Movie Mention: PROMETHEUS

Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and the android David (Michael Fassbender) search for the origins of human life in deep space. (20th Century Fox)

This will be a short movie mention, and spoiler-free, because I think if you enjoy sci-fi, you should definitely see this film. 33 years after the ground-breaking Alien (still a darn good film), director Ridley Scott returns to sci-fi/horror with Prometheus. The plot is simple. On Earth, Dr.Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and her lover Dr. Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) discover cave paintings that suggest human life was created by aliens. Dr. Shaw, a devout Christian, is fascinated by the notion of finding humanity’s origins, which she insists does not diminish her faith. Along for the ride is the mysterious Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron), a crew of spacemen, some scientists and David, an artificial life form (Michael Fassbender).

Perhaps not surprisingly, David is arguably the most interesting character. Only he knows where he came from — R&D at Weyland Corporation. The knowledge brings him no peace or joy. But the discovery of a “perfect” lifeform? Oh, that’s another story…

Movie Mention: A Dangerous Method

This is a film I’ve been waiting to see. Yet in all honesty, it felt like a truncated mini-series, where a lot of the essentials were cropped out. Michael Fassbender plays Carl Jung, a psychologist and theoretical heir to Big Daddy Siegmund Freud.   As he falls in love/lust with a patient (Keira Knightley), Jung finds himself breaking his own rules.

For me, the film continually gives us enough to keep us interested without ever giving us enough.  Is Jung sexually frustrated at home or just tantalized by the possibility of an adoring mistress?  Did Keira Knightley’s adoring patient/mistress write those anonymous letters, bringing Jung’s reputation down?  Did Freud truly try and seduce his subordinate’s former mistress?

I wish the movie had provided those answers.  Ultimately I know that Freud died of cancer, Keira Knightley’s character (Sabine?) was shot dead by Nazis and Jung died peacefully of old age.  But the parts in between go unanswered, and I was left wishing for much more.

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