It Should be Matchpoint for the Sentinel

There is a simple reason why movies have been failing. Over the last 2 to 3 years media decided we were all going to morph into androids. An android is a robot devoid of human emotion. They, with cool detachment, ramble through the trappings of a day experiencing nothing. They try as best they can to execute their agenda. They get up in the morning, exercise, drink coffee, get dressed, and go to work much like Michael Douglas's character in The Sentinel. As in the movie nowhere do they actually allow themselves to feel or experience anything soulful. Mindlessly but with conviction they spout worthless sentences confirming their selfishness and superficiality. Nowhere do they ever represent anything good or evil. Nowhere do we learn anything about them to be able to grow to care about them. The number one mistake cinema is making at the moment is telling the story through the perspective of moral ambiguity. I guess this technique is coming from the Sony Playstation or other recent computer games that make us solve a problem. You don't know what the hell is going on, until you solve some riddles, and near the end things make sense. Formulaic. Done. Over. The problem this creates in ethics and morality is, when an audience watches a movie through the perspective of a seemingly good person, what happens to them when the character murders their mother? Is that the experience directors are trying to convey? No one wants to watch a movie through the perspective of evil, unless they are evil. To subject the American audience to this in what has formally been an avenue of pleasure and escape is a heinous assault on our sensibilities. It will have a negative effect on our world. Traditionally movies play out good versus evil with a clear delineation between the two. The bad cowboy wears the black hat, and the good cowboy wears the white hat. Even when evil abounds we are seeing the movie through the eyes of good. There is hope and love. Even when the enemy wins we take away a positive feeling about the world. To distort good versus evil as in the War on Terror only creates confusion. That is why we as an audience must ask, with so many examples of films like these, is this a conscious attempt to blur the lines of reality? As video game designers at Sony have openly admitted, their goal is to do this. With advance computer technology they want to conceal the division between real human behavior and programmed behavior. What we have are getting now in media is programmed. That is why it is failing. Big Brother and Newspeak or not ideals our media industry should be promoting. The re-writing of history and the contrivance of human reality is something that needs to be left in a George Orwell novel. So many movies have failed as a result of this. Matchpoint follows the self-serving and immoral desires of a poor tennis pro who almost rapes a friend's fiance because of her ample bosom. Then he shoots her landlord to cover up his crime. To like this movie means you morally think his actions are appropriate. The only alternative is to hate the movie. Maybe that is what directors are trying to achieve. If they don't have the talent and the stories to create good movies, then they can be remembered for creating evil and controversy. It is wrong falsely to make the audience care about a character portrayed as good, to assault them later in the movie with a grievous breech of morality. Human beings fail, but do we really want to see that firsthand? Of what benefit will that be to the human race? The answer is none, and directors should stop doing it. Shopgirl is an example of a movie that takes a traditionally romantic character that is inately good and has them fail miserably in the end. As in The Sentinel this condones distasteful and immoral behavior. "Gee mama. That Michael Douglas is cuckolding the most powerful man in the United States," and we somehow are supposed to like him. It seems we do need some religious conviction in this country. Is that what we really want to show our children? What a giant step for the human spirit! It seems the Cannes Film Festival was full of spiritually devoid and bleak movies this year. The Da Vinci code suffers from the same ill. The tone of the movie is dark, despondent, and detached and never once uses a traditional human quality as a vehicle for entertainment. What's wrong with a little sex and romance? Have we really become like these characters as a nation, devoid of traditional human needs and desires, living our android lives in solidarity? It is time for film makers to move on.