Movie escape

Movies are meant to be a way to escape reality for a couple of hours.  Time to forget all about the world outside and enjoy yourself.  There are those movies that are nothing but fight scenes and explosions and they are great.  The ultimate escape.  They will never be an award winning movie or sneak into a top one hundred list of the year, but they are serving a purpose.  Entertainment.  And according to a good friend of mine, that is their purpose.  There are dramatic movies out there that draw you into a different time or different circumstances that you would never ever see and blow your mind.  Those are the award winners and the top one hundred movies of the year and they are around to make people think. 

And then there are documentaries.  I love love love documentaries.  Call me a nerd or a geek all you want but they are great.  I'm watching 'Imagine:  John Lennon' at the moment and, if anything, it is making me laugh.  He had such a nonchalant approach to life that it make me sad that he isn't around anymore.  He was socially aware of the goings on in the world as well.  He promoted peace and love in his adult life which is what makes him such a fascinating person.  But above all of that, he was a musical genius (and I try not to use that term [genius] very often). 

Documentaries are meant to make you aware of the world.  Of certain situations you may not know.  Or, if you want, to just learn about people.  Currently on my Netflix queue I have documentaries that range from the life of Hank Greenberg to the rise and collapse of Enron, to the struggles to find and reclaim European paintings the Nazis stole during the second world war.  So there are many different forms of documentaries and they are not all Michael Moore type documentaries, edited for the director's own agenda.  Those aren't documentaries.  Documentaries are meant to be objective, not meant to push an agenda.

I watched 'Taxi to the Dark Side' last night and if you need a reason to hate the George W. Bush administration even more, this documentary is for you.  It took a look at the escalation of 'enhanced interragation' and the death of a man suspected of being a terrorist.  The reason this man's death was so important is because he died from injuries he suffered while being beaten and left in stress positions for hours (and by hours, I'm talking twenty to thirty hours) on end.  It explored the blurring line between what is right and what is wrong and how the Bush administration abused their power. 

The next time you want to watch a movie, think about a documentary.  They can open your mind.