I have. I rented a couple of DVDs for my wife and I to watch. One was Vantage Point, an action/mystery/thriller about a Presidential assasination, told (and retold) from a variety of points-of-view. It was surprisingly good…”surprisingly,” because it came – and went – at the box office so fast, I’m not sure it lasted a week. If you like intelligent movies that make you think – and pay attention – you’ll likely enjoy this one. However, if you’re like most of the movie-going public, maybe not. And that brings me to my rant du jour…You see, I love movies. Good movies. Movies that move you. Movies that tell a compelling story. Movies that take me out of my world and into somewhere else. Movies that entertain. Sadly, they don’t make a lot of movies like that any more. Sure, some movies entertain, and some even manage to hold my attention. Few are well-constructed enough that I get lost in them. And even worse, most forego trying to entertain or thrill in exchange for beating me over my head with a (inevitably liberal) agenda. Most movies today are so busy trying to push a hidden agenda message of “America is bad” or “Humans are destroying the Earth” or even “The terrorists are just misunderstood ‘freedom fighters’ who just want America to stop it’s Imperialistic ways.”
Puh-lease. Give me strength.
Hollywood generally wouldn’t know a good story if it bit them on the…leg. Vantage Point somehow slipped by the Hollywood machine, and escaped. That might have been fatal, had the mainstream media not done their typical hatchet job. Vantage Point was largely ignored in the media – or simply panned. It came and went in the blink of an eye.
So, why, you might ask, does Hollywood do this. I have a theory.
Hollywood is an insular community. Most directors make movies to impress their peers – not to impress the public. They could care less about compelling storytelling. They shovel crap like Brokeback Mountain (the homo-sexualizing of the Marlboro Man) and laud it with honors at Oscar time. Vantage Point will likely be passed over completely. When a good movie does beat the odds and survive the one-two punch of the Hollywood machine and the mainstream press (remember The Passion of the Christ, anyone?), they deny it, call it a fluke, and then attempt to copy its success – without understanding what made it a hit. Think of The Nativity Story. The teenage girl that played Mary found herself pregnant in real life. The media promptly made THAT the story, lauding her for her ‘brave’ decision to keep the child. Christians stayed away in droves. Hollywood scratched their collective heads, then declared that The Passion of the Christ was…a fluke after all.
The networks decided to get in on this “God” stuff. The result was The Book of Daniel, the story of a pill-popping Episcopal minister and head of a dysfunctional family. It was cancelled after just four episodes. Again, the Hollywood brain trust decided that Christians must just not watch a lot of TV.
I could go on, but there’s little point. Hollywood is controlled by liberal secularists, who are more interested in pushing their ‘values’ (or lack thereof) over giving the public what they want. Which is why you’ll have to catch Vantage Point in your DVD player, and not at your local cinema.
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