Okay, movie review time. I rented five movies last Wednesday, and only returned them tonight.

Castle in the Sky: Children’s anime from Miyazaki, the famous director of Princess Mononoke. Originally titled “Laputa: Castle in the Sky” in Japanese, Disney dropped the word “Laputa” for American distribution. The rumor is that “laputa” (unbeknownst to Miyazaki) is an obscene slang word in Spanish, but I don’t know enough Spanish to put the rumor to rest. At any rate, the movie is a good kids’ film – with the caveat that the Japanese don’t have the same stigma about guns in kids’ films, and there’s a potentially scary scene where the bad guy puts the little girl up against a wall and shoots off her pigtails.

Shaolin Soccer: Kung-fu brothers apply skills to soccer. Hilarity, as they say, ensues.

Supersize Me: This is an eye-opening documentary about the obesity epidemic in America, and its roots in fast-food franchises. As a sort of framework, the documentary producer goes on a 30-day diet of nothing but McDonald’s food. The predictions his doctors make about what will happen, compared to what actually happens, are fascinating.

The Last Samurai: This film was well-acted, but fundamentally flawed conceptually. An American cavalry officer (played by Tom Cruise), haunted by the atrocities he witnessed in his battles against the Indians, is hired to help modernize the Japanese military during the Meiji restoration. During a fight with the samurai rebels, he is captured. During his winter as a captive, he learns to appreciate the samurai values of discipline, honor, and loyalty. Eventually he is released. He goes back and joins the samurai rebels, and fights alongside them as a samurai, even though they know they cannot win against the modern military with medieval weapons and armor.

The flaw is this: the samurai are not fighting for their land, their families, or anything else that tangible. They are fighting for their way of life. What do they mean by this? Well, the movie gives some mumbo-jumbo about Bushido, the Warrior’s Code, discipline, and honor. The obvious question (that is never asked) is, “Can’t you teach the modern military about discipline and honor, and, heck, even Zen Buddhism?” Well, they could, but it just wouldn’t be the same . . . you see, the samurai have been the military for 900 years, etc., and it just wouldn’t be the same, passing it on to these peasants. And there it is: the way of life the samurai are fighting to preserve is the medieval caste system, in which the samurai were pretty much the Big Bullies on the Block, with legal license to kill any peasant that doesn’t bow and scrape to them.

To preserve this way of life, they are willing to leave their wives husbandless and their children fatherless. Even though they know they will lose, they will throw it all away just to have one last slaughter of the Japanese peasants who have enlisted in the “new” military. It is especially troublesome that Tom Cruise would join them in this, since he was so messed up with the atrocities committed against the Indians, but now he’s made peace and is ready to slaughter the Japanese.

The last movie was Magnolia. I’ll save it for tomorrow, since it was so. . . magnolia-like.