If this were not a true story then this movie would not have been believable at all and would seem more like a Disney Wizard of OZ type of a movie.

One could argue that the trailers for this movie tell the viewer all he/she needs to know about the whole story which is about a girl who is terminally ill and then falls out of a tree and somehow by some miracle is cured. What the trailer does not tell you is the great acting of Jennifer Garner and the story of what a family already in financial trouble has to go through to pay for the insane medical bills that can ruin lives and are in many cases medical tragedies that can be completely futile attempts to save the life of a child. Despite knowing the happy ending in advance, this story was told very well and was tragically effective at depicting the insanity of the medical world in present day United States. An additional side story in this movie was about another girl with terminal cancer and her situation was equally as tragic as the main character in this movie.

One part of this that really stood out was that the parents of the young girl played extremely well by Kylie Rogers would have had to wait a full 9 months to even see a specialist for the rare intestinal disease their daughter had were it not for the persistence of her mother. Clearly the child would never have lived long enough to see this specialist were it not for another miracle of a helpful medical receptionist who begged the doctor to see this child before it was too late. What also brings great emotion in this movie are the adorable face and eyes of the young girl who plays the main role in this movie during some of the medical procedures which at times are hard to watch.

The additional story with Queen Latifah befriending the mother and young girl during their trip to see the specialist in Boston seemed more like an afterthought and overall I thought did not fit well in this movie. One had to think that the story as it probably stood originally did not create a movie that was close to 2 hours long so this extra side story was added.

This movie challenges the existence of God in several scenes in this movie, especially by the girls mother played by Garner and the scenes that stands out the most are the stupid comments by some of the neighbors of the family with the ill child, actually questioning the sins of the parents and even the young girl in their attempt to understand why the young girl got this horrible medical affliction in the first place and was not yet healed. I for one was hoping for a more extreme reaction from the mother after hearing the cruel comments from her fellow parishioners in the church they all attend.

Other scenes that stand out are the callous and egomaniacal attitudes of the doctors who for a long period of time could not figure out and correctly diagnose the illness of the young girl, constantly thinking that her problems were minor and would go away on their own. One young doctor in an emergency room was particularly rude to the girls mother requiring the mother to take extreme action to figure out what was wrong with her daughter.

Of course the financial nightmare of going through something like this are unfortunately a major part of the story, and one has to wonder why the father of 3 daughters would put his family in great financial jeopardy by taking a huge second mortgage on their house for his business before the discovery of his middle daughter’s illness.

Miracles from Heaven may be another tearjerker, but it was an extremely well made one and a very good family picture as well. I highly recommend this movie.

Miracles from Heaven – IMDB

When Raging Bull came out in 1980, I remember it was one of the first films I had ever seen that was purposely made in black and white other than Woody Allen’s Manhattan which came out in 1979.

You realize very early on while watching this classic movie that due to the gritty depressing nature of the film, making it in black and white was definitely the right choice. After seeing this movie we all learned what Robert De Niro went through to make it, which included gaining and losing 60 pounds and getting into the shape of a world class middle weight boxer. There was no way De Niro was not going to win for best actor in 1980 and one could argue that his performance in this movie might be considered the greatest of all time, given his acting and the physical and athletic achievement in making this movie. This is a must see for anyone who appreciates a great movie and an outstanding acting performance.

Raging Bull IMDB

I was reminded recently of how great a movie “The Imitation Game” was when it came out in January 2015. This is the story about Alan Turing who is considered to be the inventor of the modern day computer. Turing’s incredible genius saved 2 years of the World War 2 and 14 million lives when he invented a machine that broke what was called ENIGMA, which was the machine that encrypted the German communication codes. The number of combinations this machine created was 159,000,000,000,000,000,000 and decoding it was considered at the time almost impossible. Why this movie was great how well the process of building this decoding machine was explained as well as the breakthroughs that eventually lead to the best way to figure out every single German code and the combination changes that happened every day. Its incredible to realize that Germany and all their evil and murdering of so many innocent people during World War 2 would possess scientists so brilliant to invent a machine like this and so many of the best weapons of war including almost the Atom Bomb. More amazing to realize is that in order to save lives during a horrible war the most important invention in human history, the computer was invented. The insanity of war most unbelievably has created many of the greatest inventions in human history, including the science of medicine. This could be the greatest irony of all.

Another great story within this great movie is that once you have broken the code using this decoding machine, how often can you use it as to not alert the Germans that you have figured out their ENIGMA machine? This one idea creates the best scene in this movie where they all the scientists working on the decoding machine realize that the machine cannot be used that often and only by using mathematical formulas and statistics can they win the war while at the same time not alerting the Germans that the British had broken the code.

The downside of this story is how Alan Turing was treated after the war by England because he was gay and for many years because of this he never received the credit for his invaluable accomplishments during World War 2. I will not spoil the movie by elaborating more on this issue. Only until the year 2013 did the Queen of England finally give Alan Turing the credit he deserved for his incredible accomplishments during World War 2. For me for something like this to take so long is the biggest tragedy of this movie.

Both Keira Knightly and Bennedict Cumberbatch were outstanding in their roles in this movie.

If you have not seen the Imitation Game you owe it to yourself to learn about one of the most important stories of World War 2.

I highly recommend The Imitation Game.