Reviews

Beautiful film that appeals to all age groups including me a senior citizen. How many of us wish to be mermaids without legs beyond fear and desire ? Many of us are trauma bonded to tyrannical fathers or husbands who have no rightful guilt for those they have harmed . The king got it right in the end . William Hurt as priest and Pierce Brosnan played it real . There are no more Whited Sepulchres ( Versailles ) filled with dead man's bones.

Life is a stage and where else would you meet so many characters but in your own family.

I loved them all:

The show stopper was Mel Gibson who played it real as the alcoholic macho sex addict grandfather.

He just can't connect with others except through his macho masculinity and antagonizing others.

"I may be a lot of things but I am not a heathen" Mel says.

Like a lot of us Mel loves the story but not the walk.

Like his other half the step grandparent (high functioning autistic) he just wants to connect but can't.

Welcome home Mel.

It is not the trauma that makes us sick but the inability to express the trauma:

Blended families, divided loyalties, alcoholism, and people with neuro differences: high functioning autism.

This film is a heavy hitter extremely funny: comic relief a perfect 10!!

The Only Living Boy in New York is brilliant as it works on a seemingly infinite number of levels.

Yet at the same time it is a failure because it only succeeds in connecting to the most insightful of the audience.

The paradox is brilliant: we are all in a trance. Private lies of adultery and finance are nuclear weapons that divide people families and the world apart.

Breaking the trance of materialistic suburbia: private lies: fathers and sons: is the Wild Man played by Jeff Bridges the down and out alcoholic father who nails it.

We must find the father.

'When you light the lamp you will see him. He sits behind the door the eyebrows so heavy the forehead so light: lonely in his whole body for you"

The only living boy in New York follows the wild man's lead; breaks his father's secret by sleeping with his father's mistress:( re capitulating his relationship with his father: and ironically the mistress' father)..i

I can't stop thinking about this film which initially felt like My Dinner With Andre: boring: but not with Pierce Brosnan and Jeff Bridges sitting at the table.

Parents of autistic children just get it. High functioning autism is autism.

Will Ferrell plays the perfect half (step) parent not the man child this time but high functioning autistic all the same.

Instead of a TV anchorman, Will plays a radio executive.

Given he is neuro untypical, it is very challenging for him to compete with the brawn and coordination of his other half: the biological father played by Mark Walburg.

Will this beginning un coordinated and co dependent dance between them turn into a slam dance?

Autistic spectrum: Rigid thinking, strong resistance to change of routine, sensory processing differences (often a lack of fine motor skills) and a strong desire to fit in and be accepted.

Because of a strong desire to be accepted as the stepfather, he invites the braun to stay in their home for two weeks. A nightmare for any step family.

My first laugh came when this HFA step father took picture of the homework routine (special interests) . My second laugh came when it took him six months to put three boards together to build a treehouse. The motorcycle escapade was hilarious. Fine motor skills lacking.

I could not stop laughing when the overripe glamour boy Tom Church from Sideways says to the biological father "Wow...you flew for the 101st Airborne. I have a lot of respect for you. Will you come over to my house?". Just like in Sideways Tom issetting up others (this time Will the step father) to get angry.

On a positive note, I loved how this perfect HFA half parent was always on time, was their Sunday School teacher. Was that ever refreshing to see in a movie. Also, unlike the birth parent, he was patient and drove within the lines while picking the kids up from school..

The writing was excellent and the shall we dance ending was extraordinary.

Am glad this film already cleared 59 million making the film critics all wrong.

One reviewer commented that 'the only thing funny is your own disbelief about how utterly crappy this film was"

I also was surprised at my denial because of the smiles between Pierce Brosnan and Selma.

You can't put a smile under a microscope and that is why this Some Kind Of Beautiful satire on life is worth watching.

The professor reminded me of professors I had while in graduate school : with a special emphasis in depth psychology and the German romantics. A year after the affairs with the younger students, the Professors of depth psychology were let go.

