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 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.

The Descent answers the question: How tough can a woman be? Director Neil Marshall chose to make this movie with an all-female cast. The women depicted are brave to the point of being foolhardy nutcases, but that’s only my opinion.

The movie starts with three friends having fun while whitewater rafting in Scotland. Sarah (Shauna MacDonald) is host and her husband and daughter are along on the trip. On the way home in the car, her husband seems distracted while driving, and suddenly there’s a horrifying accident that kills the husband and daughter. Sarah wakes up in the hospital, traumatized for life. Still, after some recovery time, she decides to visit America where her friend Juno (Natalie Mendoza) has an all-woman adventure planned in the Appalachian Mountains.

What do Sarah, Juno, Beth, Rebecca, Sam and Holly all have in common? They are all athletic, adventurous women ready to have an exciting cave exploration weekend. Juno leads, and the five others are misled into believing they’re exploring a well-known cave system in the National Park. Juno decided, alone and on her own, to take them instead to an unexplored cave so they can have the honor of naming it.

They rappel into a huge open pit chamber, then make their way deep inside the earth. While crawling through a narrow passageway, Sarah gets stuck but Juno talks her out of her terror and rescues her just as there’s a cave-in. By this time the movie viewer is on edge. I was literally ready to pack up and run because horror movies that put me on edge are far from my favorites. My significant other, “The Mystic”, talked me out of it.

I’m glad I stuck around to see the beautiful cave painting that was in the next room they passed through. I’m one who appreciates great artwork, including movie-art, by the way. But when Sarah saw a strange white creature lurking in the distance I felt sure their troubles would multiply.

The main thing I got out of the film was the impression that some women are tougher than others. They have mental prowess, irrepressible bravery, quick instincts, and the guts to do the necessary things to survive. Others melt in the heat of battle, in varying degrees. The women who survived longer did so because they had those special qualities that belong to the toughest, bravest, most-courageous of all.

The Mystic was favorably impressed with this film - especially the acting talents of the women involved. They looked  sincerely traumatized, claustrophobic, and frightened. The directing was flawless and I’ll admit the women were very talented.

If you like sitting on the edge of your chair, frightened half out of your skull, this is an excellent film. If however you are like me and prefer sweet love stories, this is not going to be your cup of tea.

The cast included Shauna Macdonald (Sarah); Natalie Mendoza (Juno); Alex Reid (Beth); Saskia Mulder (Rebecca); MyAnna Buring (Sam); Nora-Jane Noone (Holly); Oliver Milburn (Paul); Molly Kayll (Jessica) and Craig Conway (the underground creature).

A pregnant woman who doesn’t want to be a mother; a husband who doesn’t know how to care about his wife, two ditzy waitresses, a handsome doctor, and a sweet little old man. These are a few of the characters in the odd but intriguing chick flick melodrama, Waitress.

Keri Russell  stars as Jenna, a young woman whose fantasies take the form of creative pie recipes. She works as a waitress at Joe’s Pie Diner, along with two other waitresses, Becky (Cheryl Hines) and Dawn (Adrienne Shelly). Though she is miserable when she finds out she’s pregnant with her abusive husband’s child, her co-workers give her a baby diary in which she writes letters to her unborn child.

Unable to restrain herself, she passionately throws herself at her handsome obstetrician, Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion) and he gladly engages with her in a torrid extramarital affair. This sets the scene for a roller-coaster pregnancy and plenty of soul searching.

This is a cute movie with plenty of depth as Jenna feels her way through her distress. It brings up ethical issues when she involves herself in the illicit affair, and many will find themselves disgusted with the doctor-patient relationship. Still Jenna redeems herself and the beauty of the film triumphs over the confusion and pathetic attempts at finding happiness.

I enjoyed the creativity of this movie - it definitely wasn’t your ordinary chick flick comedy though there were many amusing moments. For example, when Jenna finds out she’s pregnant she imagines a new pie recipe and names it “I Don’t Want Earl’s Baby Pie” - shortened to “Bad Baby Pie”. She sees a mother with a tyrant of a boy-child in the restaurant and though you don’t hear her say a word, you know what she’s thinking. And Dawn’s first reaction to her odd, persistent new boyfriend is understandable - he’s quite a dweeb.

A regular customer at the restaurant is Joe (Andy Griffith) who claims to own Joe’s Pie Diner. He warms to Jenna, occasionally extending his old-age wisdom and advice. I loved Andy’s performance - he was perfect in every way.

At the official website you can name your own life-inspired pie.

Note: Adrienne Shelly was the writer and director of this unusual chick flick. She also played the role of Dawn. A tragedy occurred, and a great talent left us. This amazing, creative woman was murdered in November 2006 in New York during a failed robbery, leaving her husband and two-year-old daughter, both of whom had bit parts in the movie. The 19-year-old murderer was sentenced to 25 years without parole in March 2008.

Waitress has its own official blog with interviews, news, reviews, and more.