Are you familiar with the Love Comes Softly series of films based on books by Janet Ochs and directed by Michael Landon Jr.? Well, here’s to a group of films that seem to be a hotbed of controversy despite their simplicity and beauty. Maybe you don’t see how these movies could be controversial. Let me explain.

Last week I checked Love’s Unending Legacy out of my local library - a great find, I think considering it was produced in 2007 and the story line was absolutely touching and chick-flicky.

My significant other, who I call Mystic on this blog, came in to ask if I’d watched the movie yet. “Yes,” I told him. “I watched it last night. It was SUCH a GOOD movie!”

He gets a sick look on his face and rolls his eyes.

“Oh, you don’t think so?” I said. “I love the simplicity, the love stories, and the fact that God is part of these movies.”

“That’s the problem,” he said. “I don’t need Christianity shoved down my throat.” He then launched into a soliloquy from which I had no recourse. Past experience had taught me not to dare getting a word in edgewise until he says, “You have nothing to say?” And then I’d better be careful what I say.

What I finally said was, “Okay, go watch your violence and bloodshed. To each his own.”

Honestly, I don’t see any problem with the way Christianity is depicted in these films. It isn’t all “in your face” type proselytizing. It is just a gentle matter of fact that American pioneer families were predominantly Christian and the church was a huge part of their social life. If they sit down at the dinner table to say grace, that’s a realistic part of the story, not an attempt on the part of the producer to introduce subliminal suggestions to convert viewers.

Honestly, I’m not a Christian, in fact, I think I may have found my guru and I’m thrilled about that, and still doing quite a bit of seeking to decide… and I’m totally not a joiner. (Been there done that and then literally gave away the t-shirt after 30+ years servitude.) But Christian or no, I absolutely LOVE seeing people relate to God and express their spirituality in these precious movies - which were created from novels written by Janet Ochs. Who can object to that?

Anyhow, if you want a decent, heart warming family-centered movie, the Love Comes Softly series is excellent.

In what was originally billed as a paranormal thriller, Bruce Willis stars as David Dunn, a man who cannot be injured. It starts when he’s the only passenger on a doomed train to survive a horrific accident. He returns home to his estranged wife and doting son, only to have to face questions about how he could possibly have survived without any injuries whatsoever. Once he’s home, the flick takes on the character of a family movie or human interest drama.

Then Dunn is approached by Elijah Price (Samuel Jackson), a victim of osteogenesis imperfecta - brittle bone disease. Price has suffered numerous broken bones throughout his life and presents a tragic figure we can not help but sympathize with despite his rough, gangsta-style exterior. Price is obsessed with superhero comics and has build a business around them; this started when his loving mother gave him comics as a gift to comfort him when he was a child. He’s decided that a superhero with unbreakable bones must exist and he wants that man’s secret. This obsession is what leads him to David Dunn.

As Dunn grapples with the facts of invincibility, he also has to deal with the unwanted attention of Elijah Price. Dunn and his wife, Audrey (Robin Wright Penn) are having enough problems already — their marriage is falling apart and he’s looking for a new job in New York City. Their son, Joseph (Spencer Treat Clark), is not handling this crisis well and obviously loves his father too much to face having him leave.

After Joseph hears that Elijah believes Dunn is an invincible superhero, he works on trying to convince his father that this is true. Dunn eventually tries to fulfill the role, leading to a surprise ending that only a schmo would reveal to the uninitiated.

Be prepared for flashbacks and a bit of confusion at first, but overall, the movie is very entertaining.

My partner, the Mystic, says, “Why would you want to review something like that? It’s a movie. It’s entertainment. You watch it and then forget about it.”

Well, my answer is that it is one of the best movies I saw this week. The others were filled with worse violence . . . obviously his picks not mine. I prefer chick flicks; he doesn’t.

I like the juxtaposition of opposites in Unbreakable - Dunn’s invincibilty vs. Price’s vulnerability - and appreciated the intensity of love Dunn’s son, Joseph, shows for him. Dunn rises from a troubled security guard to a self-actualized superhero, like a phoenix rising from the flames of distress and reprobate thought.

