I should probably start by making it clear that I have nothing against Ferraris. In fact, I would love to own one. I’m also partial to the Ferrari F1 team. But all that aside, my enthusiasm for the brand does not extend to the movie of the same name, directed by Michael Mann.
This movie is a modern biopic more than a narrative, which is fine, but if you are going to do a character study, at least find a character who is interesting or inspirational. Unfortunately, all Ferrari inspires is sympathy for adultery and encouragement for aspiring polygamists.
Despite my interest in Ferraris I did not realize Enzo Ferrari had a second family on the side and a child he did not publicly acknowledge until after his wife died. Much of the movie focuses on this part of Ferrari’s life.
We are in the middle of a political season, and I already feel sick to my stomach.
When I went to the polls to vote in the primary a few weeks ago, I was so disappointed with the choices I was given I jokingly told my wife I felt disenfranchised. In reality, I was just sick of politics, I didn’t like being drawn into it, even for the ostensibly virtuous act of voting.
The current rancor though in politics is nothing new. I recently read biographies on Cato and Cicero and was shocked at how vitriolic the political debate of first century B.C. Roman politics had been. Personal attacks on one’s political opponent and the demonizing of an opponent’s policies was all par for the course.
When I recently read Aristotle’s Rhetoric, I should not have been surprised to find he advocated ad hominem arguments in politics; apparently, anything to win was justified when it came to political argument.
What disappoints me is that we are nearly two thousand years into the manifestation of the kingdom of God on earth, and the rancor and demonization of one’s opponents so popular amongst pagan Romans seems to be alive and well amongst Christian Americans.
I have a relative who is a Christian and constantly posts on Facebook derogatory comments about Joe Biden and and all things Democrat. They are the kind of posts you would find offensive if you were a Democrat. So, I asked him one day if he had any friends who were Democrats. He said, “I don’t think so.”
I mention this example because it is indicative of too much of evangelical Christianity today, which seems more interested in confronting the world over politics and culture than the gospel.
First century Christians had a lot more politically and culturally to take issue with than 21st Century Christians, yet I don’t see any indication in the New Testament that they were picking fights with the pagans over such things. Rather, I see Paul, for example, using the Athenian culture to reach the Athenians on Mars Hill. See Acts 17:22-34.
Jesus said Christians should use money to make friends to reach them with the gospel. Luke 16:1-9. Christians today are too often doing the opposite with their politics.
I have reviewed many movies here, but I rarely mention whether a movie has nudity, sexually explicit scenes, or other offensive content. I figure if that is primarily what a Christian movie critic is offering the public, it is not worth the effort. Pagans will act like pagans, even when they make movies; we shouldn’t be surprised. I try to overlook it and focus on the themes, messages, and entertainment value of the movie. After all, movies are supposed to be a form of entertainment.
A movie’s biggest sin then, is when it fails to entertain. When it does so after 2o minutes of resorting to every shocking image the most perverted pagan can conceive, from a grossly obese man enjoying a golden shower to a midget on a pogo stick made into a giant penis spraying its pretend semen all over the audience, you know you have a monumental loser on your hands.
In fact, the most fitting metaphor of this movie was the elephant in the first scene defecating all over the man transporting it to a Hollywood party. Call it foreshadowing. After twenty minutes of this movie, I felt like that man, and the only thing I could think to do was look for the exit and the nearest shower. It was perhaps the single worst, most banal and offensive, boring excuse for a movie ever put on film.
I have been a fan of Damien Chazelle’s movies in the past, particularly Whiplash and La La Land, but I seriously doubt his judgment after seeing this one. Chazelle should give back whatever he was paid to write and direct this movie. In fact, he should pay me back. After seeing this abstract-excrement-on-celluloid-excuse for a movie, I feel like I have been robbed at gunpoint and felt-up at the same time.
Save your money. Don’t waste your time. Get a root canal, a colonoscopy. Anything is better than being subjected to 189 minutes of this. GS
I have to admit, I didn’t think I would see it in my lifetime. I had hoped, and hopefully done my part. I sued an abortionist who perforated my client’s uterus while in the act of killing her unborn baby. I represented a pro-life protestor wrongfully arrested for protesting outside an abortion mill. I have functioned as legal monitor for pro-life protestors who were working the sidewalks outside abortion clinics, and I have voted pro-life for forty years.
From the first time I read Roe v. Wade in law school in 1986, I thought it was a tortured, result-oriented opinion. If a first year law student could see that, why did it take 50 years for six Supreme Court justices to see it?
The truth is that many more have seen it than have admitted it, but as C.S. Lewis described it, we have been creating men without chests, i.e. men without the virtue to guide their intellect or emotions. That is not to say those on the Supreme Court now are any more virtuous than those in the past. More likely, Evangelicals have simply been successful in making the fight against abortion a key component of the Republican platform, and the party has finally thrown Evangelicals a bone, and it is a very big bone.
