The Day after Xmas...

It is always an excellent day when I enjoy two trips to the theater! The day after Christmas, I did just that--I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button during the day and then Valkyrie at night. I enjoyed both films, despite Tom Cruise's "Tom-Cruise-ness" (he plays every role virtually the same way but I do not by any means hate that about him. It's a bit reassuring in some ways, something you can confidently rely on). Button, a film about a man who ages backwards, of course causes one to consider aging and death as being a natural part of life...and in addition may cause consideration of the drawbacks of doing what many stars try to do with botox and plastic surgery--reverse aging. Cate Blanchett is wonderful, as per usual, as the ballet dancing love-interest (and looks absolutely stunning due to make-up and lighting as she plays her character in her early 20s). Brad Pitt also manages to maintain--unlike Cruise in his film about a German soldier in which no one even remotely attempts a German accent--a decent New Orleans accent, at least to me. One of my favorite parts of the film which stayed with me long after I left, was a point at which Button relays the sequence of events that led up to a particular incident in the story, examining the reality of the intertwining and crossing of people's lives. Thinking about how events or choices that each of us makes can affect others is interesting and this idea came to mind today when the fact that I ran late this morning caused me to be at an unfamiliar bank in the early evening and witness a robbery. Had I just gotten up earlier, I would not have had the need to be at the bank later on.
Valkyrie portrays the story of a group of German politicians and soldiers who were not in support of Hitler and plot his assassination in order to institute a new government into power. What I find particularly interesting about this film is that it tells another side of the story; most films portraying Germans in World War II essentially present all Germans as in support of Hitler and/or as Nazi soldiers. (Another exception that comes to mind is Black Book which also reveals the resistance to Hitler's policies on the part of a Nazi soldier). The evils that Hitler did could not possibly have been supported by all Germans and I was glad to watch a film that recognizes and portrays this truth.