You will have to see the movie to understand what I just wrote. I think it was 106 minutes well-spent though it truly isn’t the most mystical and enlightening movie I’ve seen this year. This was the second movie I’ve seen that was directed by M. Night Shyamalan . . . I enjoyed his bit part in the movie . . . and I’ll be ordering his other movies from Netflix to see what they’re like. I expect I have a treat in store for me.

I could not help but love this movie about a gentle alien (maybe) forced into a mental hospital. Kevin Spacey played the lead role of Prot. I can’t say enough good things about him and the role. Now I’m a big Kevin Spacey fan and have been scanning Netflix to order all the other films he’s been in.

K-Pax leaves you in suspense the entire time. Is Prot an alien, or a mentally ill earthling? The powers that be are convinced he must be insane, but his doctor soon picks up on Prot’s amazing intelligence and wisdom.

I was extremely impressed with Kevin Spacey’s performance. Prot was calm and patient, curious about life on earth, and filled with wisdom. He knew exactly what his fellow mental patients needed and set about improving their lives in the kindest, gentlest way possible.

His open-minded psychiatrist, played by Jeff Bridges, couldn’t seem to believe that Prot could really be an alien. The doctor started an investigation into his past using occasional clues provided by Prot. Bridges was perfect for the part and did a good job of keeping us in total suspense.

This is a movie I would love to see again. Something about Prot is just so attractive! It must be the calm, gentle patience — so unusual in this civilization. For that reason alone I consider this a spiritual masterpiece.

I borrowed this movie from Netflix for two reasons. The first and most honest reason was that I’ve always been curious about communes. I was a San Francisco Bay Area teenager in the sixties and identified with hippies and flower children. But by the time I moved to the Haight Ashbury in the early seventies, most hippies had moved on - many of them, to communes. However my life path did not take me to a rural commune so I missed the social experiment aspects of that movement, and I wanted to learn more.

My second reason for watching this movie was for novel research. Back in 2003 when this film was made, I wrote a novel that included some commune scenes. In the process of revising this novel (which has never yet been done) I’ll need more information about what it was really like to live on a commune… so I thought, “Cool! A movie about a commune! I MUST watch it!” … [The commune in my novel, Far Out - The Journey To Oblivion... is not Black Bear Ranch; it is a fictional commune in Southern Oregon.]

W.O.W. …I got more than I expected. The first shock was seeing scenery of the Klamath River Valley and western Siskiyou County - because that’s where I live. I reside near Happy Camp, California. The commune in this movie, Black Bear Ranch, is about fifty miles downriver from where I live. The second shock was that I saw someone who I met last year… at the time I was working in the local pizza restaurant and this person came in to buy… pizza, I guess. Okay, so it is a small world!!

The commune’s motto is “Free Land For Free People” and it still exists today - on the original eighty acres near Somes Bar, California. Since I watched the movie I realized I’ve known people who were living or visiting there. It is definitely cool that there’s a place for people to go live, if they want to take part in that kind of free community… if they like living in the woods, doing communal farming/logging/cooking… whatever it takes to keep the place operational. The commune website: Black Bear Ranch.

The movie starts with film of the social unrest in the sixties, then weaves in interviews with founding members including actor Peter Coyote, artist Elsa Marley, and herbalist Dr. Michael Tierra. There’s plenty of film from the early commune days mixed in with the much more recent interviews, and we get to follow the stories of several founding members from their original commune days to the present in which they reminisce about their experience, considering both the positive aspects as well as the negative, which included a lot of jealousy due to the free-love aspect of commune life.

I would not want to live in those conditions. I see it as an arena for social experimentation and self-expression, especially for youth seeking peaceful and loving alternatives to the crazy civilization we now live in. I found it strange that the topic of drug use was absent in this movie except for a brief anecdote about a drug raid yielding tomato plants that the deputies mistook for marijuana. Another negative factor was a second group called Shiva Lila, a child-worship cult, that took up residence on Black Bear Ranch. When they were forced to leave, they took commune children with them to southeast Asia where half of the children they had with them died. An interview with one of the survivors showed how strange and difficult a childhood it was. Her’s was a fortunate outcome as she returned to California and reunited with her father.

At the website for the movie, Commune, you can watch the trailer, link to the movie’s MySpace page, and download a study guide that includes related links.