Powerful anti-slavery film makes an impact

12 Years a Slave

Released November 8, 2013

I came away from 12 Years a Slave feeling as if I had watched something unspiritual. What I had witnessed was a depiction of the depravity of slavery.

The disappointment of Imagine

Imagine

Released September 9, 1971

EMI Records released a digital remaster of the 1971 album “Imagine” (by John Lennon) in 2010. The album contains the famous song “Imagine” which is used in the film “The Killing Fields”, but Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror is a better place to start if we want to change the world.

Good versus evil: A traditional fantasy for young and old

Krull

Released July 29, 1983

Krull is a good old-fashioned combination of a medieval historical film and a science fiction fantasy.

The challenge of change, but Steely Dan’s debut underwhelms

Can’t Buy a Thrill

Released November 1972

Written by Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. The vocals are by Fagen, Becker, David Palmer, and Jim Hodder. Donald Fagen also played piano, electric piano and the plastic organ, Walker Becker played electric bass guitar, and Jim Hodder played drums and percussion, with Jeff Baxter (guitar) and Danny Dais (guitar). Gary Katz produced the album. Can’t Buy a Thrill boast the most interesting lyrics and perspectives of 1972.

Traditional themes and classical style action

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Released January 14, 1944

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is at a basic level a story of revenge. Yet we see and feel plenty of classical style action, adventure, love, and honour. It is a romantic style film. Based on the Arabian Nights tale, Ali Bab and the Forty Thieves was released on January 14, 1944, which puts it among the Golden Era of Hollywood filmmaking. I would like to see a Christian film with the same premise, where an Arabian Tales paced-epic is transported to a Christian-based romantic adventure.

Gratingly realistic: drama movie re-creates the Boxing Day tsunami

The Impossible

Released October 11, 2012

One may not grasp the difficulties of the survivors of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, but The Impossible pulled off the impossible, by making one feel something of it. The power of re-creation enabled this and while not the same thing is still a way of conveying the magnitude of the disaster that the viewer is forever changed.

This adaptation is a sobering drama

A Christmas Carol

Released November 23 (UK) and December 17 (USA), 1984

This is a surprising Christmas movie. I was surprised by the film’s magnetic attraction.

Back in 1927: the first Hardy Boys mystery tells of a not-so-distant past

The Tower Treasure

By Franklin W. Dixon

Publisher: Grosset & Dunlap

Released 1927

The first Hardy Boys mystery The Tower Treasure was in the words of your grandfather or great grandfather, who read the book when it came out all those years ago (almost one hundred years!), an “exciting page turner”.

Something in the music does not compute

1999

Released October 27, 1982

The album that put American musician Prince on the map in popular culture came on the heels of the singles 1999 and Little Red Corvette. And it was an album of funky rhythms.