I ended up writing my thesis on the clinical application of fairy tales. However after seeing this film would re name it "Eros Without Boundaries"

Why is it artists and professors think they can make love to the whole world: younger sisters and students ?

Artists who think they can make love to the whole world seem "pretentious" said one reviewer. Or maybe they are like Father Chronos (time) who keep swallowing younger and younger women until they swallow a stone and die.

Am not sure what the reviewer meant by pretentious, but the homes and outfits were lavish. That is except for Selma who lost her high heel and the old mustang.

This was also true of the graduate school I attended: a Spanish villa monastic retreat with amazing views and its own organic vegetable garden which was prepared by cooks for the weekend retreat.

Was it the beauty of the place that hosted incestuous relationships between much older professors and girls old enough to be their daughter? Jack Nicholsonn was born of his sister due to blurred boundaries of his alcoholic father.

Incestuous relationships do make for what another reviewer called "plot so interrupted, motivations so compromised and reality so ignored that even the main character played by Pierce failed"

However, Isn't that the purpose of filmmaking: to reflect back the satire and collective unconscious of our times? Didn't Clinton have a relationship with a woman old enough to be his daughter?

I interpreted this collective unconscious to be : narcissistic self absorption, madness, the lure of love, death romanticism and the drunkards craving for unconsciousness: not being accountable for actions.

Looking forward to seeing 007 get some better scripts.

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act" George Orwell 1984.

There were three revolutionaries in this story that I grew to love.

Christian Bale deserves an academy award as the clueless and cue less autistic on wall street. He read numbers and predicted the future fall out in his own poetic way with loud drums..

"Poetry is the truth and people hate poetry" especially from an autistic.

It is not surprising that this revolutionary ended up being audited four times and investigated by the FBI. .

Also I loved Brad Pitt cast as the disenfranchised former wall street trader who left due to the corruption.

He wouldn't talk on certain phone lines saying that he would be recorded. His being a keeper and planter of seeds reminded me of the parable of the sower in the Book Of Matthew. He planted his seed on the good ground. As a result, he did not have a stony calloused heart as the other traders.

Steve Carrell was well cast as an investment fund manager a subsidiary of Morgan Stanley. I loved the flashbacks of his childhood studying the Torah. Looking for inconsistencies he found none. What stage of moral development was he in when betting against the American economy and winning? The audience is left hanging.

Well done!

Speak up, speak up, speak up! The only one you will scare away is your future x parishioner or the Motion Picture Academy.

"A film like Spotlight is the refresh button. The acting is not visible and the script follows like a real conversation"

The Globe reporters practiced what every good therapist practices: mirroring, reflecting, validating and empowering what happened to these adults being sexually abused as children within the Catholic Church.

The reporters helped to break the hypnotic trance of "it never happened" which perpetuates the cycle of sexual abuse..

The reporters interviewing style also made me remember the importance of not explaining away an adult child's negative feelings.

As a side note the news reporters negatively named and interpreted a child's trauma in the true story "Room" which caused the child more trauma.

The film showed trauma of sexual spiritual abuse as being unique to each individual.

One victim commented that the priest who sexually abused him was the first person to validate that it is okay to be gay. Fatherless and in poverty this parishioner was the only person he had in his life.

Other victims displayed arms filled with burn marks and/or puncture wounds from drug use. Full of self loathing because their bodies enjoyed the sex and the attention they received.

Other victims believed they they are gay because that was the first sexual experience they had. Others knew that they were gay before the sexual abuse.

Reporter played by Mark Ruffalo played a splendid cause and mighty torch for the atrocities of the systemic spiritual sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church. He may in real life been sexually abused by a priest. He plays a convincing role!

Sexually abused children often go into a hypnotic trance to keep the abuse a secret and know what it feels like to be in perpetrators shoes. They will often grow up to be caught in reenactment to master the trauma as victims or perpetrators. They will often have intrusive thoughts.

