Movie Recommendations

The heat of this particular warm weekend, the first (I think) of 2009 brought back the feelings of past summers where good times were in prospect and where a sense of liberation was felt.

 After watching two films this weekend, that partiular summer smell descended upon me this afternoon as I sat on my couch wondering whether to fall asleep or write in my journal, signaling something new.  Those two films were called Pay It Forward and Yes Man.

Pay It Forward starring Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Artificial Intelligences’ Haley Joel Osment is about a 7th grade boy named Trevor McKinney (Osment) who sets out to help change the world after receiving the assignment from his teacher.  The assignment is to think of one thing that would change the world and for those who worked on it the whole year would receive extra credit.  After bringing a homeless, heorin addict into his home and giving him food, Trevor composed a proposal for his project.  He would help three people and each of those three people would have to help three other people and so on.  I knew from the start that this movie was going to delightful so I left it on.  The movie teaches that the world does not have to be shit, but can be wonderful if we all change it by caring for one another.  The movie made me think a lot.  I would love to go help people and bring someone homeless into my home to provide shelter and food, but it is too great a risk.  We do not know who we are helping and that is the frightening part.  Trevor said people are too scared to help one another, but there is a reason why that fear is there.  The movie will give you a surprise and I won’t tell you what type of surprise to not ruin it for you.  Try and see this sometime. The movie is seldom aired on HBO and Starz.

 The other movie I saw today was Yes Man starring Jim Carrey.  Jim’s character, Carl is someone who lives a mundane life sprinkled with bitterness and hopelessness until a friend tells him about a program that teaches people to say Yes instead of No to things.  Saying yes improved Carl’s life instantly. The whole philosophy behind this movie was that we all should say yes to things we want to do instead of saying no and maybe, that “yes” could lead to something bigger. Go see this! It is out on IO and DVD.