movies (Page 11 of 31)

"Suspect Zero" - starring Aaron Eckert, Ben Kingsley, Carrie Ann Moss

Suspenseful crime / drama / thriller about remote viewing - openly talks about the government doing it...in fact, the featurettes on the DVD are all about how it works, and the government's involvement.   !

I want to be excited that "Wow!  Hey!!  This stuff is finally coming to the forefront of the public's attention!" except I'm realistic with a touch of cynicism, so I know better.  It actually creeps me out that they're now openly flaunting these topics in recent movies. 

At any rate, this movie was mentioned to me by a fellow Realmer whom I email with.  She's aware of my connection with abductions / remote viewing and has only recently begun to realize her own possible involvement with this.   The general gist of the plot centers on an FBI agent Tom Mackelway (Eckert) who, due to his recent "unorthodox methods" in tracking and arresting a serial killer, has recently been suspended from service for 6 months then shipped off to New Mexico to go work for the FBI in Albuquerque as a form of demotion.  Once there he finds himself involved in yet another serial killing case.   We see scenes of Ben O'Ryan (Kingsley) remote viewing Mackelway, tracking him.   He sends Mackelway multiple faxes of missing children bulletins.  We're led to believe that he's another run of the mill serial killer behind the spate of killings in N.M, and maybe has something to do with all the missing children he keeps bringing Mackelway's attention to.....but is he? 

What I liked about this movie is that it's not your typical gruesome "serial killer horror fest".  This movie, unlike its peers, doesn't focus on the killings nor focus on gory rotting corpses found at some nasty scene of the crime, where the Feds take an extra long time to poke about looking at the weird accumulation of evidence and puddle of rotting goo while the sparse and chilling music plays, blah blah blah and ALL that cliche stuff.   It actually shies away from that and instead puts the attention on the actual plot and characters and interesting desert cinematography......imagine that!  Not that there aren't any corpses.....but it's as if the director purposely cuts away as soon as possible, so there isn't focus on it.  You barely see anything. To me, this is good, 'cause I'm just not into the demonic vibed gruesome horror chillers anymore.   So despite being a movie "about serial killers", the actual killings take a backseat.  So if you're thinking of avoiding it because of that, rest assured, you should be fine.  Most notably, I was in a pleasant, good mood before watching and my vibe / frequency had not lowered after the movie.  Instead I was left intrigued, pondering the plot.    Conversely, the movies "Se7en" and "Silence of the Lambs" (both of which everybody compares "Suspect Zero" to for some nutty reason) REALLY lowered my vibe afterwards.  Those movies, like all horror serial killer movies, are darky, heavy movies JUST for the sake of being dark and heavy. 

This is a good movie in general, but if you also happen to be interested in remote viewing, it's a double bonus.   Look for little clues about it all, they're there.   One that stood out for me was Ben O'Ryan mentioning several times throughout the movie that he was unable to "turn it [remote viewing] off".  "I can never turn it off....they didn't teach us how to turn it off....."     My dad once said the same thing.  He didn't know he'd been used by the Navy / NSA and for years afterwards was plagued with moments where his psychic abilites were "On" as he called it.  One afternoon when I was 15 he was pacing around and around the kitchen and the hall and livingroom, visibly upset and even slightly distraught.  He'd been "ON" for several days in a row and it wouldn't stop.  He was bombarded with knowing and imagery about everybody he met......he knew a woman at work was pregnant before she did, even knew what the sex of the baby was going to be.   He would just know anything.   He went to the cabinet, pulled out a deck of cards, shuffled it...had ME shuffle it....then wrote out what the first 10 cards would be.   Then I turned over the cards.   10 out of 10, perfectly, he got them all, suits included.   This actually pissed him off even more and he made a sour puss face and took off to go pace around some more.  He HATED being able to do this, but as he told me "I can't shut it off!"   He was stuck.     

So yeah, that stood out for me in the movie, "I can't turn it off!"   Very true.

OK, this is obvious. No coincidence. These movies really try to tell us something. I've been to Batman Begins last night. Very interesting. Batman's last two films were rubbish & among the worst films I've ever seen. But not this one.

possible spoilers -------------------

There is a shadow union that works for destruction of corrupted society. We learn that they were with us all the time practicing demolition from time to time. This reminded me the "balance factor" in Babylon 5, the superb sci-fi series that we talked about before: There were shadows & vorlons (angels) that were working for balance in the universe. Shadows believed in destruction and chaos, while Vorlons believe in self-knowledge to progress.

Here we see a similar pattern, the shadow union (illuminati?) is unknown to main culture, literally invisible, highly skilled & educated. They watch and decide when a civilization would come to an end.

