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House M.D.: Informed Consent (2006)
Great discussion generator
As House goes, this is a fairly typical episode, with lots of soapy melodrama, overacting, one-dimensional characters, and an overly simplistic view of medicine combined with lots of dramatic license. However -- it's a GREAT academic tool. I teach "Medical Law and Ethics" to budding health care professionals (it's one of the first three classes in their curriculum), and have now used this episode in about ten classes over the last five years on the last day of the course. It does a nice job of incorporating half a dozen basic principles into a package, from informed consent for research to informed consent for treatment; from active euthanasia to passive euthanasia to "let nature take its course." It is a gripping tale despite its unrealism, and a powerful educational tool as a springboard to class discussion about the general and theoretical principles they have been studying for many weeks. It's been a great way to wrap up the class on the final day. Class member feedback has been that it's very moving, very thought-provoking, and there's JUST enough ambiguity so that the viewer has strong suspicions but is ... not ... quite ... completely certain exactly who might have been in the hospital room at 2:30 a.m. It's an episode worth watching, especially for medical newbies as an academic exercise.
Sideways (2004)
These are people I didn't like spending time with
"Sideways" is one of those movies that are technically well done, with good performances and tight editing, that in the end make one wonder, "Why did anyone bother to make this movie?" With the exception of Virginia Madsden's character, I found the characters to be one dimensional, unsympathetic, unlikeable, and thoroughly depressing people to spend a couple of hours with. Giamotti's depressive angst and Church's selfish randiness were interesting and amusing for, oh, about a minute and a half. After that, I just wanted them to go someplace else, get out of my life, and leave me alone. As the end credits rolled, I felt that I had not watched a two-hour movie. Instead, I felt like I had watched a 15 minute movie eight times. The movie made me realize I'm too old to waste my time with unpleasant people. I think I'm glad I saw it (rented it because of the hype, the critical reviews, and the award nominations) but I'm very thankful I'll never have to watch it again. Perhaps I just don't understand the subtleties involved, but I couldn't identify with anyone in the movie -- if I were to encounter any of these people in real life, I'd take pains to ensure our lives intersected as little as possible as seldom as possible.
Rent (2005)
Not groundbreaking, but very well done.
I knew nothing about the Broadway musical before seeing the movie, except that it was loosely based on "La Boheme" and won several Tonies. I still don't know anything about "La Boheme," but the movie was extremely well done with several standout performances. Every single cast member was very good at the minimum, and Wilson Heredia as "Angel" and Tracie Thoms as "Joanne" were each a step up from outstanding. If I were a member of the motion picture academy, I'd want to nominate Heredia for supporting Oscar -- he was that good. The material was not groundbreaking, a little too much triteness and a few too many clichés, with a lot of evident influence from everything and everybody from the Beatles to Lloyd-Webber to Meredith Wilson, from "Evita" to "Sgt Pepper" to "Oliver" to "Fiddler on the Roof." BUT -- the material was good, the performances were great, and the actors meshed terrifically well and made you care about them. All in all, a very worthwhile movie to see -- and I'm glad I finally did so.
The Monolith Monsters (1957)
It turned me on to science fiction
I saw this movie in a second-run theater a couple of years after its release when I was about 8 or 9 years old. I was expecting a standard stunt-man-in-a-bad-rubber suit 1950s sci-fi/horror flick, with lots of jumping out of dark places to startle the audience. After all, it was on a double bill with "Night of the Blood Beast," which featured a stunt man in a bad rubber suit jumping out of dark places.
What I got instead left a youngster open-mouthed. It wasn't a horror show or a creature feature. It was a thoughtful, problem-solving investigation of a strange phenomenon, with hypotheses and testing and all the stuff I was learning about scientific method at school. I was just fascinated and enthralled. It was then that I realized that science fiction didn't have to be about the monster of the week, and I started reading Heinlein and Asimov and Clarke and Simak and Knight and ......
I recently saw it again for the first time in (mumble) years, and it holds up surprisingly well. The production values are nowhere near those of a classic like "Forbidden Planet," and yes, the science is quite silly. But it was still fun to see again and even more fun to share the stories of 1950s Saturday matinées with my kids. It was a terrific evening in front of the VCR, and it's a keeper for the home video library!
The Core (2003)
Silly and goofy and makes no sense -- and I love it!
I love silly 1950s grade-b sci-fi. Two of my favorites are Monolith Monsters and This Island Earth -- movies that are so bad that they're great fun to watch. The Core fits right into the genre. The cast obviously had lots of fun making it (as director Amiel points out in the DVD commentary, they substituted a trout for a pigeon in one of the sequences.... just for the halibut, I guess). One of the fun parts is that no one takes themselves seriously, the actors all give earnest yet tongue-in-cheek performances, and they a play a super-stupid scientific (?!) idea with absolute deadpan. The core idea is a silly as the Van Allen belt "catching fire" in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, but the movie's a lot more fun. Great way to waste a couple of hours.