Movie Dates
When ‘lockdown’ stopped, Terry and I didn’t feel comfortable going back to our Friday Night Movie dates that we’d been doing for 40 years. We couldn’t imagine sitting shoulder to shoulder with people in a packed theatre where just one sneeze could infect the whole place.
But we discovered that since being retired, we could attend a matinee movie and we’d sometimes be the only people in the place!
One night, here in Kona, we decided to check out the Friday night movie situation by going to the new movie “Avatar, The Way of Water”. It was a FRIDAY NIGHT and we maybe saw one other couple in the whole theatre. (Bad for business/great for us!)
Did you see the first James Cameron Avatar movie? In 2009, the first Avatar film earned $3 billion in sales, becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time.
This is the one series of movies that must be seen on the big screen and actually IS 3D when you wear the glasses.
In the first Avatar a paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home. When his brother is killed in a robbery, paraplegic Marine, Jake Sully, decides to take his place in a mission on the distant world of Pandora. Virtually, he is able to come into the Pandora world and he now looks like the Pandora people and has his limbs fully intact.
That movie explored such themes as the conflict between the modern human and nature, and the film's treatment of imperialism, racism, militarism and patriotism, corporate greed, property rights, spirituality and religion. It was stunning to look at and had a meaty script.
“Avatar 2: Way of Water” sees former human-turned-Na'vi Jake Sully and his partner, Netriyi, fighting to protect their newly-formed family while exploring new regions of Pandora and encountering threats, both new and old. They end up having to flee their forest home to live with the “water people”.
I cannot tell you how incredible the animation was in this film except by way of relating that our daughter, who works in the field, said that it was the best work she’d EVER seen in that vein.
We, being older folks, found that there were too many fighting scenes at the end, which seemed to drag on way too long, but for younger fans of video games, I know they would not notice that.
Years ago I read a book called “A Man Called Ove” by Fredrik Backman. I loved this book so much that I continued to read books by this talented Swedish author.
Jump ahead a few years and we went to the theatres to see the subtitled Swedish film based on the book…which was also excellent.
This year, Tom Hanks, plays “Otto” and I was wondering if it could possibly live up to the excellence of the book and the first movie adaptation.
Trust me : it is also WONDERFUL! This is a movie that will pull at your heartstrings in a good way, make you laugh, make you cry, and have you feeling that you shared something remarkable in the theatre.
Tom Hank’s real son, Truman, (not an actor!) played the younger version of “Otto” in the film and it was brilliant casting. If you’ve never read this book or seen the film ….do it! You won’t be disappointed.
The Chosen.
On April 21st, 2019, the series by Dallas Jenkins (the creator, director and co-writer of The Chosen),first aired and it became an instant phenomenon.
Data from 2022 ( from the Angel Studios) showed that the Bible-based series had garnered 405,268,000 worldwide views! The Chosen keeps on breaking records, being the most crowd-funded film, and making history in the film industry.
I remember tuning in to the show and being instantly captivated by this version of Jesus and his disciples. It is not ‘preachy’, and instead of being the usual ‘straight out of the bible’ stories, this version shows Jesus and his followers as human!
Jesus laughs….a lot! His disciples quarrel and so do some of the couples….as normal couple sometimes do. It’s like looking at a documentary of the real people if you could have actually been ‘beamed’ back there to film it! ha ha.
The Chosen is so beautiful. I supported this ‘Go Fund Me’ type of venture by buying Terry some ‘merch’( a Chosen T-Shirt with the fish logo on it) and now they are already in season THREE.
If you think Jesus is unreachable in your life, if you think that He isn’t aware of you here on earth or that you can’t relate to the stories in the bible…..watch it! Watch it if you’re just curious. It’s SO good.
The Chosen is not only streaming on the internet (get the app for better quality) but we saw the final 2 episodes of Season 3 IN the theatre.
What a treat to see it on the big screen!