Take A Break From The Darkness [OregonMuse]

Some of the TV shows I've been watching recently include Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy, Hell on Wheels and Copper. I like them, I think they're well-crafted and entertaining, but all of them are pretty dark and the plots usually involve conflicts between various shades of bad guys. Mrs. Muse has stopped watching most of them because there's nobody she likes, or can identify with.

A steady diet of this sort of thing kind of wears on my soul after awhile, so every now and then it's good to watch something more uplifting. This is why I recommend Ocean Heaven, a 2010 Jet Li movie, and no, this is not a martial arts film. Jet Li is a widower whose life revolves around caring for his severely autistic son, now almost an adult. The father has just been diagnosed with cancer of the liver and has only a few months to live, and he has to figure out how to see that his son is taken care of after he's gone. Jet Li is a surprisingly good actor in this role, and Wen Zhang gives a remarkable performance as the autistic son.

So here you have a story about good people struggling to cope with the adversity that life throws at them, rather than an evil bad guy trying to rip off some other, slightly more evil, bad guy, and I found it rather refreshing.

The trailer makes Ocean Heaven look kind of sappy, but it really isn't.

And below the fold, more evidence that all movies are action movies now:

Also, open thread. The previous one was starting to smell like ace's feet.

posted by Open Blogger at 07:57 PM

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