The priest who stated that he did not receive any gratification by raping a young boy was still caught up in the hypnotic trance. It was like it never happened as he said you see I was also raped.

This is broadcast journalism at its finest! It doesn't matter if it was The Globe or The Phoenix who bore witness to this story.

Am now wondering if Tom Mc Carthy and John Singer will be blacklisted from making another film?

Adele Bloch Bauer, "The Woman In Gold" and her niece Maria Altman are smiling in Heaven now.

Their fascinating lives of beauty, loss and remembrance reveals something deeper beneath the golden surface of the stolen art.

If it wasn't for Maria's crusading journalist friend the Austrian

Hubertus, Czernin, this raiders of the lost art story would have never happened.

Hubertus worked tirelessly on this case since the early fifties and stayed in contact with Maria.Sadly he passed away shortly after the resolution of this case. Maria gave him a couple of million from the sale.

Both Hubertus and Maria were well cast. However, Maria wished that Czernin would have gotten more credit than he did in the film. Maria only saw her attorney once a year.

The flashbacks of Maria's growing up years and exit interview from WWII Austria were astonishing!

Ann Marie O Connors rendition of the story unveils some grimmer realities.

Maria stood under a painting of pretty young nuns peering through the gates of the convent like MarIa of the Sound of Music." What are they doing? Don't they see the soldiers outside. What do the soldiers want? To rape them Brigitte said"P. 260

Maria might not think that the film's court room scene was realistic..

Maria revealed that it was a secret that American's were working with former Nazii's Dr Herbert Wagner after WWII.

Some of Wagner and his scientists had overseen and performed abominable experiments on Jewish victims at concentration camps (p258-9)

Dr Wagner and Werner von Braun another member of the SS were later used to jump start NASA (rocket technology) in the United States, though they had overseen slave labor operations where thousands have died.

Wagner had played a key role in the Nazi war machine, a serious charge at the Nuremberg trials. He and his two assistants were the first Nazi scientists to be secretly airlifted to the United States after the war" P. 258

Dr. Wagner's FBI handlers helpfully repeated his contention that he only joined the SS for professional reasons and never went to meetings.

Maria stated that Dr. Wagner lived in Thousand Oaks after the war? Why is another Nazi guard being tried for 300,000 counts of murder for overseeing many deaths in the prison camps?

Maria Altman also revealed that former Nazi governor Baldur von Schirarch (head of Nazii youth) had served only 20 years and lived long enough to be interviewed by David Frost. His concluding alibi with Frost was a quote from "Alice In Wonderland"? (degenerate art)

Also, Maria reflected that her gestapo minder Felix Landau was barely punished and lived for years in Bavaria as an interior designer. He loved fairy tales and had a Hungarian painter paint fairy tales on the walls of his sons personal nursery (degnerate art)

I would love to help these war criminals re story their favorite fairytale. I would ask them what was their favorite Bible story and why did they think it was important to them as a child. They seem to suffer from what Carl Jung referred to as the "inferior feeling function" such as Hitler crying when his pet parakeet died?

I would also love to hear what Klimt's favorite fairytale as a child and why he thought it was important to him as a child?

According to O Connor Klimt may have had a Mother Complex after the early death of his father. He instructed the young Klimt to financially support the family which included his mother. She soon after had a break down due to being a failed opera star. This may have contributed to Klimt becoming a womanizer dying of syphilis.

I have to agree with Adelle that art is an essential prism for understanding the world and to help people to see things differently.

Every time I look at the painting of Adelle and this reel therapy of a film, I see things differently and that is the power of art

Lessons from the story of Cain and Abel: Can we be our brothers keeper? "The most important aspect of the story is the fact that the murderer Cain according to the Bible was the second man on earth and his victim was only the third" Morton Reed

A small innocent child has been killed.

Had the beautiful demur Melanie Wyatt killed her baby, or had something more sinister and unbelievable occurred causing her to wipe the awful deed from her memory?

