Dogma
Let's get something straight. I'm not going to review new things. I very rarely get there in time to experience things while they're new, so I'm going to buck the trend [not very far, admittedly] and rather than review things that you won't already have seen/heard/read, I'll review the things you have.
All the better for you to dispute my opinions.
So, Dogma (spoilers follow)
It was controversial at the time because apparently if you're American you can't get away with satire quite like Monty Python did in Life of Brian. As it is, I'm wary of recommending it, but then that's because I always take flak for recommending things because invariably people don't like them. [Although I now have one person hooked on both the West Wing and Babylon 5. That'll teach them.]
It's the story of a pair of outcast angels who think the Roman Catholic Church has given them a guaranteed way into Heaven, despite a Divine decree that they would never be allowed back in. Problem is, the world is founded on His infallibility, and to contradict a decree of His is to undo all of Creation. [It sounded kind of wacky the first time I saw it - lots of SoD required - but now I look at it again and it's clearly a textbook proof by contradiction: 'Is this possibility the correct one: follow all logical implications until someone acts against a Divine decree [axiom], contradiction found, check next possibility.]
A fairly good performance from those two guys who - at the time - were never seen apart (no, not Jay and Silent Bob, Affleck and Damon). One scene in particular, but we'll come back to that. A few unforgiveable bits of cheap toilet humour (literally, in places), and we could have done without the 'Angels have no genitals' gag over and over.
What makes it all worth it, in my opinion, is the way you can really pick out the story of one angel's Fall. The scene in the car park, after the train, is brilliant. Maybe you can't see it, and I don't really blame you, but there's something that draws me to both performances (especially Affleck), during a scene in which you can really get inside the head of someone who has had enough, and wants to do something about it. You can see how Bartleby [Affleck] got there, and his outlook seems perfectly valid, and with the response 'I've heard this rant before' you realise (if you think like I do) that the previous rant in question must also have sounded perfectly plausible.
Which is the whole point in using the Devil as a literary figure, if you ask me. Yes, he turned against Heaven. Yes, he waged war on his Creator and the loyalist Host, and yes, he lost and was banished. Why?
The easy answer, and the one that a lot of people try and roll with, is that he was Evil. Now that doesn't sound right. His first progeny, made in His Image to love Him, and the kid is inherently Evil? And all the others that went with him, they were Evil too? That's fine if you want a demon to scare your children, but if you want to tell decent stories about him, you've got to go deeper than that. He had to believe he was doing the right thing, and he had to convince others to share that belief, so that they would follow him even though that defiance was against their very being.
In Bartleby's 'rant', you can see someone falling into Darkness because he believes it's the right thing to do. It's a fundamental tool that's useful for all kinds of sympathetic villains, but it's one of the hardest plot devices to craft, and while Lucas fumbled it a few yards out of the end zone in Star Wars Episode III, Kevin Smith et al do it beautifully in Dogma.
Well worth sitting through the 'shit demon' sequence and the 'Look I have no equipment' joke for it.
Please bear in mind when considering flaming me that I'm not talking about your God or your religion. Smith was telling a story: he has concocted a version of the Catholic Church that clearly isn't the one that he grew up in, nor the one that anyone else knows, and the edge of the preposterous that taints everything it does should satisfy you that it isn't yours, either. Likewise, I'm talking about the Devil as a literary figure, and not the guy who's going to give sinners a hard time for all eternity.
All the better for you to dispute my opinions.
So, Dogma (spoilers follow)
It was controversial at the time because apparently if you're American you can't get away with satire quite like Monty Python did in Life of Brian. As it is, I'm wary of recommending it, but then that's because I always take flak for recommending things because invariably people don't like them. [Although I now have one person hooked on both the West Wing and Babylon 5. That'll teach them.]
It's the story of a pair of outcast angels who think the Roman Catholic Church has given them a guaranteed way into Heaven, despite a Divine decree that they would never be allowed back in. Problem is, the world is founded on His infallibility, and to contradict a decree of His is to undo all of Creation. [It sounded kind of wacky the first time I saw it - lots of SoD required - but now I look at it again and it's clearly a textbook proof by contradiction: 'Is this possibility the correct one: follow all logical implications until someone acts against a Divine decree [axiom], contradiction found, check next possibility.]
A fairly good performance from those two guys who - at the time - were never seen apart (no, not Jay and Silent Bob, Affleck and Damon). One scene in particular, but we'll come back to that. A few unforgiveable bits of cheap toilet humour (literally, in places), and we could have done without the 'Angels have no genitals' gag over and over.
What makes it all worth it, in my opinion, is the way you can really pick out the story of one angel's Fall. The scene in the car park, after the train, is brilliant. Maybe you can't see it, and I don't really blame you, but there's something that draws me to both performances (especially Affleck), during a scene in which you can really get inside the head of someone who has had enough, and wants to do something about it. You can see how Bartleby [Affleck] got there, and his outlook seems perfectly valid, and with the response 'I've heard this rant before' you realise (if you think like I do) that the previous rant in question must also have sounded perfectly plausible.
Which is the whole point in using the Devil as a literary figure, if you ask me. Yes, he turned against Heaven. Yes, he waged war on his Creator and the loyalist Host, and yes, he lost and was banished. Why?
The easy answer, and the one that a lot of people try and roll with, is that he was Evil. Now that doesn't sound right. His first progeny, made in His Image to love Him, and the kid is inherently Evil? And all the others that went with him, they were Evil too? That's fine if you want a demon to scare your children, but if you want to tell decent stories about him, you've got to go deeper than that. He had to believe he was doing the right thing, and he had to convince others to share that belief, so that they would follow him even though that defiance was against their very being.
In Bartleby's 'rant', you can see someone falling into Darkness because he believes it's the right thing to do. It's a fundamental tool that's useful for all kinds of sympathetic villains, but it's one of the hardest plot devices to craft, and while Lucas fumbled it a few yards out of the end zone in Star Wars Episode III, Kevin Smith et al do it beautifully in Dogma.
Well worth sitting through the 'shit demon' sequence and the 'Look I have no equipment' joke for it.
Please bear in mind when considering flaming me that I'm not talking about your God or your religion. Smith was telling a story: he has concocted a version of the Catholic Church that clearly isn't the one that he grew up in, nor the one that anyone else knows, and the edge of the preposterous that taints everything it does should satisfy you that it isn't yours, either. Likewise, I'm talking about the Devil as a literary figure, and not the guy who's going to give sinners a hard time for all eternity.
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