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Interests include acting and film, music and dance, writing, art, languages, fine wine and sun.
Reviews
Gone Girl (2014)
Exciting, frustrating, emotional, confusing, brilliant!
I actually watched the film before reading the book, and have since become an avid Gillian Flynn fan and love both, Dark Places and, Sharp Objects, the latter of which I am extremely excited about seeing as a series.
Back to the film...
What starts off as a fairly normal missing persons thriller, quickly becomes something that you least expect. It is extremely faithful to the book, which I always approve of and very little was even left out. Ben Affleck is fantastic and whatever you may have thought/think about him as a person, do not let that cloud your judgement when watching, Gone Girl, as he is really is believable. However it is Rosamund Pike who steals the show as the missing wife. She is just outstanding, really fantastic. There is enough sex, detective work, subplots, good dialogue etc to interest fans of the different components of a thriller, but for me the overall story line is just so perfect that I wonder if it truly ever could have failed as a film.
I am currently waiting for my two next favorite books to make it to screen, What Happened to Michael by N F Paupe, who has the equal power of deception and intrigue that Flynn does and , The Dry, by Jane Harper, a book that will explode ( literally) on screen.
Deliver Us from Evil (2006)
And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
Deliver us from evil is a documentary film exposing the atrocities committed by Irish born Father Oliver O'Grady, and his time as priest and leader of a parish in various different towns in California. It also displays the conspiracy of the Catholicism, its constant protection of employees within the church and the lengths they went to, to protect gods name while standing by and watching children robbed of their innocence.
Although much of the information we see about the Catholic Church and the corruption at the very heart of it, is not completely surprising and I'm sure many people already have their beliefs on paedophilia within the church and its ongoing cover-up, it is with the shameless nature that these "Men of god" talk about the case that is difficult to watch. When Bishop Mahony is asked at one point, "If you knew of a priest having sexual urges towards boys and girls as young as 8 or 9, would that be just cause to remove him from his post" he replies in monotone "No" . It is unsettling to say the least and combined with interviews with the offender himself Father O'Grady, a truly vile and disgusting individual and clearly sociopathic and the victims and their families, we are presented with such a hopeless and desperate story from where there truly is no redemption.
Father O'Grady intersperses the documentary with various appalling remarks and commentaries and it is abundantly clear from the get go that he has no sense of realty and that the disconnection he has leads to a point where he feels it is acceptable to write to his victims and arrange a nice friendly reunion. It is so far-fetched and so ridiculous that we have to questions his sanity and motives throughout. He gives us certainly no just cause for sympathy, describing with a smirk what he did with various young girls and boys and what aroused him and why. The saddest part being that after this documentary was made he was arrested and sentenced to three years for further child pornography charges. It begs the questions, how can the Catholic Church protect him still and how has he evaded a longer jail sentence.
The Catholic Church is presented in such a poor light, that it's very difficult to know what to believe and who to trust. With more and more cases emerging of child abuse within the church and of many more cases that still go unresolved and undiscovered, it is an eye opening insight into the truth and the need to protect our children and the children of the future with such reverence and love.
The victims and their families who gave interviews during the film are unfathomably brave people. It seems that for some there is no light at the end of the tunnel and even 30 years later they remain as scarred and as unhealed as before. It is truly heart retching to see the long term affect this has particularly to those who believed so fervently in god before and who feel betrayed and violated themselves by the church.
While the film does not offer hope nor light, it does offer us truth and facts that may have remained hidden. It is very honest and does not shy away or worry that it may offend. If nothing else we can learn so much from this film and focus on bringing justice to the victims and their families and work so much harder to find and punish those responsible.