There are some more interesting references, the name of the scientist who supports Bruce Wayne technically is "lucius fox" - foxy lucifer? In fact I had the story of Sumerian Gods Enki & Enlil in mind while watching the movie, Enlil wants to destroy humanity, Enki giving Upnapistim (a kind of Sumerian Noah) knowledge to build an ark. This story evolved as Prometheus in Ancient Greek literature and many people believe "lucifer giving the apple of wisdom to eve in eden" story is also evolved from here. This makes lucifer founder of humanity's culture & society as we know it today. In the movie, lucius fox gives batman everything he needs to progress and succeed, even things he doesn't know anything about.

The system to destroy Gotham was very interesting. There is a herbal drug that creates illusions and delirium in people. The more interesting thing is, people begin to have altered perceptions when they inhale this drug. I saw this as shifting to 4D - if one is not ready one may go mad because of this new perceptions. But if you're ready (have the antidote) this is no problem for you.

By the way, I watched trailer of War of the Worlds before the film. Seems great! This one may have much more symbols & metaphors than any film this season.

Watched Batman this weekend - I thought it one of the best movies I have seen for a very long time.

Some of the things I really liked about it:

The manner in which Bruce Wayne deals with the darkness inside himself.
How he learns to confront and embrace his shadow self.
Embracing and then using his fear.

All the dialouge in this movie between Bruce Wayne and Liam Neason's character with regards to the inner self; I thought were great, and very focused.  I find it interesting that these sorts of subjects were dealt with in a film that also had a fair amount of symbolism.

A common theme here at NR - is questioning how people can evolve themselves in order to confront or deal with possible world changes / cataclysms.  Often this focuses on self awareness and embracing ones entire self.  I thought it was neat that this is exactly what Bruce Wayne did in order to save Gotham.

The result wasn't exactly how we discuss it here.  In effect he ends up with a split personality - both his Bruce Wayne and Batman egos are only aspects of his personality - yet he has forced them to become more or less his entire being.  But the great part his he understands this fact and uses it to fight "evil" for a "greater good".

Another great aspect about the movie was that it really blurs the line between "good" and "bad".  Many people believe the difference is as stark as Black and White - the truth is entirely otherwise...and this movie handled that very well...

I saw "Batman Begins."  Wow!  What a movie.  Much better and different than I thought it would be.

I understand that for some people Batman is a beloved character and story, so I want to make clear that the following is just possible interpretations.

I really get the feeling that the people who wrote this story and screenplay were familiar with Fritz Springmeier's work or knew the same material through other sources.

Here is a link to Springmeir's work:
http://www.whale.to/b/sp/springmeier_h.html

I think that the League of Shadows is very much like the Illuminati.

Bruce Wayne had very traumatic experiences happen to him as a child.  The fall in the well and the bats were portrayed as an "accident" but perhaps it was not. 

The shooting of his parents right in front of him was also portrayed as a "random" act of violence but even more so with this one - perhaps it was not random.

The Liam Neeson character took a great deal of interest in Bruce Wayne as a young adult and perhaps that went further back than openly portrayed.

So Bruce was traumatized as a child and developed a type of split personality - straight out of mind control.  There was the comment Bruce made about Batman - "any man that dresses up as a bat must have problems."  I thought that was pretty funny.

Dr. Crane was all about mind control - he specialized in traumatizing people.  The movie even mentions that the League of Shadows needs to operate all all levels of society - including the prisons - where some people are taken to the asylum for experiements.

Now, I understand that this part might be controversial - but what if Bruce's dad was not just the good doctor that he was portrayed as.  He did build an empire - and they did use that word to describe his business enterprises.  If he was really just a humble doctor then why was he compelled to make billions and billions and billions of dollars?

Also, Bruce's dad took young Bruce to that very creepy opera that featured bat-like beings- maybe demons.  Maybe the good doctor was just trying to expose his son to some culture but perhaps more was happening there.

Springmeier writes that Illuminati types may use charity giving as a sort of twisted game where they try to balance their "good works" with their "evil deeds".  Not that all giving is like this by any means, but it is possible that some large public gifts could be used to create a positive seeming persona so that it is easier to do nefarious deeds in the shadows.

Perhaps Bruce's father was also in the League of Shadows - but not as high up as Ducard, the Liam Neeson character.

I liked the dialogue between Bruce and the Liam Neeson guy.  Very intelligent and twisted.  A mixing of truth, partial truth, and flat out lies.

For example, Bruce did not leave Liam to die in a burning house - like Liam said he did.  Bruce risked his life to save him and then brought him to a place where he could heal.

