Category: A Spiritual Look At All Forms Of Entertainment…

While many may only be able to think of Chris Evans as the star-spangled superhero named Captain America, seeing how he’s played that role in seven films over the past six years, he has also acted in a number of other movies as well, some quite good in fact, one of which being “Gifted”, which I just caught a screening of recently in the theater.

“Gifted” is about man named Frank Adler (Chris Evans) who has solely been raising his deceased sister’s daughter Mary (Mckenna Grace), ever since her mother committed suicide. Mary is exceptionally intelligent, showing a brilliance well beyond collegiate levels at only 7 years old, especially in the area of mathematics. But, Frank feels she needs to be more like girls her own age, instead of spending all her time focusing on complex mathematical equations and hanging out with their adult neighbor Roberta (Octavia Spencer). So, he opts to send her off to public school in the hopes she finds that, but it becomes immediately apparent once there that Mary is bored, unchallenged, and has no desire to remain there. When her teacher Bonnie (Jenny Slate) notices this, and begins to see Mary’s arithmetic gifts emerge during their normal classwork, she quickly brings it to the attention of Frank and the school’s Principal, Gloria Davis (Elizabeth Marvel). Frank becomes adamant when they both suggest that Mary attend a school for gifted children and says Mary is just fine being right where she is. That answer doesn’t go over so well with Principal Davis though, who ends up getting in contact with Mary’s grandmother, Evelyn (Lindsay Duncan), as it’s her hope that Evelyn might be able to change Frank’s mind. Unfortunately, Evelyn is the very person Frank has been trying to keep out of Mary’s life and as soon as she swoops in, it becomes pretty obvious why, as her only desire is to see Mary develop her mathematical gifts. But when Frank refuses to compromise with Evelyn, she decides to take him to court for parental rights, thus drawing Mary into a fierce custody battle where the victor will either be Mary remaining the child Frank desires to continue taking care of or the prodigy Evelyn wishes to groom Mary into.

Overall, I really enjoyed this film a lot. I laughed, cried, and felt my heart move more than not throughout the entire running time and almost wished it didn’t have to end when the credits finally rolled. I’ve seen a number of child prodigy films over the years, none of which tugged at my heart-strings as much as this one did. Why that is has a lot to do with the incredible acting of both Chris Evans and Mckenna Grace. It was very refreshing to see how far Chris Evans has come in his acting abilities, as I clearly remember watching him in one of his first starring roles way back in 2001, where he played a totally goofy teenager in a spoof-based film titled “Not Another Teen Movie”. As for Grace, an eleven-year old actress who already has over forty acting credits to her name, she played the conflicted and genius seven-year-old so well that if “Gifted” had been released during awards season, there’s a good chance she would have been nominated for her role.

Nevertheless, while I may not be a genius on any level nor ever have been, and while I may not have ever gone through a custody battle either, I definitely could relate to the material of this movie, especially the family dynamics of Frank, Mary, and Evelyn. On some level, Evelyn was a lot like my mother, as she constantly drove me to overachieve in everything I did. My father on the other hand, was a lot like Frank, and seemed to always stress the importance of being of kid, even as an adult.

So maybe that’s why my heart moved as much as it did while watching “Gifted” and because of that, I highly recommend seeing it and give the film my best rating of five stars.

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

Recently I watched the movie “Trainspotting” (1996) for the first time along with a few friends of mine who’d already seen it. It’s mainly a film about heroin users that on some level seemed to occasionally take a humorous look at an addiction that’s really never humorous.

“Trainspotting” centers around the lives of Renton (Ewan McGregor), Spud (Ewen Bremner), and Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller) and the Edinburgh drug scene they are deeply immersed in. The movie focuses on all the highs and lows that a heroin junkie tends to go through including the crimes it takes to support their habit, the losses that stack up while engaging in their habit, and the hell that one goes through in any attempts to kick their habit.

What I struggled the most with this movie is the way the heroin addiction was portrayed, as many of the sequences that were involved were shot in such a way that it made the viewer laugh at the antics a heroin addict might go through. But in the world I live in, there’s nothing funny at all about heroin addiction. Every year the rate of heroin users continues to increase along with its rate of deaths. 13,000 people actually died in 2015 from this drug and I have personally watched countless lives throughout the rooms of recovery be destroyed by this disease.

Thus, watching Renton in this film fully crawl into a disgustingly dirty toilet that he just defecated into to retrieve two pills didn’t make me laugh one bit. Or watching Spud lose his bowels in a bed he slept in because he was so messed up and then seeing them eventually be sprayed all over everyone the next morning when the family grabbed the sheets out of his hand that he personally wanted to wash, didn’t make me laugh either. There were plenty of other scenes throughout the film as well where I noticed my friends were laughing, but I just couldn’t.

