Behind Every Dark Cloud

 

There’s a problem with happiness – you can’t have it all the time. The message out there in the world however seems to be the exact opposite.

As a society, we chase any and every opportunity that will grant us a marvelous feeling of peace and contentment and when we don’t find it, we are unhappy. We seem to forget that loneliness, failure, despair and anguish is the other, often more true, flipside to the coin.

What we try to do, is to numb our pain. In fact, if we don’t have to deal with it, even better. Almost as if nothing in life should hurt. No. Pain is painful, loneliness suck, being rejected hurts and having your wife or husband cheat on you with a colleague can be emotionally crushing to most.

When you have to face life’s crises on top of being bi-polar too, things might seem even more severe, which in turn can make it even more, dare one say - interesting.

Patrick (Bradley Cooper) has just been released from a mental institution after being sentenced there by a court for assaulting the man who had a sexual affair with his wife. While spending time at the mental facility, for the first time he comes to terms with the fact that he suffers from bi-polar disorder.

Pat however, refuses to drink his medication because it makes him feel drowsy, but perhaps he just hasn’t had the right motivation to do so, yet. When he meets up again with Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), a girl who herself seems to gravitate towards the extreme ends of socially acceptable behaviour, Pat finds someone with whom he can associate. 

The fact that Tiffany is in contact with Nikki, Pat’s ex-wife, is of course what really interests him (or so he says). Ever since his violent explosion and being sent for psychiatric counselling, Pat hasn’t seen her and all he can obsess about is getting back in touch with her.

Tiffany agrees to help get a letter to her from him, in return for dancing with her at an upcoming event. Although feeling forced into helping her, he soon realises that for all her unconventional quirks and mannerisms, everything she says or does is completely void of pretense something, that in his world, allows him to make more sense of things than he has been able to do for a very long time. 

  

‘Silver Linings Playbook’ is a wonderful story of two people making the most of dealing with some really challenging problems they have to face in life. It makes those of us who sometimes feel dejected and alienated realise that when you try hard enough and stay positive, you can have a silver lining to your story too.

Ultimately, we are all a bit messed up. Something this movie communicates really well. What you want and yearn for is often far simpler than you initially might have thought - to find someone that will love you and say, ‘It’s okay – I’ll be messed up with you.’

  

 

Falling Face First

Ever been a victim for doing the right thing? It’s the worst. Ordinarily ‘acting by the book’ will allow you to navigate life’s treacherous moments safely, until somebody dies as a result thereof.  

Yes sir, no amount of procedurally correct actions can bring back somebody once they are dead. Death is simply not contained by the boundaries of protocol. A hard fact to swallow, no matter who you are.

When Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerhard Butler) rescues his Commander-In-Chief, President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart), just in time from a car wreck after their vehicle was involved in an accident, he does the right thing, but he doesn’t save the First Lady (Ashley Judd), too. (Who in their right mind doesn’t save Ashley Judd?)

Being more than just the President’s number one agent, but a friend and confidant as well, having Mike around stirs up too many memories for the President of that fateful night when his wife died and so he gets resigned to a desk job, away from the Whitehouse. Fortunately for Mike, fate is about to serve up yet another unlikely twist to his tale. 

During a visit from South Korea’s Prime Minister, the president and a whole bunch of US officials are taken hostage by a North-Korean terrorist, Tang Yeonsak (Rick Yune), who managed to infiltrate the Minister’s detail. Fuelled by rage over the death of his parents who were killed by an American landmine, Tang starts killing hostages down in the Whitehouse’s bunker and threatens to kill the president next unless America withdraws all their military forces from Korea.

Besides insisting on the withdrawal, he also demands the access codes to all the nuclear weapons distributed all over the country. His aim is to activate them and turn America into a nuclear wasteland. Unfortunately for Tang, his acts of terror is about to be met by Banning, a man with skills more terrifying than any terrorist. Having been forced to sit out from real active duty, Mike is more than motivated to make amends for the past and pretty soon, he will once again be his president’s no1 go-to guy.