To sum it up, I recommend this movie but probably not for young children.

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And another thing.  I'm sure that many people are familiar with the idea of associating certain actors with specific roles.  Examples abound. 

For various reasons, the same actors get used over and over again in movies.  In some cases, I bet that the filmmakers are aware of associations that certain actors have and may use that as part of the message of the film. 

Immediately when I saw the person that was playing Bruce Wayne's father, I thought - that's the creepy alien experimentor guy from "The Forgotten".  So right away I thought - he's a "bad guy".  Because of that, I had a harder time buying the story that he was this benevolent doctor who just happened to make billions of dollars.  His story was that he spent his time at the hospital while the other guys ran his empire.

Similar situation with Liam Neeson.  The recent associations from Star Wars are that he is a wise, benevolent Jedi Master.  In Batman Begins, at first he appears to play a similar type of role but then it becomes evident that something else is happening.  Maybe his Jedi Master background makes his arguments for the League of Shadows more compelling - for those who are debating the wisdom and merits of the "dark side".

Is this v for vendetta movie gonna be a cartoon or anime style movie?

I too thought Constantine was a great film. The critics tore it apart just because Keanu Was in it.

Well, we watched a movie called "The Final Cut" tonight on DVD, which was mentioned earlier in this thread.  It stars Robin Williams, Mira Sorvino and Jim Caviezel.  In the future, people have organic implants in their brains which grow along with the person's brain, and which record every moment of their life, 24/7, until they die.   Approximately 1 in 20 people have them, so they're not mandatory.  It's not exactly like a Big Brother type conspiracy for government tracking or anything like that.   It's more for the rich, for people who want to be "immortal."   Then after someone with an implant dies it's up to the "cutters" to sift through a lifetime of footage and weed out the chaff, and cobble together a final film highlighting the best portions of that person's life.  The film is then shown at the funeral called a "Rememory", and even put into their tomb at the cemetary.   Robin Wiliams is a cutter named Alan Hakman, the best of the best in the cutter profession.  He'll take jobs that other cutters don't want to take - usually involving someone with an unsavory life full of seediness.   Cutters often have a hard time dealing with that kind of footage, even though it's their job to look the other way and delete it, pretend it doesn't exist.

There's a resistance movement as well, who are against the implants for several reasons:  the fact that people don't have a choice in the matter because their parents have them put in for them as babies; the privacy issue, and those without implants never knowing if they're being filmed or not when they interact with someone; the way the implants have altered the way people interact with each other in general, etc.  Another issue is the deception that goes on in editing a person's life -  cutters are hired by the families to basically make scumbags into saints after they die, so people never know the truth about who they really were.  The families have their little fantasy of how they choose to remember someone and it's up to Hakman to create that fantasy based on the stories they relay to him in his interviews with them.

This movie didn't receive very good reviews at IMDB.com, but I understand why.  People were expecting some high action thriller, but that's not what this movie is.  The back of movie box is a little deceiving though in that regard, to be fair.  It shows an image of Robin Williams running, so, it kind of implies high suspense action or something.     But it doesn't mean that the movie is bad....it's just that people tend to give bad reviews if they go in expecting one thing but get another, which is kind of understandable I guess.

So rather than high action thriller, the movie is more like a slow burn, with a focus on poignancy.  But more on that in a second.  The main plot centers on the recent death of Charles Bannister, who was a high profile executive within the Eye Tech corporation, the manufacturer of the implants.  Hakman has been hired by Bannister's widow to be the cutter for his implant footage.  The resistance movement knows that Bannister has some unsavory footage in his implant and desparately want to get a hold of it from Hakman and use it to bring down Eye Tech.  They want scandal, to show how scumbags are edited and reworked to become saints, and Bannister's the perfect candidate, being that he was an executive for Eye Tech.  A subplot involves a childhood memory / secret that haunts Hakman and has affected his entire life, and ends up tying into the Bannister footage that he has been hired to edit.

Like I said the movie has poignancy and is more of a slow burn, that's the only way to describe it really.  Just the way it's filmed in general, it takes its time with things, really focusing on the concept of humanity, such as the scenes of Hakman sifting through footage from people's lives - the good and the very bad - and the look on his face as he does it. He knows the dead's secrets, the real them, versus the deception that he's paid to create for their family and friends for the Rememories. Then the scenes of him interacting with the family and friends who have no clue what he knows......or do they?   As Bannister's widow said (indicating that she was in fact, aware)  "Some things are better left forgotten."     

Anyway, I'd recommend this movie - just realize it's not a high action thriller.  If you know that going in, then you should like it.