After a convenient name change, this blog seems to be developing a very specific theme.
Men Who Stare at Goats
Starring: Ewan McGregor, George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey
Grade: A
Before I begin, I'd just like to say, for those of you who have seen The Informant or read my post about it - these movies (while certainly not the same) have a lot of similarities. Half-way through the movie I realized this. But unlike The Informant, this movie was advertised as a comedy and is. Even during the moments where you kind of cringe at what's going on, it's still funny. (And of course, I still like The Informant, even if it wasn't as funny as advertised). Now onto the movie!
Dude, I pretty much loved this movie. At the moment I can't think of anything bad about it, other than at times I wanted it to go a little faster. But I'm also really tired so maybe if I wasn't than A.) I might have found something bad about the movie and B.) I might have not wanted it to go faster towards the end.
Let me start this movie intro by saying that if Miss Alice is reading this paragraph, she might want to skip it. There was a commercial for (I think - and isn't it funny I can't remember what the ad was advertising) a TV-movie. And it started on a close-up of this guy talking and all you can see are his eyes. And I'm thinking 'I know that voice and those eyes... it can't... be...' And the camera pulls away to reveal Glenn Beck. And the woman sitting behind me says with pretty much no restraint "Ugh, I hate that guy." And the theater busts out laughing. And the theater was pretty much in sync with the laughs from that point on.
On to slightly less controversial politics - now, I'm not exactly a fan of hippies, but I have to say after watching the hippie scenes in this is movie, where the "Men Who Stare at Goats, as it were, are trained to be psychic soldiers... I wouldn't mind spending some time in that camp. So the basic premise of the movie is that a reporter, Bob (McGregor) is investigating a government program from the 80's called the "New World Army", where men were trained to be "Jedi Warriors" or "Psychic Spies", via New age practices and things like that, and he's being told the story of this program (which is seriously based on some stuff that actually happens. See my side note on MKULTRA on the bottom of this post) by Clooney's character, Lyn. There's obviously more too it than that but this is the basic premise.
Okay, I could really just go on about this movie, especially because I'm tired, so I'll just break down the stuff I liked in bullet points.
- Lyn's demonstration of (his liberal intrepretation of) how a Jedi warrior disables an enemy opponent: there are actually two insistences of this - both hilarious - and the second probably my favorite scene in the whole movie
- The Jedi warrior references subtle juxtaposition with Ewan McGregor (aka the young Obi Wan Kenobi - if you don't know who I'm talking about... get out. Now.): this was supposedly unintentional and they just happened to cast McGregor for the part. Whether true or not, whatever, I don't care. It was funny.
- The glorious, GLORIOUS 70's rock. Long live Boston.
- Pretty much the entire last twenty minutes of the movie. I will give nothing away, but it's great. And it led me to decide my next bullet point.
- Jeff Bridge's character (the original psychic warrior) is Walter Bishop. And through the transitive property, Jeff Bridges is also Walter Bishop. And Walter Bishop is the Dude.
Now go see the movie!
And if you're still reading: MKULTRA. Look it up on Wikipedia. Basically it was this CIA program from the 70's where the government tried to use LSD to see if they could read and end up controling the minds of people, such as communists and dictators, people like that. A lot of people died and the program shut down. When I was in high school, the documents about the program were unclassified, and my friend did a really awesome research project about it that I wish I did instead of stupid HUAC and the stupid McCarthy Hearings. (Stupid McCarthy... stupid not reading about the smoking gun til I had already written my whole paper...). It's pretty crazy the things they did. Crazy... or... Genius? Nope, it was crazy.
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