Two movie recommendations

Today I want to recommend two movies to you.

The first is “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.”  Not only is this a thoroughly enjoyable movie, it has strong, wholesome, and helpful messages taught in it.  For just one example – there are several others I could mention – the topic of resisting temptation is clearly presented.  Without revealing any spoilers, one of the characters tells the voyagers, “to defeat the darkness out there, you must defeat the darkness inside yourself.”

One of my favorite moments is a declaration that Aslan the lion makes at the end of the movie.  I don’t want to ruin it for you if you haven’t seen it, but Aslan gives Edmund and Lucy the reason as to why they were even brought to Narnia in the first place.  His words made me cry, as they are right out of Lewis’ original work.  I’ve seen this movie three times already, and it’s still in the theatres.  I definitely recommend it!

A second movie that I want to endorse is “Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam.”  This is a DVD that you can pick up at Red Box or wherever because it was a direct to DVD release.  Yesterday, I mentioned Batman: The Animated Series from 1992.  Well, some of the people involved in that series (like Executive Producer Bruce Timm) had their hands in the creation of this movie.  This film is really several short cartoons, including a Green Arrow cartoon, a Jonah Hex short, and a mystery thriller with the Spectre.  Those are OK, but the price of the DVD, in my book, is the main feature starring Superman and Captain Marvel.

In this story, Superman essentially mentors a new hero, Billy Batson who eventually becomes Captain Marvel.  At one point, Billy is complaining to Clark Kent (Superman) about how every time he tries to do the right thing, he seems to suffer for it.  Clark responds, “that’s because good is hard; bad is always easy.”  I like this line!  It reminds me of a maxim that I learned somewhere along the way in my life (and I don’t know who said it), “the hard thing to do is the right thing to do.”  While I don’t think this is necessarily always the case in every instance, I think there is some truth to that statement.  Later on in the movie, Captain Marvel says that he has to “be stronger” than the main villain, Black Adam.  Superman replies, “Then be strong; be good.” 

By the way, if you enjoyed reading my thoughts on some of these movies, you can also see some more reviews that I've written on amazon.com (of the reviews I've written there Spider-Man 3 is probably my favorite).  Enjoy the movies!
 
Kevin Bauer
(Psalm 37:27)