Morton Reed gives just as much information about each of the characters to make the reader think that each could be culpable of the crime.

The first character I thought of as being culpable was the infant's policeman father who was either at his children's feet or their throat. He loved the baby so much he wanted to swallow (bite) her up. A black out drunk, he may have not even remembered if he had committed the crime or sexually exploited his older daughter Polly.

Sexually exploited children often are caught in re enactment to master the trauma either as victims or perpetrators. The child may have intrusive thoughts. They will often understand what the perpetrator was thinking and know what it feels like to be in his shoes.

perpetrators shoes.

Did Polly the physically, verbally sexually abused child kill her younger sibling Denise?

I thought she may be guilty due to the fact that during a play therapy session she threw the doll against the wall as she exclaimed "Daddy told me Mommy lies a lot and that is why God punishes her with bad babies. Mommy and Daddies fight a lot because of God"

I am wondering if a family sculpt exercise with Mom, Dad and Polly could have been a more useful therapeutic modality?

When Mother Melanie started to display features of paranoid schizophrenia, I thought that surely she could be culpable of the crime. Or maybe she and her eight year old daughter together killed the small infant child during one of her hallucinations.

This play is a show stopper and drama stopper because it was far more informative than scary (extreme sexual and physical violence)

Whenever someone asks me how does a court mandated therapist work with the resistance of involuntary clients: perpetrators, victims, accusers and defenders: physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual abuse, I will give them this book. It also serves of an example of the importance of not explaining away a child's feelings by caregivers and that these feelings need to be expressed and honored.

Shattered Lullabies needs to be required reading for graduate schools in the field of family and marriage counseling.

It leads to an examination of Object RelationsTheory and Klenian investigation into the fantasy life of the child. Therapeutic applications: Content vs Process. An exercise of family sculpting can demonstrated be a useful tool to replace doll and play inquiry.

Shattered Lulabies leads to an examination of what is aggression? Instinct vs. Learning? Frustration vs Aggression? Poverty theory?. The Cycle of deprivation?. Sibling rivalry theory and projective identification?

I will wait for the film to come out as it will be a sequel to Gone Girl. This time it will be called "All Gone" a comment children often say when they get rid of negative feelings by flushing it away the way eight year old Polly did.

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal" I Corinthians 13:1

Most of the proceeds of Dan Baldwins story are given to charity.

I was so happy to see that my 20.00 ticket was supporting the Malibu Nursery School. A 10,000 dollar check was later presented to the Malibu Community Labor Exchange.

People who get punched in the face by the 800 pound gorilla of addiction and live to tell about it are remarkable human beings.

They are the ones creating the unorthodox interventions so needed today!

Great film!

After having both read the book and seen the film I was struck with one theme.

Gone Man: Hijacked by his co dependency and addiction (alcohol)

Ben Afflect was well cast as the perfect gone man who is also known as Nick.

The final scene leaves Nick so cut off from himself that he goes into a hypnotic trance to keep his wife's crime of murder a secret.

Does Nick know what it feels like to walk in the perpetrator's shoes?

Will he know what it feels like to walk in the perpetrator's shoes.

The ending leaves the audience all hanging.

Very well written directed acted and produced!

Cathy Sargent

This film gives much needed comic relief to caregivers often held suspect by people who claim to be neuro typical but are not.

For this reason, it deserves an academy award.

The main protagonist News Crew has: rigid thinking, strong resistance to change, lack of body awareness (mind blindness) and sensory processing differences which lead to angry outbursts.

All of these qualities fit the criteria for being on the spectrum for aspergers disorder.

Will Ferrell was well cast as the newsman who becomes blind and angry in the final scenes.

This is exactly what it feels like to have aspergers.

Not able to read social cues mind blind as to how to fit in or just trying to find things in your refrigerator can be frustrating and mystifying for you as well as those close to you.

It feels just like being on the bus on automatic pilot without a driver as shown on the film.

