Sympathy For Delicious (4 Stars)

A wheelchair-bound DJ discovers that he has the power to heal other people, but not himself. That's the straightforward part of "Sympathy for Delicious". The less straightforward part is figuring out what the director, Mark Ruffalo, is actually trying to say with it.

The clue is in the title. "Sympathy for Delicious" is a play on the Rolling Stones song "Sympathy for the Devil", but the film also has a much closer connection to "You Can't Always Get What You Want". Dean desperately wants the one thing his miraculous power cannot give him: the ability to walk again. Instead, he gets the opportunity to heal other people, and promptly turns his gift into a way of making money, gaining fame and getting involved with a rock band.

And that's really the point. Dean spends most of the film wanting the wrong thing. His physical disability is only part of what needs healing. The real journey is learning to accept what he cannot change and discovering that helping somebody else can be more important than getting something for himself.

It's a good idea, and once I understood what Ruffalo was getting at, I appreciated the film considerably more. But I have to admit that I didn't fully get it while I was watching it. There are so many different elements competing for attention – religion, faith healing, rock music, fame, poverty and Dean's own bitterness – that the message is buried.

So don't expect a conventional story about a man who discovers he can perform miracles. The miracles are really there to ask what "healing" actually means. And as the Stones already told us, you can't always get what you want. Sometimes, if you're lucky, you get what you need.

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Black Hawk Down (3 Stars)

Netflix Thursday #20

This is a 2001 film directed by Ridley Scott about a mission by the US army in Somalia in 1993. It's based on true events, though simplified in parts for the big screen. The Somalian rebel leader Aidid was deliberately starving the population in order to become more powerful. The Americans had tried in vain to capture or kill him. On 3rd October 1993 an operation was launched to capture two of the most senior men in his group.

Was the operation successful or not? That depends how you look at it. The two Somalians were captured, so the mission was technically a success. On the other hand, 19 American soldiers were killed and 73 were wounded, the highest number of casualties in a single day since the Vietnam War.

The slogan on the poster is "Leave no man behind". It's something that the American armed forces are proud of. But is it a good military strategy? Based on the evidence of this film I'd say No. The problems begin when an American private falls out of a helicopter. A team is sent to rescue him, which leads to a Black Hawk helicopter being shot down. More troops are sent to rescue the soldiers from the helicopter crash, but many of them are cut off from their comrades and need to be rescued.

What I'm trying to say is that if the private had been left to die, the day's casualties would have been one dead and zero wounded. "Leave no man behind" is a proud slogan to chant among servicemen, but does it make sense? Was it worth sacrificing 19 lives to save one man? If I'd been the man lying on the ground I'd have yelled at my comrades to leave me to die.

As my regular readers know by now, I've been on holiday for the last four weeks. I'm in England with my daughter Fiona and her family, and I'm staying until 12th December. It's my first visit since the pandemic, so I wanted to make it a longer visit. This has an effect on my viewing habits. Fiona doesn't have a DVD player and relies on Netflix for entertainment. This is frustrating to me, but I'll talk about her and her family in this post.

Fiona watches Netflix every day. She doesn't watch films, she watches reality shows and true crime series. I have to admit, if that's what someone wants to watch, Netflix is sufficient. Good luck to her.

My grandson Samuel (two years old) also watches Netflix every day, closely supervised by his parents. He watches "Masha and the Bear" and "Cocomelon". Sometimes I put on other children's series for the sake of variety. He enjoys these for a while, but then he says "Bear, Bear", so I put "Masha and the Bear" on again. Okay, Netflix is all a small child needs.

But what about my son-in-law, Mehdi? With the exception of "The Walking Dead", he only watches films. He watches a film every day, more at the weekend. He likes mostly action and horror movies. I've been observing his habits closely. Every day he clicks through Netflix's new movies and recommendations. Sometimes he immediately spots a film that he'd like. Sometimes nothing attracts his attention, so he either re-watches a film he's already seen or he picks a film that he might like. He's at Netflix's mercy. He can only watch what's being thrown at him.

A few days ago I watched "Forest of Love" with Mehdi. He loved it, and he said he wanted to watch more films made by Sion Sono. Oops! There aren't any more of his films on Netflix. In my opinion, Mehdi has the inclinations to be a real film fan. Not everyone watches seven or more films a week. He's suffering from having to rely on Netflix, but he doesn't realise that he's suffering, because he's never owned a DVD player. He doesn't know what he's missing.

I'm not saying Netflix is bad. It's good for my daughter. It's good for my grandson. But it's bad for anyone who's a serious film fan, except as an additional extra to a DVD or Blu-ray player.

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead men tell no tales (3½ Stars)

In my opinion this film can be written off as an unnecessary sequel. The original Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, made from 2003 to 2007, was perfect in itself. It had a story to tell, there was a beginning, a middle and an end, and when you walked out of the cinema at the end of the third film you were satisfied that you knew it all. Only if you stayed to the very end, of course. It was the after-credits scene in "At World's End" that rounded off the story. Nowadays there are many films that have after-credits scenes, but the Pirates of the Caribbean films were the first to have after-credits scenes that were essential to the plot. For instance, the second film makes no sense if you haven't seen the after-credits scene of the first film.

"On stranger tides", the fourth film in the series, was touted as the first film in a new trilogy. Despite its big success at the box office it was beset with problems. The critics hated it. Its special effects made it the most expensive film ever made, a record which it still holds. The viewing public criticised the absence of Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley.

"Dead men tell no tales" shares the same jumble of real world naval battles and supernatural elements that we know from the previous instalments. If anything, this film keeps the real world to a minimum and concentrates on the supernatural. The new character Carina Smyth is in the centre. She alone knows the secret of map that no man can read, a map that leads to the Trident of Poseidon. This is a legendary artefact that can allegedly break every curse on the sea, including the one that befell Will Turner in the third instalment.

The fifth film rounds off the story once more. We don't need a sixth film, but we'll get one anyway.

I need to watch the first three films again. Last week I finally unpacked all my DVDs, which had been in boxes since I moved to Germany ten months ago. Now I have no excuse not to watch and re-watch my favourite films.