Movie Review Monday

Stop-Loss

Stop-Loss is a military term, (and a financial term meaning ‘designed or planned to prevent continued loss, as a customer's order to a broker to sell a stock if its price declines to a specific amount’, just in case you were interested), that refers to the act of sending soldiers back to active duty even though they are ‘contractually’ finished with their service. In this movie, a group of servicemen fresh from mortal combat in Iraq come home to a small Texas town in the hopes of some much needed R & R. One of them (Ryan Philippe) is scheduled to retire, but ends up being Stop-Lossed. This angers Philippe’s character and he goes AWOL. The rest of the film is spent in trying to portray each soldier’s agonizing attempt to find normalcy and meaning in their life outside the military. The film, produced by MTV, is flashy and full of catchy rap tracks – which I always enjoy, I mean seriously who doesn’t enjoy a little ‘let the bodies hit the floor’ now and again, right? The acting is good, the subject matter is compelling, but the storyline is a little disjointed. I wish that they had fleshed out the secondary characters a little more, and no it’s not because I think Channing Tatum is hot! All in all I liked this movie, but I didn’t love it. I give it a C+. (I am changing from Stars to Grades, because it gives me a little more grey area to play with and because it reminds me of playing school when I was a little girl.) This movie is Rated R for brief but extreme violence and pervasive language.

Happy Valley

Happy Valley is a documentary about drug use and abuse in Utah. The film follows the lives of several families who have been affected by the drug abuse of someone in their family. The statistics presented in this film are sobering. For instance, over 40 % of Utahns have used prescription pain killers for non-medicinal purposes. And for many, drug addiction and abuse, starts with prescription drugs. There is a part in the film where they interview a narcotics officer and he talks about being at a party on Saturday night and asking the kids who are taking drugs if they are going to feel bad the next day in church, and they answer him by saying that it is no big deal because its not like it’s against the Word of Wisdom or anything. Holy crap! The film makes the point that even though this is “Happy Valley” there are real problems with real consequences going on all around us, and we can’t as a culture pretend not to see it because it doesn’t fit into our idea of what a good religious community is or does. In the end the film also makes the point that there is redemption available if you will only ask for it, and that we are all children of God, worthy of forgiveness and love. I highly recommend this film. I give it a B. And the only reason that it doesn’t get an A is because I felt like the film could have been edited and polished a bit more.