This is also what it feels like to watch the news 24 hours a day.

People on the spectrum for aspergers syndrome are not able to filter a bombardment of social sickness such as mysogyny, violence, and entitlement issues and they have feelings of being a misfit.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues deserves the highest honors as Will Farrell attempts to make this cast and crew all fit in!

Unfortunately this was not case for the recent shooter (diagnosed asperger) at UCSB. He felt like a lonely outsider..a misfit..

There is a reason to be happy about Pierce Brosnen humbly accepting to play the role of Phillip .

In America there are few models for doing grief work and few models for manhood.

Phillip is a knight without armor in the way he sees Ida a cancer survivor as well as his gay son.

His eyes see up to the skies and down to the seas. Mourning and melancholia is complicated and Pierce in real life has experienced this.

I am reminded of the 12 step program: life is unmanageable, I cannot control things, I am not God and have to rely on a power greater than myself.

Phillip could play God in this film. After all he is paying for his son's wedding and Ida asks him to read the letter regarding her final prognosis.

Instead, Phillip reacts peacefully and humbly by making observations rather than emotionally reacting.

Isn't that what adults do?

I am still taking notes on how to respond to betrayals that have occurred for me over 15 years ago!

Yes in the end, love is all we need and we either fall into His everlasting arms or not.

I left the film feeling more love, joy and hope for the future!

It is a good thing that Sam Shepherd is not all washed up from the mud in his career.

He plays a stunning role as father to Mud!

Fatherless boys who have no roots in the instinctive world (mud) often make division and tragedy rather than paradox.

The way Sam saved his son Mud in the end with the staged death in the muddy waters was a paradox given their earlier confrontation in the light of day.

What also seemed a paradox to me was Mud's clean white shirt contrasting his muddy surroundings??

It was the same paradox I felt when viewing that 1968 classic film "The River Boy" by Noel Black which won the Venice International Film Festival.

"The River Boy" also was a paradox in his white mail ordered suit that did not fit.

The suit did not fit, nor did his parents or the girl of his dreams

Times have not changed since 1968 in regards to children growing up to re capitulate deficiencies they experienced as children in their adult lives.

There is nothing new about the repetition compulsion of children turned adolescents who are compelled to seek dry rivered relationships ( the boat caught up on the branches of a tree played by Reese Witherspoon) and expecting to get water.

This time I know this mate will be the mother or father I never had or the mother or father who never saw or heard me.

And yes this time Mud's father did see and hear him and it was in the mud!

We need more of these muddy knights who wear white shirts and ill fitting clothes without armor to both generate and protect life.

Director Ben Afflect and producer George Clooney takes Hollywood liberties and amps up American bravado over Canadian courage, but gives an amazing window into Tehran in 1979.

My friend Sudama Mark Kennedy felt a lot of tension watching the films mock execution which HIS FATHER SURVIVED.

Other than that scene, there was very little mention of the 52 Americans held hostage.

However this film is great in that it brings attention to the current renumeration bill in Congress HR 5976; Justice For Diplomats Held Hostage in Tehran Act.

Please suggest to your congressional representatives that they co sponsor this bill!

"Speak up.. speak up... speak up. The only one you will scare away is your future x husband" and our future x military service! (Reviving Ophelia)

Three cheers for the sexual assault survivors who are speaking up both in this documentary and in their lawsuit.

Yes it really did happen!!

It is a criminal justice issue and a human rights issue!

Sexually abused individuals often go into a hypnotic trance to keep the abuse a secret and know what it feels like to be in the perpetrators shoes.

Breaking the silence, is breaking the trance that perpetuates the cycle of abuse!

As a therapist with some experience working at the rape crisis center, I was horrified just observing the affect of the patriarchal woman in charge of the sexual assault prevention program. All she could talk about was the buddy program as if this would stop predators stalking their prey?

One rape survivor was blamed "what can you expect for walking down a hallway alone with a bunch of drunken soldiers in each room".

