Sunday, April 22, 2007
GOING UP
Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was Michael Tolkin's
Tolkin takes the mumbo jumbo of the christianists dead serious and weaves a very tight movie around what might happen if you got carried away with it; following to a logical conclusion.
It is a sort of apocalyptic horror film. It even had Gabriel blowing his horn.
Here is another appreciation which takes a different slant on it.
Mimi Rogers is the main convert here and she does a great job of working the range from really serious sin to born again-ness.
All of the stations of the cross are covered; the glassy eyed co-workers who discuss their religion in little cliques, the door to door Mormon type clones, the kind of insanity of the cult.
The counter weight to Rogers' conversion is David Duchovny lookin' real good in his younger years.
There is some very sexy stuff in the early scenes.
You gotta take your sinnin' serious.
Some of this is hard to watch. Squirmy.
But then that is the experience of the non-convert. On the other hand, I cannot see a practicing evangelical watching this without a LOT of squirm.
There are some Palm Spring area shots. Nice.
Rogers is very good.
Speaking of conversion, she was married to Tom Cruise for three years (yikes! another netflix coincidence we saw him yesterday). She is the one who converted him to Scientology.
Talk about your glassy-eyed kool-aid type cultism.
It is said that she no longer practices. I guess she just converts.
So, that is the end of the rapture for today. We will just have to wait for the real thing to come along before we can mock it any more than this.
Incidentally, the film does not mock. It takes it dead serious and, as such, is an even more powerful statement.
This will be a Netflix4 out of 5.
Labels: best films, christist watch, culture
