Movies With Compelling Subjects That Ultimately Failed

Films that should have a compelling message released in 2009 are received in a lackluster way.

Interesting and compelling stories that actually have some basis is truth are being made into films and not taken seriously. Unless, your Steven Spielberg, a famous Director that turns almost every film he’s done into gold at the box office. You have to make the best film you can with the money you have and write a good script that works on many levels. Here is a film that should have been received much better by the discerning public.

Case in point, “The Fourth Kind” starring Milla Jovovich is consider a science fiction-thriller directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi. But the film is suppose to be about a real event that happened in Nome, Alaska. Fully documented by the FBI’s probing of the region for missing people and video sessions from psychologist Dr. Abigail Tyler of traumatized patients who claim to have been abducted by aliens. The film mixes real footage with fictional accounts of what happened. The movie is rally scary, compelling, and if true really terrifying. But cinematically the movie has problems.

UFO fans will love this film and people with an open mind will consider the frightening possibilities. But the majority masses and critics have made valid points that the drama scenes, meshing plots of story, interwoven direction leave a less than perfect film. Instead, your watching in essence two films on an important subject of alien abduction phenomenon. Nay Sayers claim its full of clichés geared to believers of UFO’s with alien abduction and lost memories retrieved through hypnosis, and nothing new to chew on. The film is shocking enough about abduction victims but public interest is low on this thought provoking subject and looked upon as old news. That alone is shocking. A mockery of what really happened to the distress people in Alaska who actually had a close encounter of the fourth kind.

The film could have been made into two straight movies, one documentary and one fictional drama based on actual events. But the film gets lost in translation, taking a real story with strange video evidence and mucking it up with actors playing the same, yet fictional scene, in the same movie. The film could have been made and promoted as the darker side of Spielberg's "Close Encounter of The Third Kind" in which people and the US Government make peaceful contact with aliens. A much bigger production compared to "The Fourth Kind" but the film would have faired better if made into dramatization of true events happening in Alaska. The Fourth Kind 

Another film on an equally interesting subject matter is “The Men Who Stare At Goats.” Directed by Grant Heslov from an adaptation of the Jon Ronson book of the same name. A reporter (Ewan McGregor) during the Iraq War meets “Psychic soldier" Lyn Cassidy (George Clooney) and discovers a secret U.S. psychic military regiment that uses paranormal skills to find and spy on the enemy. Also starring Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges. But the film lacks discipline and focus at times, and never takes itself too seriously. The Men Who Stare At Goats

The film fails at being a satire on a real documented subject about the U.S. military developing psychic spies. Full of good actors in a movie spoofing a real phenomenon known as RV (Remote Viewing). A bit of history about the RV program. The U.S. Government knew in the 1960’s that other major countries like Russia were doing research in using psychics as spies. By the early 1970’s the U.S. military at Stanford Research Institute (now called SRI International) had began serious testing with psychics and their abilities to see beyond time, space, past, present, and future events. RV can see hundreds of mile away at anything above ground, underground, and anywhere on the entire planet with a measure of accuracy. Russia and the U.S. military knew that psychics could kill with a mere “thought” as well. But the film takes a contemptible view at all of this and would rather show a bit of lunacy in it’s depiction of RV.

If the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) NSA (National Security Agency) and DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) believed enough to used scientific protocols to develop and nurture this ability over many years, and discovered that everyone potentially has this power, than a much more serious movie on the subject should have been made. The great American psychic Edgar Cayce had said the same thing over 70 years before that people everywhere have this natural psychic ability. Cayce said that every soul is connected to everything else, the Earth, time, space, all dimensions, other souls, and God, total consciousness, all related, all connected. Nothing is unknown, but rather waiting to be discovered. Nothing is unseen but waiting to be seen.

The Remote Viewing program is a great topic and very true. What’s the ultimate all-seeing and time traveling machine out there that can go anywhere instantaneously? The human consciousness and soul-connection by way of Remote Viewing. The RV program has already proven that it can produce intelligence-collecting results, and can be verified, and be very accurate. You can’t hide from a psychic spy. Telling the truth would have made a much better film.

The Prisoner, on AMC cable TV hit the airwaves in the fall of 2009. The highly anticipated remake of the cult classic 1968 show fails to deliver the goods. The new version lacks the intelligence, wit, psychological, mind-bending, charm of the original. The new show seems lethargic and self absorbed. The problem is the era, today, and not the troubled 1960’s of where society was in conflict with itself and immersed in the Cold War, Government versus State, and young people screaming to fight the system where they saw their freedom being taken away and your reduce to just a number.

The original show was co-created by Patrick McGoohan and George Markstein and starring Patrick McGoohan as a British secret agent who abruptly resigns his job, and then finds himself held captive in a village. Taking first his freedom away and than his name. Given a number and no hope of escape his captors tortured and manipulated him every chance they could to get vital “information” from him. Nothing was more important to the old show than having your individual freedom ripped away and submitting to conformity. It made for good drama and was thought provoking. But no one is rocking the boat today and sadly, the new Prisoner isn’t making a convincing plea either. Better to watch the original show on DVD and learn what it’s really like to lose everything. The Prisoner: The Complete Series [Blu-ray]

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