The military must attract extreme narcissists and alcoholics who are so cut off from their own feelings that they do not honor others.

I pray that the survivors will have a successful appeal and the military will be held accountable for these injustices!

If you have ever had a relationship with an individual who suffers from borderline personality disorder, you will know what it feels like to be Bernie!

BPD's have a pathological defense against abandonment that is destructive to themselves as well as others. (an emotional sunburn)

Who best to play this role than Shirley MaClaine?

She was described by neighbors as being "conniving, demanding, pulling the heads off dolls as a child, condescending, possessive" as well as having a pathological defense against abandonment . She screamed "I hate you don't leave me" just like the book with this title.

Jack Black is perfectly cast as Bernie the helpful funeral director who attempts to befriend the unhappy widow after her husband's death. Not knowing the fish tank that she was swimming in, Bernie was duped into having a relationship with her. (important to name the disorder)

It was push/pull/black/white/and no off button from the beginning of their relationship..

However, Bernie believed in the higher angels of everyone including the bpd and this was his downfall.

This is true to form to the real Jack Black whom I met a local Santa Barbara boutique. He asked me a total stranger what kind of flowers to pick out for his girlfriend.

Staying with a borderline, you can become borderline which is on the border of neurosis and psychosis and the homicidal and suicidal rage that goes along with it.

It is not surprising that Bernie had a psychotic break and kills her .

This is a fantasy of some therapists when meeting up with a borderline who are either at your feet or at your throat.

(Analyze This, What About Bob?)

I was blown away watching the trailers that preceded this extraordinary documentary.

Coming attractions included Bill Wilson who was advertised as being one of the most significant people in the twentieth century. This was followed by a personal interview of him talking about the unquenchable thirst that never goes away.

The next scene was the documentary "The Highest Pass" and the rich patina of India's landscape.

The motorcyclists' journey to the top of the Himalayas evoked images of Dante's Inferno or the seven story mountain experience which was a divine comedy of purgatory before entering Heaven.

I was struck by the genuine transparency of the riders and the ability to be vulnerable and receptive to being filmed while riding to the top.

The riders seemed like artists helping the audience to see anew the people, the places and even the self that you have been sleepwalking past your whole life.

I left feeling renewed and refreshed. Well done!

Am not sure who is enabling whom in this 1968 sociopathic thriller?

Is it Anthony Perkins who plays a disturbed man named Dennis or Tuesday Weld who plays Sue Ann as his pretty sidekick?

All I know is that I never felt any desensitized violence in the killing. No agent orange here. There were too many pregnant pauses evoking images of the rippling effects of actions and their effects upon others.

How does a sociopathic thriller evoke empathy?

Visionary director Noel Black made it happen by planting Hollywood in New England and drawing on styles of the past.

He brought neat touches, flashbacks, naive and knowing together in a magical way.

"There is an extraordinary patience and calculation to Anthony Perkins elaborate ruse" writes one reviewer. I couldn't agree more as in spite of the hectic pace of the plot, Dennis seemed to be in the slow time as his earlier film "Psycho"

Pretty Poison was reel therapy for the Vietnam Era and casting Anthony Perkins for the disturbed young man was brilliant.

There was no slow time or cinematic moments on Vietnam's Hamburger Hill. Instead there was only cold beer, hamburger and the Follies Bergere after seeing your buddies get blown away.

It has been over 30 years since Vietnam and the war is still not over because of the herbicide agent orange sprayed into the de militarized zone. Dennis was right after all about the poisoning in the water.

Politics cannot be put aside in this film!

The birth of all consciousness whether it is a barbarian invasion or not begins in the round or world egg.

It is the mythology of the Uroborus or circular snake that weds, slays and impregnates itself... and the serpent that bites its own tail n the Garden of Eden.

This labyrinth of a story is centered around a serial seducer college professor no longer seductive and dying.

