Malone (Mary), 92 minutes, 2004. Mary is in her senior year at American Eagle Christian School. She describes herself as "born again from birth" and is at the top of the social food chain along with her good friend Hilary Faye. Her "good Christian boyfriend" Dean, in an incautious moment confesses to her that he thinks he's gay. Mary sets out to save him.
  63. Schultze Gets The Blues
    Directed by Axel Schneppat, starring: Horst Krause, Paramount Classics, German with subtitles, 107 minutes, 2003. Schultze and his two buddies retire after many years working in a salt mine. Their retirement gifts are lamps made from salt! Each of them tries to find meaningful activities in their "golden years".
  64. Shadrach
    Directed by Susanna Styron, starring Harvey Keitel (Shug Dabney), Narrator: Martin Sheen, VHS, PG, 88 minutes, 1998. The story takes place in Virginia during The Great Depression. Paul's family is well off Southern Gentry but his best friend Mole Dabney is part of a poor family on the other side of town. They don't bathe much and the boys all suffer from B.O. but the girls smell sweet especially Molina.
  65. Shooting Dogs
    Directed by Michael Caton-Jones, starring: John Hurt (Fr. Christopher), BBC Films, 115 minutes, 2006. The story concerns the Ecole Technique Officielle in Kigali, Rwanda where on April 11, 1994, 2500 Rwandan Tutsis were slaughtered. They had taken refuge on the school grounds because Belgian UN forces were there and they sought protection.
  66. Sideways
    Directed by Alexander Payne, starring Paul Giamatti (Miles), 108 minutes, 2004. It is rumoured that Sideways caused the merlot sales to plummet and the pinot noir sales to soar in the Okanagan wine industry. Urban myth or not this is a very popular movie not least because it combines sunshine, wine and romance.
  67. The Sea Inside
    Directed by Alejandro Amenabar, starring Javier Bardem (Ramon), Fine Line Films, Spanish with English subtitles, 125 minutes, 2004. The true story of Ramon Sampedro and his efforts to convince the Spanish courts of his right to die.
  68. The Soloist
    Directed by Directed by Joe Wright, and starring: Robert Downey Jr. (Steve Lopez), 109 minutes, Drama, 2009. True-life story based on a book by Steve Lopez, columnist with the LA Times. One day while sniffing around somewhat desperately for a column idea, he encounters Nathaniel Ayers, a homeless black man playing a violin with two strings on the streets of LA.
  69. Sweeney Todd
    Directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp (Sweeney Todd), 116 minutes, 2007.Todd returns to England from a penal colony in Australia. He is bent (literally) on revenge for Judge Turpin's having seduced his wife, stolen his child Johanna and ruined his own life. He forms an alliance with Mrs. Lovett who runs a pie shop.
  70. Talk To Her
    Directed by Pedro Almodovar, starring Javier Camara, and the participation of Geraldine Chapman, Spanish with English subtitles, 144 minutes, 2002. In this movie there are two crippling accidents two beautiful and talented women, an unexplained pregnancy, suicide, two love triangles and a miraculous resurrection that can only be attributed to the healing power of love.
  71. Transamerica
    Written and directed by Duncan Tucker, starring: Felicity Huffman (Brie), 101 minutes, 2005. Brie (Sabrina Claire Osborne) is in the final stages of getting medical and psychological approval for her gender reassignment surgery. She had been Stanley.
  72. Tuck Everlasting
    Directed by Jay Russell, starring William Hurt (Tuck), Disney Pictures, 90 minutes, 2002. The Tuck family, May, Tuck and two boys, Miles and Jesse have stumbled across a stream, deep in the woods, that apparently gives immortality.
  73. The Theory of Flight
    Directed by Paul Greengrass, starring: Kenneth Branagh and Helen Bonham Carter, Alliance-Atlantis, 1 hour 40 minutes, 1998. Richard (Branagh) is a hapless, failed artist who suddenly realizes that as a modern man he doesn't understand how planes fly. He conducts an experiment in which he constructs a kite and jumps off the roof of the bank in which his girlfriend works. It doesn't work!
  74. Ushpizin
    Directed by Gidi Dar, starring Shuli Rand (Rabbi Moshe Balanga), Hebrew with English subtitles; 2004 Israeli Critics Award for Best Picture, 110 minutes, 2004. Moshe Balanga is a rabbi in Jerusalem down on his luck. His yeshiva won't pay him because they don't think he is there enough! His wife Mali hides from the rent collector. Both of them pray very hard for a miracle and one happens or at least a random act of kindness happens and they come into some money.
  75. Vera Drake
    Written and directed by Mike Leigh, starring Imelda Staunton (Vera), 125 minutes, 2004. This begins as a drama about an English family trying to get ahead after W.W.II. The time is 1950. Vera is a kindly, helpful, cheerful woman who works as a domestic for a number of wealthy families.
  76. The Visitor
    Directed and written by Tom McCarthy, starring Richard Jenkins (Walter Vale), 103 minutes, PG 13, 2007. This is a humorous and touching story in which the personal spiritual journey of the bitter and depressed Walter evolving into a conscious and soulful person is intertwined with a political critique of the loss of soul of the US, as it became consumed by "security concerns."
  77. Why We Fight
    Directed by Eugene Jarecki, 139 minutes, 2006. This is a solemn documentary from a "lefty" point of view about U.S. involvement in war since the end of W.W. II. Its beginning point is Dwight Eisenhower's farewell speech as U.S. President in 1960.
  78. Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
    Directed by Judy Irving, starring Mark Bittner, Pelican Media, 83 minutes, 2005. This is a flock of wild birds, not native to the US (they come from Ecuador), that has grown from parrots that have hitch hiked by boat or from pets that have escaped or been abandoned by owners. Many urban legends exist to explain their presence.
  79. Wit
    A film by Mike Nichols, starring Emma Thompson, 103 minutes, 2001. Vivian Dearing (Thompson) is an expert in the poetry of John Donne and a world respected scholar for her uncompromising high standards. She's 'tough'. She also has stage four ("there's no stage five!") metastatic ovarian cancer.