Doubt movie review

Despite being an agnostic, I spent major part of my school years at a Catholic high school. While I came across some wonderful nuns but felt sorry for them that they were wasting their lives for an imaginary God. Sadly, some of these nuns were apparently so sexually frustrated that they took their frustrations out on students. The best way to describe is to simply call it torture of kids in the name of discipline.

That is why the behavior Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep) did not surprise me at all. Either she is just sick of her life or hates the Catholic Church for mistreating its female staff that she decides to bring down parish priest Father Flynn (who had a very high coolness factor and played by Philip Seymour Hoffman).

I guess she engages in everything that I would expect the Bible to not allow but she is so enraged at her circumstances that she does it anyway. Sister James (played by Amy Adams) as a young nun watches in horror what really should not be happening in a religious institution.

A great movie for anyone who enjoys fine acting and wants to appreciate how #@#^& up religious institutions really are and how they manage to take people for a ride.

The Devil Wears Prada movie review

Most magazine editors become very powerful but Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, is above them all. The top designers in the world have to be on good terms with her because Vogue is literally the Bible for the fashionistas and nothing gets inside the magazine until Wintour says so.

She is reportedly the inspiration for the book and the movie. And those of us have had the misfortune of dealing with mean bosses know what it feels like and how frustrating it can be to work with nasty supervisor.

Miranda Priestley (a role that was literally made for Meryl Streep) hires yet another assistant Andy Sachs (I would have never thought that Anne Hathaway was such a fine actress) not just to answer phone calls or to act as an executive assistant, but also to bring coffee for her boss and be treated worse than a maid.

It is the story of a right-out-of-college graduate with all the aspirations of making it big and always doing the right thing, but then finds out that the world of business is one ugly place where there is no place for sweet, polite, considerate people.

She learns a lot of lessons about work and life from her boss but like anyone with even a bit of personal values would do, she quits (as dozens of assistants have done in the past). In the end she realizes that a great job is not worth it if it means stepping on people's toes and sacrificing your personal values.

Strongly recommended if you like fashion, comedy, New York, and Paris.

Defending Your Life movie review

So what happens when you die? The reality is that no one has a %#!@ clue. Our current body of scientific knowledge simply tells us that once we are dead, we turn into (biodegradable) junk. But it doesn't hurt to entertain ourselves with such ideas as afterlife or judgment or rewards/punishment or even more exotic concepts like hell/heaven.

In the movie Defending Your Life, almost all the action happens in the so-called Judgment City. It is supposedly a waiting area where the dead are put on "trial" and decisions are made regarding their future: back to earth or forward (no one knows what that is except that people tend to use more of their intellectual horsepower there than on earth where we use less brain power, deal with all kinds of idiotic fears, and worry too much). No wonder then that Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep actually fall in love there.

The Judgment City, which reminds me of a Florida on a beautiful day, is a place where you lose all your inhibitions and you can eat all you want without the fear of gaining weight (you are dead by the way).

Three things attracted my attention:

1. We spend way too much of our time and energy on fears (jobs, money, family, etc.) and don't have enough fun.
2. We can be at our best if we become fearless.
3. It is painful to look at your past (at the trial in Judgment City, they play videos of your life to show you how you were such a fearful person and how little brain power you used).

It is meant to be a fairly entertaining and light romantic comedy but with a serious message: Discard your fears and you might live a better life.