Sherlock Holmes has yet to arrive on Blu-ray (wife didn’t watch the two TV show discs we have), so we tried Thirteen Days from Netflix streaming instead.
This was kind of cheating as far as forcing movies for therapy goes.
It was a fairly intriguing political drama set around the Cuban Missile Crisis and the decision-making done by the key players. The emotion was all about an event whose outcome I already am well acquainted, so I didn’t really have to stretch myself there. I didn’t feel much emotion, so this was a pleasure. It was almost like I had a feeling of control, since it was an exploration of how a pre-determined outcome was reached.
The film managed to be pretty good, despite the fact that Kevin Costner was in it. By the way, he does a Boston accent far better than a southern or “British” one (http://www.amazon.com/Robin-Hood-Thieves-Extended-Version/dp/B001993Y3G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1281269975&sr=8-1)
I was pleased with the willingness of the producers to let the story tell itself without lots of unnecessary shots of crying, people in fear, or without the massive cavalcade of foreshadowing and paralleled emotional loss of say, a Ron Howard (I still hate Apollo 13 to this day because of crap like that). The concern was subtle, and well developed by multiple individual characters. Historically, I’m sure the otherworldliness and uber-intelligence they granted the Kennedy’s was overstated, but since Costner tends to workshop at the Altar of “If Only JFK Lived, Everything Would Have Been Better,” I’m not too shocked.
All in all, a good film if you enjoy character studies, anything about the process of high-level decision making, or simply want to educate yourself about the broad framework of the Missile Crisis and don’t want to read a book.
