Three Movies

I find I watch too many documentaries.  I have serious side that is over developed but even knowing that, I have a tendency to feel I should be learning something if I am spending the time to sit and watch film.  So I will share my thoughts first about a couple easy delightful films.

MARGIN CALL is a totally a surprise.  I expected a boiler room of screaming men, loud noises, bright lights and then the scene of a smoking crowded bar of drunken men that had their world changed overnight by events on '08.   The film is the extreme opposite.  It is a small cast of characters, alerted by a nerd, that they should return to the office in the late hours of the night. The numbers he has observed, they must see.  The film is about the 12 hours before that phone call and the 24 hours after. The writing is done by someone that knows the inner world of Wall Street.  The conversations are not about greed but paychecks, not about power bit survival and mostly spoken by men that have calculators for brains.

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is Woody Allen film.  In my opinion he is either very successful or a huge miss on each of his films.  This one I treasure.  Of course, I feel Paris is the most perfect city of the world that I have experienced.  I have managed to spend a little time there during different periods of my adult life. On my last visit there,  a few years ago I read Hemingway's Movable Feast while there.  Immediately, I had to find the Shakespeare Bookstore, visit Luxembourg Park to walk the same space as a writer did during the 20's.  This film explores that same feeling but has a bigger theme. The beauty of the city is filmed so well that people like me will return to view this movie on that grounds alone.

CAVES OF FORGOTTEN DREAMS to me was like holding a new born baby.  It was moving and touching.   The films shows cave drawings that are being film and studied by experts for a few hours of a week one spring a few years ago.  The drawings are radio carbon dated to be around 30,000 years old after their discovery in 1994.  I, personally, hope that is a hoax.  The beauty of these drawings are so breathe taking to me that I only can assume the current population of this planet have not really advanced much in 30,000 years.  The sensitivity of these drawings are so real,  I wonder if it possible that man kind has
always had the same level of intelligence.  Looking at some other works of the ancient world, I ask the question with seriousness.  I am curious to walk along this river valley and feel the sense of that space after seeing those pictures on a cave wall.