Faith through Film and Fiction

Lauren Slouffman

Ok hey!!!!! So I watched Harry Potter because I friggen live Harry Potter. I never read any of the books at all. But the movie are bomb. I watched the chamber of secrets and the think that what really makes these movie so great is the music. We watched a documentary about it in class and they said how the music is iconic and it's true. Absolutely true. Watching one of the films takes me back to my child hood. It has a specific feeling about them. And I love the cast so much. They use characters to make it feel like you are in the movie. And he uses warm colorS in general except when something terrible is about to happen. Then he used very cold and dark colors when Voldemort was coming as a sort of warning it felt likeX they are so well done. And so timeless I love them. 10/10

I'm watching Apocalypse Now to kill two birds with one stone: write a review in this class and be able to see the whole movie so i can get exempt from my english exam. I wasn't expecting the movie to be 3 hours long but i watched it anyway. The movie, like many others i've seen this year, is set in the Vietnam war. This is a really ripe setting for a lot of movies because of the social and political angst that was going on at the time in contrast to the counterculture back home. On my initial viewing, the movie had just lost me. A lot of stuff isn't really explained, but i understand why i'm supposed to be watching it having just read Heart of Darkness. This movie was obviously made in response to it and features similar themes, from aesthetic similarities to plot similarities to philosophical ideas and morals being projected through the characters and the situation they find themselves in. People like to say that the whole movie is made worth it just from the ending, and while the ending is spectacularly eerie, i think it pairs really well as a follow-up to reading heart of darkness. I would recommend this movie to anyone who has read heart of darkness and liked it, but not to anyone with a short attention span.

For my free choice movie I watched a musical. The musical was mama Mia. A musical composed entirely out of Abba songs. The movie was pretty good. The acting was convincing enough for what the movie was with the exception of the mother played by Maryl Streep who did an exceptionally good job with her performance. In the movie the daughter, Sophie, is getting married. Sophie never new her father and had been told her whole life that her father was a man named Sam who had to leave to marry someone else. However Sophie discovered the lie thanks to her mother's old diary. This diary contained tales of her mother's .....'s with 3 men over that summer in which she was conceived. Sophie goes on to invite all 3 of them to her wedding in order to discover who her real father is. This touching story like all movies of its kind ends exactly how you'd expect it to. The setting was Greece and was beautiful. The singing was pretty good except for 1 of the dad's who just couldn't sing. I'd give this movie a 1/1.

Mamma Mia (2008)

I watched Mamma Mia because who doesn't need a good throwback to ABBA every now and then.  I decided to watch it when Alec told me he did not know what the band ABBA was, and I remembered this movie had Meryl Strep so it has to be decent.  The story was very cute and had really good incorporations of the music.  The setting was also beautiful because it was Greece even though the only people in the movie are either American or British which was really weird actually.  The comedy was definitely there even if it was a bit cheesy at times, but the movie did have good characters.  I was pleased with the ending where Sophie decided not to marry her young love and maybe wait a bit before doing that, but however her mom did have to marry her dad as soon as they found out who it was which was kind of disappointing.  I really did like the premise of the plot and how it everything about her having possibly three dads was very light hearted rather than centered around her mom being ashamed or anything like that.

7/10