What blows my mind is that his first wife and children are so loving and forgiving given this creepy snake like man. They are altruistic in helping the mistresses children!

In this case the uroborus snake has slayed himself in his self defeating serial seducing of women. In biting his own tail..there is a surprising amount of character development for all.

Quebec have much to teach Americans about the rippling effects of being our brothers keeper in spite of all odds.

Life is a stage and where else could you meet so many characters but in your own family!

David Wozniack's 539 sperm donor children were as different as Matthew the tax collector and Simon the Zealot at The Last Supper!

I loved them all ...the severely autistic, the prescription drug addict, the unemployed actor, the soccer star, the neurotic, and the gay!

We often learn the most from those who are most unlike ourselves.

The labyrinth of sperm donor children that surround the birth of his first newborn child is heart warming! It feels like agape love much like Quebec film "The Barbarian Invasion"

However, Quebec has a way of romanticizing the trivialization and the minimization of having accountability for actions. (such as the fertility Clinic that donated 500 sperm donor donations under the name Starbuck)

I almost fell in love with this film!

If you are a friend of Bill W., you will love this film.

Alexander Payne once again peers deeply into the tortured souls of lifes losers in the moonlight this time.

One must look a little more than sideways to see that the characters are dancing with the gorilla alcohol.

George Clooney is well cast as the sober scapegoat husband and father in a crazy making alcoholic family system which seems to be all of Hawaii and the United States.

"what is it about all the women in my life who want to destroy themselves?"

This drinking a love story begins with his wife whose extra marital affair just happened at a party during Superbowl Sunday. Also, her fatal boating accident while water skiing just happened.

When George makes a surprise visit to tell his 16 year old daughter Alexandra of her mother's impending death, he finds her drunk and dancing under the moonlight on the golf course.

Alexandra's boyfriend is not quite the overripe glamour boy of Sideways, but he has the same rebel like spirit setting up others to get angry. He later discloses that his father was killed by a drunk driver.

Alexandra's younger sister tells her comatose mother that her sister has been drinking and is an alcoholic. She takes photos of her Mom who is in a coma and brings to school where her teachers criticize her? Why isn't this child honored for expressing her grief by sharing her art work?

George's father in law blames him for his daughters death. The water skiing accident was George's fault because George was a workaholic and didn't buy his wife her own power boat?

Perhaps we are evolving a new ideal of manhood in George Clooney who is CONSCIOUS, capable of self examination and noble in his ability to endure estranged sadness and frustrated grief which is common in alcoholic families without acting out in ways that hurt other people.

Cathy Sargent

Aaron Beck the father of cognitive behavioral psychology believes there is no such thing as multiple personality disorder or demon possession. Instead he called it "defense mechanisms"

After seeing this film, there is not a doubt in my mind that the existence of evil and demon possession does exist.

I saw this film at the suggestion from my friend Sister Regina from the Sisters of the Poor Clares contemplative order. She told me that evil is becoming more pervasive throughout the world especially in Italy..

The film revived my faith and I now keep a rosary and read the Bible every day as I my profession is a therapist.

This is a classic film about bereavement, grief, depression and dancing with the gorilla alcohol until you can't dance anymore.

What was most inspiring to me were Ben and Jerry a married couple who in their autumn years practiced the ministry of being present even with the ugly potato plants (alcoholic friends) who were threatening to take over their garden. Like the humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers, Ben and Geri believed something was always growing and becoming even if it was an ugly potato growing sprouts

I don't know how this couple managed to stay serene watching their alcoholic friends continue to use alcohol despite the consequences.I wouldn't interpret their serenity as apathy but love, patience and kindness. The serenity prayer reads: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference".

This film is a great psycho/educational tool for alcohol counselors showing a cluster of personality traits that alcoholics share in common. (low tolerance for frustration and rejection)

Three cheers for the producer, director and writer who captured quiet ordinary moments Ben and Gery spent with their friends without shaming, blaming or denying!