My (earnest, irate) thoughts

Hearts in Atlantis: The story of a young boy without a father, and his friendship with an old man with psychic abilities. It’s a people movie: nothing blows up and no one shows off their private bits, but somehow it seemed very adult, anyway. And it’s full of great insights from Anthony Hopkins, like “Sometimes when you’re young, you have moments of such happiness, you think you’re living in someplace magical, like Atlantis must have been. Then we grow up and our hearts break in two.”

In the Valley of Elah: Precisely because it is from the perspective of a typical military family, this is a fantastic anti-war movie. The soldiers, the cops — they are so ordinary that it makes the film’s conclusion more horrifying. There is one scene where Tommy Lee Jones tells the story of David and Goliath to Charlize Theron’s son. Afterward, she says, “You know that story isn’t true.” He responds, “Of course it is.” And, almost as an afterthought, “It’s even in the Qur’an.” (Warning: there is a lot of nudity in this movie, probably because of its attempt to be accurate in detailing a soldier’s life: topless dancing, etc.)

Guns, Germs and Steel: A documentary about the world’s inequality and why it exists. Anthropologist Jared Diamond poses that it’s because of a people’s proximity or lack thereof to the three things in the title. It’s a must-watch because it kind of gently unravels this American assumption that the Western world has been successful financially because its people are smarter or more deserving than others. (There’s nudity, but it’s the National Geographic kind.)