Saw two good movies recently

Sicko

First, I saw Sicko. A very good movie. Mr. Moore tends to target his messages to the people in my generation fairly well. Either that or we are easy targets. I think it is because we are probably the last generation who experienced people in our family that believe ‘this is the greatest country on earth’. Yes, the US has its shining moments, but not everything we do is smart. These ‘patriots’ would smartly denounce anything done by any other country – “we’re the best”. We, on the other hand, thought they were a little weird, but between them and television, we believed what we heard. Mikey from the Life commercials died from pop-rocks. Be careful, you could get razor blades in your apples at Halloween. Gay people spread aids. Ozzy Osbourne bit the head off of a bat at a Kiss concert. blah. blah. blah. You get the picture. Toss in a few good doses of ‘communism’ is evil and ‘socialism’ is a failure, and a population essentially becomes shut off to new ideas. All of these half-truths propagate and refine the ‘conventional wisdom’ of a generation.

Do I believe in communism? No, I think it’s a flawed system. Do I believe in socialism? Yes and No. I think there are flaws in socialism, but I think we should try to figure this out. I think the decision of capitalism or socialism should be made on a case by case basis. I think they can co-exist. As Moore points out in the movie, socialism is already here in the U.S.. He didn’t point out this example, but if you look at our road and highway system. We all share these systems pretty much for free. Anyways, this post is getting too long…

Moore uses Sicko (and all of his other movies) to make a great case for the other side. I always feel ashamed and a little wiser after his movies. I wonder what he’ll think of America when he notices that things don’t change.

So as Sicko ends, they play a song while rolling the credits. I didn’t know who sang this song, because I had never heard it before. Why do I mention that? Because when I started my next movie…

Harold and Maude

Harold and Maude, it started with the same song. Weird coincidence, huh.

This was another really good movie. It was one that I had heard of off and on throughout the years and finally got a chance to see. I won’t describe the plot, but if you like provocative, well-done movies, this is definitely a must see. This definitely captures the chill of the early 70’s really well. Yet, the movie is timeless.

Also, if you like Wes Anderson movies, you should watch this just to see where he got a lot of his technique.

One more thing, the song in common to both movies was done by Cat Stevens.

Yet another thing. To see another movie from this period that was powerful (and not sci-fi), check out Network.

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