Because in my world where I’ve seen four sponsees, all under the age of 40, die from heroin overdoses, or where I’ve seen my actual friends steal, go to jail, hurt, maim, and attempt to kill all for this drug, made it kind of hard to watch a film that makes more light of an addiction that ultimately is extremely dark.

There was one scene in the movie though that I feel accurately depicted this disease at its worst and it involved a baby that was being brought up in an apartment where all these junkies hung out. It crawled around innocently, playing, and laughing as the mother thrusted one needle after another in her arm day after day. But one day, after an extended period of using, the woman discovers her baby dead in its crib, looking blue, malnourished and very diseased. As she screams and cries, Renton decides he needs to shoot up to deal with it, which she agrees is necessary as well. Soon, she’s high, her screaming is over, and she appears to care less about the loss. I shudder as I still picture these movie scenes in my head, because it’s scenes like them that happen far too often in the real world with heroin users. It reminds me of that family that shot up heroin in their car last summer, both passing out and overdosing while their baby sat in the backseat.

None of this is funny! Heroin addiction is never funny! It’s deadly and it’s taking the lives of many beautiful souls more than any other drug out there right now! People don’t come into the rooms of recovery and laugh about their heroin addiction, most in fact are usually crying because they’ve lost so much. Personally, I’d prefer to watch a film that has a more realistic approach to heroin addiction, that correctly shows the disease at its worst and never with humor. “Requiem For A Dream” was a great example of that.

Nevertheless, while director Danny Boyle does a good job highlighting some of the craziness that a heroin user goes through in his movie “Trainspotting”, I was left rather disappointed because I felt the film could mislead some who see it into believing that heroin is not as deadly as it truly is.

Heroin addiction is nothing to laugh about. It’s a serious problem in our country right now and I actually live in a state that leads the nation currently in overdose deaths. That’s not funny and never will be, so hopefully films that come out in the future about this disease will focus only on the bleak outlook that comes with it. And maybe, just maybe, they’ll also focus on the hope that does exist out there for a heroin user, that being the 12 Step rooms of recovery.

So, overall, while “Trainspotting” was a good cinematic movie in that it was original in its own design, its biggest flaw was in showing humor with an addiction that truly is never humorous at all…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

There are plenty of movies I resist seeing in the theater and even for home viewing, simply because I don’t like any of the trailers I see for them. And even when I’ve gone against that notion, and chose to see the full feature anyway, I’ve usually ended up regretting it, but not so with a 2016 film titled “Eddie The Eagle”, which I recently caught on television at home.

“Eddie The Eagle” is the true story of Michael “Eddie” Edwards (played by Taron Egerton), a determined British ski jumper who defied all the odds and qualified for the 1988 Winter Olympics. From an early age, Eddie’s only dream was to qualify for the Olympics, but due to a number of disadvantages that life dealt him from physical limitations to financial, it seemed as if Eddie’s dream was always beyond reach. But when he discovers his love of skiing and pursues it with all his might, he achieves local success, furthering his belief he’ll one day head to the Olympics. Yet even when he fails to make the competitive Olympic British team in 1988 for downhill skiing, he still doesn’t give up. That becomes overly evident when he learns there haven’t been any British ski jumpers since the 1920’s, as then he decides to quickly switch to the totally different winter event, convinced he will learn how to master the highly difficult sport all on his own and qualify for the Olympics there. And even through a number of setbacks and injuries, his determination eventually arouses the interest of a cantankerous coach named Bronson Peary (played by Hugh Jackman) enough to help him in his quest to become Olympic bound. In the end, it becomes apparent that Eddie is a man who never stopped believing in himself, even when so many counted him out, and becomes an unlikely hero in the process when he finally achieves his childhood dream.

When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I must admit I rolled my eyes and thought it looked kind of silly. And even after reading up on Eddie’s life on Wikipedia, I wasn’t motivated enough to head to the theater to see it. But zoom forward a year later when I noticed on one of those free premium channel weekends that my satellite company occasionally offers, that this movie was showing. I opted to record it to DVR mostly for my other half, as he had wanted to see it in the theater the prior year but never did. When we finally got around to watching it, I was less than enthused, half expecting myself to fall asleep during it. Yet, it was quite the opposite. Finding myself seeing some parallels to Eddie’s journey to the Olympics, to my own journey of self-healing, that many have often told me to give up on, just like they did Eddie, I actually found myself being pretty moved by the film. In a world where it’s rather easy to listen to others and give up on our dreams, our passions, and our goals, sometimes we have to look Higher and go deeper within, to channel enough energy that will help us defy the odds that so often seemed stacked against us. And that’s exactly what Eddie did in his own life, he never gave up and achieved his dream, which is precisely what I plan to keep doing and why I was so inspired by this film by the end.

I’m grateful for stories like Eddie The Eagle’s, because in a world where negativity seems to be abound these days all around me, it’s stories like his that truly help me to keep going and never give up on something I know I can achieve, God willing, just like Eddie did…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson