Movie Reviews: The Battle of the Five Armies

     It was Christmas day, and I was nine years old. I was used to the family tradition of attending movies during the holidays, and I loved the silver screen so much that every ticket felt like a wrapped gift in itself. However, all of the grown-ups and a few of my siblings were going to see some grown-up movie — I missed what they said the title was, but I could have sworn I heard something about planes. I asked if I could go see a different movie while they saw theirs, but they said it was either their decision or an evening home.

     As if I had to choose.

     It took me all of ten seconds into the film to realize that it wasn’t about planes. Suddenly I was hearing eery whispers and finding myself face to face with the most terrifying goblins I’d ever seen in my life. I had read Tolkien’s The Hobbit before many times, but this ‘continuation’ about some hobbit other than Bilbo that my siblings were raving about had me burying my face into my father’s arm and begging to sit in the lobby for the next two hours. Understandably, he wasn’t wasting his ticket, nor was he letting me wander the theatre alone: so for two hours I watched grown men face perils beyond measure, and I waited in earnest for them to unmake the magic token that was giving them so much trouble.

     When the credits rolled, I turned to my family in confusion. “But do they get there? Do they win? When do they destroy the ring? Why did it just end?”

     “Oh there are two more movies!” they gushed. I thought I was going to be sick.

     When the movie finally came out on VHS (yes, I am that old), my siblings suggested that I watch it again just in case; they were convinced I would like it. I was hesitant… but ten seconds in, I was hooked. It was incredible. This strange tale that sucked me into another world, a world of honor and culture and an ancient sense of belonging to something bigger… the first and greatest adventure I have ever known. When the last of the trilogy came out in 2003, I felt that something in me was left behind in Middle Earth.

     Then The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey came out in 2012, and I was there at midnight to greet it. I dove back into the Shire without a hitch. And now, two years later, I find myself having gone there and come back again. Unless The Silmarillion is made into a television series, then this really may have been “The Last Goodbye.” And so, with a heart that is not so much heavy as it is full, I give you my own spoiler-free description of what I have experienced in the past three hours — a fine farewell to a journey that started thirteen years ago.

     The Battle of the Five Armies rarely had a dull moment, as it started immediately with Smaug’s attack on Laketown. I was skeptical of a movie that had little to promise other than two battles that were supposed to stretch over two hours; the last few movie franchises that tried to deliver on such a promise found me bored half to death. But somehow, Peter Jackson managed to not only fulfill such a promise… but completed it so well that I hardly realized that it was happening. Only a few scattered moments that feel like video-game advertisements (including a Legolas stunt even more ridiculous than his barrel-hopping in the previous film, if that were possible) dampened the parade.

     The story, while strangely paced, was dynamic and was laced with just enough mild humor to keep us smiling throughout the screening. It showed us the peril of growing to love riches over relationships (which is ironic, coming from a movie split into a trilogy so as to increase its earnings). Every major quote and meaningful moment that I’d hoped to see from the book made its way into the screenplay, though each was usually altered a tad. And of course, all of that extra time given to New Line Cinema to display a mere third of the book allowed the plot to spread out. We finally saw the great armies meet one by one, and finally saw the final breaths of some beloved characters whose deaths in the books had been shrouded in mystery until now.

     The screenwriters did an incredible job of focusing on more of their characters: Elf and Dwarf and Man alike. We got to see the growth of people like Galadriel and even Bard’s son… but unfortunately, that meant the loss of some time with many other beloved characters. In fact, once our original company of Dwarves joined the battle, we only saw only four of them in the fray during the entire skirmish. The whimsy and adventure of the first two movies had hinged on the diverse group of fourteen that we got to meet: back in the goblin tunnels of the Misty Mountains alone, we got to see every Dwarf throw a punch or wield a blade with mastery. In this installment of the story, the lesser Dwarves — even Balin, master swordsman — were left behind so as to give more screen time to others. Still, for the most part it was screen time well spent. There were only a few arcs (namely those of Legolas and Thranduil) that felt rather forced.

     But in the end, those were all minor flaws. Every movie in the Hobbit series and even the Lord of the Rings trilogy have had their flaws, from incongruency with their source material to overuse of computer-generated effects. And yet those flaws aren’t the moments that we remember or cherish in the months and years that follow every film’s release. Our hearts still soar and ache with every step taken through Middle Earth, no matter who makes them. And I hope that in years to come, we will get to set foot in those fair lands once again. In the meantime, however, I do not mourn. These past three years have been three years more of adventure than I ever expected to have. Besides, the world is not in my books or films or drawings… it’s out there.

Movie Reviews: Guardians of the Galaxy

Whoever’s in charge of quality-control over at Marvel Studios is sure doing one heck of a job. The comic-book-based tycoon of a production company has been churning out incredibly complex, touching, humorous action films with an impressive amount of consistency throughout the past decade. Case in point: if any other brand-name studio tried to create a movie featuring classic eighties songs and a talking raccoon, they’d be laughed right into the ground. But not Marvel.

Ever since the first trailers to sci-fi adventure Guardians of the Galaxy came out with “Hooked On A Feeling” playing in the background, half of the current adolescent population suddenly bought the Blue Swede single on iTunes or dusted off their parents’ old Jackson 5 albums. Director James Gunn has created what many are calling a rip-roaring ‘space western,’ the like of which hasn’t been seen since Joss Whedon’s vastly underrated television series Firefly was canceled.

But the truth is, when I finally sat down to see Guardians I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect, because hearing people sing the praises of a Marvel movie is pretty much par for the course by now. In fact, many Marvel productions that are considered ‘great’ compared to non-Marvel films can be merely ‘okay’ when compared to other Marvel projects. This studio has almost created a league of their own in the cinema world. Their work is always witty, complex, and often makes fun of archetypal cliches that audiences have grown accustomed to seeing in superhero plot lines. They’re not perfect, of course, but they’re not a waste of money by any stretch of the imagination.

So the question in my mind when the projector rolled was, “Will this be a great movie? Or a great Marvel movie?” Because I’d honestly been led to believe the latter. 

(And by the way, while I always do my best to produce spoiler-free reviews, in this case I may include some footnotes for those of you who don’t mind some minor reveals).

The movie begins in the 80s, where we see just how the human main character, Peter Quill, ended up hanging with aliens in the first place. In the wake of a family tragedy where none of his relatives think to comfort him (or even keep an eye on the young boy, for that matter), he bursts into tears and runs off, unnoticed, to grieve. At that point, he’s suddenly abducted by a mysterious spaceship, and the childhood trauma likely reaches maximum capacity. Surely whoever he grows up to be, this kid is going to have some serious psychological issues.

But the next time we see Quill, fully grown on the surface of an alien planet, he doesn’t look that much worse for the wear. A little grungy, perhaps, but he’s still grooving to his childhood walkman like nobody’s business. And as it turns out, his kidnappers also happened to be mercenary thieves, so Quill has adapted accordingly: he’s out on his own, performing wild shenanigans and committing double-crosses that inevitably lead to the audience howling with laughter… and to his meeting a pretty motley crew of abrasive misfits. Each of them brings a new form of comedy to the screen, and each has a story: a personal injustice that led them to their current criminal lifestyle. But as time progresses, they up discovering a common cause to believe in, and they decide that it’s worth putting aside their grudges against society (and each other) in order to save the galaxy. What follows is both a side-splitting comedy, a pretty satisfying adventure, and a great movie... perhaps even a great Marvel movie, but that's debatable (though I may be alone in thinking that).

Guardians boasted a largely non-human character list, so it threw around alien names and cultures and terms until I had thoroughly lost track of who planned to hunt down/destroy/avenge/kidnap/double-cross/brainwash/conquer who… and this is coming from someone who can name all thirteen of the dwarves in The Hobbit without breaking a sweat. But even with all of my cognitive powers processing the storyline, I still got turned around a lot. That’s not to say that a second or third viewing won’t clear things up, but generally the reason one watches a movie a second time is to enjoy it, not to catch the jokes that were muttered too quietly to hear, or to figure out the politics that didn’t fully make sense the first time around.

Still, it’s not as if I’m going to have to be dragged into the second screening! I had a great time laughing at the band of delinquents, and was rather proud of them as they tried to trample all over the audience’s concept of what a superhero should look like. There were elements of that where they succeeded (case in point: a psychopathic raccoon who still saved more civilian lives and city buildings than Superman did in Man of Steel), but there were equally as many moments where they disappointed, too: like the required female character who must be tough but still attractive, so they just give her incredible fighting skills and then stick her in leather from head to toe. Or the heart-of-gold mercenary creature who can’t really speak English but is still understood and translated by his partner (can anyone say, Chewbacca?). And of course there were a few cliché moments, too, like when the heartbroken child Quill is somehow ignored by his entire extended family at a moment of peak trauma, or when someone gives a moving speech to his peers about what it truly means to be a hero, or when the villain hesitates in the middle of completing his evil scheme because he gets temporarily distracted by something petty, and so on.**

So on the whole, Guardians of the Galaxy may not really be anything new in the realm of space adventures as it claimed to be. I went in expecting a few more stereotypes to get shattered than actually did (though maybe Firefly just spoiled me when it comes to space westerns). But that’s no reason to consider Guardians a sub-par creation, perhaps even by Marvel standards — it's a perfect Friday night blockbuster for the whole family, and it's one hilarious roller-coaster ride that I can’t wait to get back in line for, many times to come.

**SPOILER BELOW**

…or when Groot has the classic moment of “actual” speech at the climax (seriously, had he just been holding it in for his entire life, or what? It’s not as if saying his usual three-word catchphrase would have made the moment any less emotional, especially if Rocket could translate it)… not to mention his not-so-heartbreaking death that we all knew wouldn’t last, since he’s a comic book character and has a history of re-growing broken limbs. I wonder if all those other twigs will become a little forest of Groots.

Movie Reviews: "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"

Is it too much to ask for someone to make a believable movie about adolescent reptilian martial arts masters mentored by a talking rat?

Perhaps I just answered my own question.

I definitely was hoping to see such a movie when I walked (or practically skipped) to the midnight premiere of Michael Bay’s adaptation of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series — one of my favorite improbable childhood stories.

I knew coming in that the pre-production of this film was fraught with a lot of controversy. Bay has always been a racy guy, for many reasons. For example, when asked about all the complaints and insults being aimed at his films (particularly Transformers 4), Michael Bay just shrugged. "They love to hate," he said. "And I don't care; let them hate. They're still going to go see the movie." And true to form, Transformers 4 made over $100 million in one weekend despite the scathing public reviews. 

As for the beginnings of his Turtle trouble, that all started in 2012 when Bay announced that he was going to change the mutants from turtles into aliens. I (and perhaps about 80% of the TMNT fans on the face of the planet) was outraged. The internet fairly exploded with angry blogs, videos, and emails demanding Bay’s head on a platter for suggesting such a thing. And the incredible thing is… he backed down. He apologized to the fans, went back to the drawing board, and even included a little joke for us in all the trailers.

“Are they aliens?” asks a skeptic of the main character.

“No; that’s stupid. They’re turtles.”

Well-played, Michael Bay.

Seeing the producer relax and actually honor the fans of this franchise gave me a bit more hope than I’d originally anticipated when the previews started coming out. While I was aware that Bay also tends to like over-flashy robots and awkward sexual innuendos and inexplicable use of slow-motion, I do admit that after watching the trailers for this film, I allowed myself a smidgen of hope that he might actually be the perfect person to head a ninja-turtle movie. After all, he doesn’t even have to really focus on the plot here: all he needs to do is give us the blockbuster action and great teen humor that he’s known for. Did he deliver?

Well… allow me to put it this way (and insert the necessary cheesy joke): I kind of wish movies were like pizza, in that if you're not satisfied with the delivery you can get a little money back.

Ironically, in the end, it was the movie that ended up judging Bay, and not me… nor the dozens of other fans decked out in ninja masks that had streamed into the theatre with me (though some of them tried to express their own opinions during the screening, as you’ll soon find out). So allow me to explain.

We open in New York City, following the less-than-she-hoped-for news career of April O’Neil, played by Megan Fox of the Transformers saga. She’s trying to become a serious reporter and investigate a recent city crime wave, but all her bosses think she’s fit for is the role of sexy airhead who does what she’s told (gee, sounds like Fox’s career with Bay in a nutshell — or rather, half-shell). But O’Neil slaves in her free time to bring the city justice anyway, and after perhaps ten minutes of nothing but interacting with boring, stereotypical human beings, she finally winds up meeting the four wise-cracking vigilantes we were all waiting for!

It’s a lot for her to take in, obviously. She must be admiring their new costume-designs as much as the rest of us. After they feebly attempt to explain to her what they are, she can only dumbly repeat back, “Ninja… mutant… turtle… teenagers?”

“Well when you put it like that, it sounds ridiculous,” snorts the turtle in the purple mask.

Yes it does, Donatello. Yes it does.

If you take something that you’ve simply accepted for so long and then rearrange it just to try and make it fresh, you may make it so new that you have to wind up forcing yourself to re-believe it all over again. And after only just introducing us to the wacky characters that we grew up loving, Bay then attempts to do exactly that… rearrange the turtles’ origin story almost beyond recognition.

All that was accident or chance in the original series (like the turtles’ mutation, April’s encounters with them, their love of pizza, how they came to learn ninjutsu) has been rewritten. So much so that after a few minutes of cringing in our seats, one of us finally stood up after learning how the animals ended up in the sewers and shouted (in a more R-rated way), “THAT’S BALONEY!”

We all giggled. Then cheered. And as the rest of the origin story kept unfolding, we all just kept laughing at it. Because Bay was trying so hard to convince us that what he had was really a plausible story… and half the fun of the Ninja Turtles franchise is the fact that we as fans know it could never happen, and don’t care because we just want to get on with it and enjoy the fun characters we can relate to. But Bay only gives us a few really fun scenes with our scaly friends, and even then he still mostly glosses over them for the sake of trying to ‘fix’ the saga… all the while somehow ignoring what was actually broken in the original stories — like buildings collapsing for no reason, ninja-weapons somehow winning in a contest against armored cars, adrenaline shots acting as a permanent cure-all for people on the verge of death, or the bad guys being evil because, well, because they’re bad guys. The head villain, a billionaire named Erik Sacks (who plans to attack and then save the city in order to become rich...er) even has goons with creepy masks and tends to toss out cheesy one-liners like, “Soon the city will be ours,” and “Time to take a bite out of the big apple,” to boot!

In fact, by the end I was almost laughing again, at how much Bay ended up resembling the head villain in his own movie. He professed to be a savior, and despite how obviously-evil he was going to be, he still somehow got away with a perfectly-far fetched scheme that ended up with him finally getting his hands on all the green that he wanted. 

Yes, I’m just as guilty as the next viewer. I knew Bay’s reputation, I knew the risks, and yet I spent twenty dollars on the midnight premiere anyway. Because dash it all, I wanted to see four mutant turtles tearing up baddies and the dance floor! And every now and then, I got to see just that — and it was glorious!

But I had to force myself to swallow it. After all the butchering of the plot that Bay did, I’m starting to wonder if we might have been better off letting him make the characters into aliens. At least then we would have ended up semi-believing a new story, instead of semi-disbelieving the original.

Perhaps there’s only a lose-lose situation to come of this: either Bay directs a sequel, or else nobody makes a sequel because the film is considered a flop. I’m honestly not sure which would be worse.

Movie Reviews: "The Song"

The idea of Christian cinema has always tended to confuse me a little bit. I can never figure out whether its purpose is to provide wholesome entertainment for Christians, or to minister to unbelievers and invite them to take a second look at what Christianity professes. I think that often times, most faith-based moviemakers are trying to do both at the same time. Not that aiming for both is necessarily a bad thing, but I think that having more than one goal in mind can often confuse a writer who wants to tell a great story — and I know from experience, seeing as when I’m not blurting my thoughts out on my blog I’m probably trying to write the next great American screenplay that will win an Oscar and sell out tickets at Comic-Con. (I can dream, can’t I?)

So when I sat down in a theatre to see The Song, created in Louisville KY (practically within spitting distance of my family and spectacular college), I wasn’t really sure which lens to view it through. Just before the projectors rolled, I was informed that it was a modern-day telling of the story of Solomon. I thought that was pretty cool. Solomon is often times a bit overlooked as far as Bible characters go, but he really figured out the human condition. A lot of his writings really helped me get through angst and questioning doubts in high school, because he — like me — wondered what the point of it all was. And I think he managed to do that because he had, unlike his subjects, pretty much what we western moviegoers all have now: an education, and a life where we can pursue our own hobbies and recreational delights since we don’t have to slave day and night for the meals on our plates. But Solomon was racy, too; can anyone say, seven-hundred wives?

And so the film began. The first ten minutes were hard to swallow, with a mystic voice-over (which continues throughout the film, I might add) and a montage about a musician named David King and the scandal that led to the birth of his son, Jed. That entire story could have been a phenomenal movie in and of itself, actually. But I could barely focus on that, because for a while… it felt like another round of the usual “Catch the Bible Reference!” game that most Christian movies are known for. Seriously: they offered free t-shirts afterwards to anybody who could name one.

The main character (who was not named Saul, for some reason that I still can’t fathom since every other name was beyond mere innuendo) is simply living his life professing a faith he doesn’t seem to cling to. He meets a sweet girl that is obviously going to be his love interest, so she therefore needs no more personality other than “sweet” and can get away with growing up in the Kentucky countryside and yet somehow know nothing about country music or skipping stones. Smitten, Jed immediately sweeps her off her feet by mocking her over-the-top-obviously-evil ex-boyfriend, and then acting so vaguely honorable and charming that the girl has no choice but to eventually marry him. His love for her inspires a new wave of songs, which rocket him to stardom and happiness in five years (or for us, five seconds). But then, we suddenly learn that his marriage is growing strained thanks to the long tours away from home, and a cigarette-smoking soprano named Shelby has joined his gang of musicians with mascara-laden eyes only for him.

What follows is perhaps inevitable, but still portrayed realistically enough that I did start to feel a little empathy for most of the characters the first few times they backslide. Jed’s choices finally carry weight and he finally becomes his own person, instead of living in the shadow of his father (or his role as a Biblical allegory). However, that ‘own person’ has some serious issues… and don’t we all? We’re all wondering what the point of life is, what purpose we have if we were not made, all of that.

But while this movie does a great job of asking the same question as all mankind… it doesn’t provide a convincing answer the way that it professed it would. I mean, evidently we’re supposed to stay faithful to our spouses and put our families first and make good choices because everything else under the sun is meaningless… but The Song doesn’t actually give any convincing evidence that suggests why these choices might be beneficial. We go straight from the first date to the honeymoon to the whispered fights once the child is in bed. We go straight from the love poetry to the barbed words, which are slung between two people who seem to have never actually bothered to communicate with each other about anything. If their marriage ever was really happy and fulfilling and transparently honest, it’s never shown to us.

So as far as a message meant to reach out to unbelievers (or even believers), The Song leaves a little to be desired, really. It’s a touch stiff at some points, especially in the beginning, but thank goodness it’s at least self-aware enough to mock those points only seconds later. It's definitely starting to take a step forward in the genre of Christian cinema, daring to face facts and really wrestle in the dark with real-life issues. Nonetheless, the story feels incomplete… like perhaps the third or fourth draft of what may need a couple more rewrites if it wants to really wow its audience, and make a faithful married life actually seem appealing.

Movie Reviews: "The Identical"

Going to the theatre has, for me, always been like a little Christmas. Perhaps that’s because when I was growing up, my family always tended to see more movies during the holiday season… but no matter the film they chose, I never once turned down a chance to see something — anything — on the silver screen. To this day, whatever the time of year, when I walk into a dark room with rows of fuzzy seats it’s as if I’m about to tear into a colored-paper package and discover something new. Sometimes it’s a dud, but sometimes it’s a priceless gem, and that’s what keeps me coming back over and over.

So, when I was invited to the preliminary screening of a small feature film that I’d never even heard of last week, I didn’t for a minute think about refusing the offer. I barely had time to take the subway home from work and inhale a hasty dinner before bolting back out the door and half-jogging all the way to the New York Institute of Technology, where I would get to curl up and watch The Identical and decide whether all of the rushing was worth it.

Less than ten minutes in, I knew it was worth it.

I hadn’t so much as glanced at a movie poster for The Identical before I walked into it, so I was pleasantly surprised to find myself enveloped in a musical, spiritual journey that spanned several decades of Americana.

I’ve seen a lot of movies - some musicals, some dramas - attempting to follow the past lives of famous athletes, noted musicians, or legendary historic figures. Each film has, for me, been a colorful portal back into a decade of American history that I never got to see with my own eyes… But this film was the absolute best of them all. From costume design to the golden original soundtrack itself, no other tale has made me so nostalgic for years I never lived in.

Now perhaps I’m wrong in gushing over this film’s accuracy since I’m a child of the 90s and can’t really know what any earlier decades were like, but no other movie has looked so identical to the faded photographs of my parents’ and aunts’ and uncles’ teenage years. No other soundtrack (sung by the actual performers, not dubbed) has sounded so deep and resonant. It made me more than once wonder if the actors were actually recorded on vinyl. (And yes, I have heard vinyl before — it was the richest sound I’ve ever heard in all my life).

The story follows Ryan Wade, the musically-gifted son of a southern preacher, as he tries to determine the purpose and direction for his life… while somewhere many miles away, an identical singer by the name of Drexel Hemsley is taking the world by storm.

At least one aspect of my youthful ignorance was a help instead of a hurt at this point: as someone who doesn’t know the list of famous “oldies” artists by heart, I was able to suspend my disbelief for the evening and imagine that somewhere back then, these two identical men really were out there somewhere.

It’s a tale of fiction of course, often hinting and nudging at the rise and fall of Elvis Presley himself… but as I found out afterwards, this movie is actually a glorious examination of a great unspoken “what-if” scenario in King’s life. Not everyone knows that the great rock legend was in fact born an identical twin: he had a brother who died in infancy. Or did he?

While the film has to create its own original characters and run parallel to history for us, it swept me in nonetheless. It’s a tale that will touch the heart of any music lover… or any young adult searching for their life’s purpose, for that matter.

I will admit, though, the movie’s lone flaw was the way it hinged on Wade’s search for himself… and then glossed over his eventual career choice in the end, as if the only reason he felt lost was because he didn’t understand his own DNA. But even then, that’s really the only minor chord in what is otherwise an incredible, rockin’ time. This movie examines faith, choices, integrity, and good intentions in a way that is both family-friendly and sidesplittingly comical. For so many of us that wonder how much of our lives are governed by chance or circumstance or providence, this story shows us two men with the same potential for greatness: one of them successful, and the other searching. One is guided by himself, the other by integrity. One of them lost, the other seeking his way. The Identical gives us a human being that we can believe in, and in a roundabout way it gives us a chance to believe in ourselves, too.

Just as the main character of this film so often goes through his life as an unsung hero, so too this film may be overlooked by the mainstream box office, despite the fantastic power that it has. It’s releasing into a select few theatres on September 5th, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I find myself in line somewhere on that day, just for a chance to sit in a row of fuzzy chairs and step back into time all over again.

Movie Reviews: "As It Is In Heaven"

It’s rare to find a movie that demands an opinion without also handing one out ready-made… especially when said movie is centered around the ever-weighty topic of religion. But if ever there was such a movie, it’s As It Is In Heaven: a film as soft-spoken and hard to find as its characters.

The story centers around an old farmhouse somewhere in the American south, where Prophet Edward has long taught his small religious movement that Judgement Day is coming… and now it’s almost here. But with less than a month to go, disaster strikes and Edward on his deathbed must name a successor… one that will prepare his flock for the end of the world in a way that he never could.

Recent convert David must take up the burden of leadership and endure the suspicions of the Prophet’s own son, all the while hoping to keep himself and his followers pure and disciplined for the Lord’s return. What follows is perhaps only to be expected, but that makes it no less striking as the cult drifts down from euphoria to dissent, then to madness before the thirtieth day is nigh.

This vivid mosaic of Kentucky landscapes and religious theology weaves a vivid, empathetic narrative that is both compelling and complex. It not only causes audience-members to examine their own faith, but also to witness how a faith that's almost all-true can turn to corruption in disguise if tainted by the tiniest of lies. Those viewers who don’t know the foundation of their own beliefs may be shaken, and those who do have a firm knowledge of their own faith will hopefully be made wiser for the watching. As someone who studied under director Joshua Overbay as a student of both film and faith, it was a privilege for me to attend what I knew was one of his most precious projects while at Asbury University.

As It Is In Heaven is powerful and controversial, treading carefully on the subjects of religion and judgement that man has struggled with for centuries… but for all that this movie touches on, in the end it is we who must choose whether to condemn or to pity the characters, for the film has not stepped in to make that decision for us. And in the same way, we must then choose to step outside of the theatre and decide where we shall go in our own life decisions… whether we ignore ancient superstitions, or dare to trust in some strange, provident Being watching over us. For what is at stake for us if we are wrong?