Unfortunately, it’s not just Olympus (the Secret Service’s code name for the Whitehouse) that has fallen in this movie, but also the film itself. Although it went on to earn $160 million and was made for just $70 million, it’s a typical story of ‘one man against all the odds’ who then goes on to save the day.

Gerhard Butler’s character lacks some serious depth throughout his entire performance, while the whole movie is entrenched with every visual trick and stunt fathomable. The plot falls flat even further when the new acting president ( Morgan Freeman) along with his advisors do what always gets done in these films – they never follow the advice coming from the man on the ground and proceed to act on their ideas. No surprise at all that someone always dies as a result.

It’s nice to see a fairly young man 

such as Aaron Eckhart in the role of president. A man who keeps fit by boxing and doesn’t mind taking a punch himself. 

However, it’s not enough.If you feel like some mindless entertainment about the first successful terrorist attack on the Whitehouse ever, then watch ‘Olympus Has Fallen’. Just be aware that it’s the only significant claim to this film.

                                                                                                         

Life In Every Breath

The concept of breathing is fascinating. It’s something all of us do countless times a day without giving it any or no thought at all. The average adult breathes between 12 – 20 breaths per minute which means that depending on how fast you read, by the time you have finished reading this paragraph you would have done at least 4 – 5 breaths, but this time you’ve actually thought about it, at least once. 

When you can’t breathe all of that changes and you’re suddenly very aware of the importance of this ‘silent-partner’ that enables you to live. 

Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is a medical engineer and the mission-specialist on her first trip into space. Accompanying her is commanding officer Matthew Kowalski (George Clooney), a veteran astronaut, who is doing his final mission for NASA before retiring. Everything seems to be going according to plan while on a spacewalk to make some repairs to the Hubble Telescope when they receive a warning from Houston (Mission Control) to immediately abort the mission.

A nearby Russian satellite has been destroyed by a missile strike and the debris from the explosion is approaching the team and can hit them any second. In space, debris like this can have fatal consequences. The warning from Houston is not in time and before they can reach their space shuttle it is destroyed by the impact, killing all of the crew inside.

From there things quickly escalate and take a turn for the worst. Ryan is separated from the Explorer and has to be retrieved by Kowalski, the only one who has a thruster pack. The amount of oxygen she has available to breathe is already at a critical level and with her breathing now completely out of control due to shock, getting to the International Space Station is not only their best chance of finding alternative transport back to Earth, it's a matter of life and death. 

 

As soon as they reach the ISS they notice it too is badly damaged and that both its Soyuz escape pods have already been deployed, but Kowalski believes there is a third one that can be used to help them reach a nearby Chinese space station where they will find another module, one that can be used to take them back to Earth.

Gravity is a spellbinding movie. Director Alfonso Cuaron manages to tell a compelling story at an exhilarating pace that draws you as viewer completely in to what it must feel like when you are orbiting around the Earth and suddenly experience a life or death situation.

The visuals are spectacular and Tim Webber, the film's visual effects supervisor, has done a magnificent job of creating space-effects that are accurate and true. Of course there are some laws of physics that get manipulated for the sake of developing the movie’s plot, but most astronauts interviewed about the authenticity of the movie will tell you what you witness in the film is exactly what you can expect when you are in space.

The film's main theme focuses on the human spirit’s tenacity to fight against and overcome fear. It also challenges certain perceptions, for instance: even if you could remove yourself to some remote place like space, where no other human being can hurt you, you realise that ‘hurt’ is part of life, perhaps the ingredient that defines it and the only way to overcome it is to never give up. Not quitting in life means you are alive. Eventually those who don’t quit - overcome, transforming them from mere survivors to more than conquerors.

James Cameron was quoted saying about Gravity: ‘I was stunned, absolutely floored. I think it's the best space photography ever done, I think it's the best space film ever done, and it's the movie I've been hungry to see for an awful long time.

‘Gravity 3D’ is currently on cinema circuit. If you are hungry to watch a movie that will literally transport you to another world, be sure to watch this one.