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PhenomenonRating:
Release Date: 04 February, 2003 Retail Price: $14.99 OUR Price: $13.99 You SAVE: $1.00! Cast: Complete Cast (15 total) |
Phenomenon Reviews
Same phenomenon in WWII, Fascist Black-Propaganda
Motion picture messages are so smoothly constructed and mass produced today, audiences would hardly bat and eye if they were seeing anti-intellectualism presented to them in a form that also imputes witchcraft, telekinesis for example. Big ideas must mean something from outer space has infected the brain; or anything intelligent, resourceful or efficient. Also foreign language acquisition is held suspect by this piece of government propaganda, we're better off being mono-lingual and ignorant of others around the world. While not as mudslinging and rife with judicial malpractice as the Salem Witchcraft Trials, movies still libel segments of the population the state has deemed unwanted or suspect for reasons of their beliefs, attitudes and intellectual pursuits. Then the mudsling is that intelligence must be unnatural and under alien control, that it means something is organically wrong with the brain; of late it has been more popular for the exercise of state oppression to simply label people as mentally ill (without all the cosmic conspiracy angle). What it really means is that the tireless efforts the government has put in place to destroy the public education system, and to weaponize the culinary water supplies everywhere with a vectored chemical incapacitant wmd, fluoridation, must now jealously and suspiciously interdict any signs of its ineffectiveness at rendering the population functionally illiterate, subaverage in memory, language, logic and mathematics skills.
There is no big important secret cipher system at risk, that the government needs to keep a secret in order to subjugate unwanted populations of chemically inundated citizens; it is plain to see and requires no algorithm to decode. The pattern is obvious: exploit, lie, poison and insult the residual intelligence of the population they haven't yet completely wiped out. This movie is a highly revealing sick statement of an insular, autocratic technological empire crumbling under its own inconsistencies and open acts of war, mob violence and vigilantism on America; a foreign policy of isolationism attempting to disguise corporate colonialism as our outreach, when the overstatements of xenophobia for international languages couldn't be more apparent or reflection of the decline in the U.S. education system. Demonization of intellectuals is old fascist whining and scare tactic. It is making more movies than sense because its only card to play is hypnosis in order to evade fairly simple identification of its ideology and modus operandi.
Other than the large dimensions of psychological film project objectives for mass populations the psycorps or planning and budgeting of the Pentagon designs, this film also has latent suggestible side effects that could be harmful to young people prior to the age of disillusionment with the establishment. The film could instill phobias in young people that academic achievement or the strengthening of their intellect is somehow a demonic or alien compromise, that smart is bad and that dumb is preferred. Use this film if anything to make a fool of the corruption that thinks we take it seriously. Who is the more alien-invasion insidiousness anyway?
There are these people out there who think they have big ideas, something to contribute. They believe in direct democracy, energy conservation, environmentalism, alternative forms of power extraction and won't learn from the coy ridicules of cinematic revisionism not to see others equally, or not bother to learn to speak some of their language. What's to be done with them? Perhaps they'll die naturally from the progression of their disease, as they so should. It seems that would be in keeping with this film's sick prescription.
Oh, and in case you're writing in the newspaper oped style that can't make an argument without telling people what to think verbatim, remember to begin with the polemic: "That's what's going on here!..."
MOVING TRIBUTE TO THE HUMAN SPIRIT
PHENOMENON could have been one of those syrupy, maudlin-filled stories we've been handed, but thanks to an intelligent script, astute direction by Jon Turteltaub and a stunning cast, this movie is poignant, touching and an affirmative nod to the human spirit. John Travolta in one of his best performances plays George, an auto mechanic who one night "sees a bright light", is stunned by it and wakes up changed. He is now obsessed with knowledge, of learning, and he's a little telekinetic to boot. How this affects him and the people in his small town overrides the obligatory governmental intervention subplot. Travolta is marvelous and so is the rest of the cast: Kyra Sedgwick as the relation-phobic young mother who is the object of Travolta's affections; Robert Duvall is superb as the doctor/friend who tries to get Travolta through this change; Forest Whitaker as his farmer buddy. In fact, the whole cast is right on target in support of this remarkable leading performance. PHENOMENON is touching, and offers a look at how Travolta's friends find themselves both in awe and in fear of his newfound powers.
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