Gifted Hands

This movie was terrific. It portrays the life of Ben Carson, a disadvantaged young black man, growing up in the 60s and 70s to become a highly acclaimed brain surgeon as an adult. The movie focuses primarily on Ben's growing up years, but also pays tribute to Ben, the adult, in his professional years as a surgeon. According to the movie, Ben moved from a failing student to a thriving, flourishing A-student, who ended up third in his high school graduating class and attended Yale.

There's a horrific moment in the movie, where, moments after Ben has won an academic award at an assembly in the school, one of his teachers gets up and rants racially about how the white students should have been able to do better than he could, given his race and circumstances. What's even worse is the principal moves on right from the rant to the next award, without bothering to correct the teacher.

Ben ultimately becomes a highly acclaimed brain surgeon and the movie is bracketed with a plot about a craniography he needs to perform. He needs to figure out what he can do to keep the brains from bleeding out when he performs surgery to separate conjoined twins who are joined at the head. He's quite intent on being able to have a possibly favorable outcome for both twins before performing the surgery. Eventually, after lengthy scenes taking up a tremendous amount of time, Dr. Carson is able to separate the twins, and they both survive.

Dr. Carson also pioneers a surgery where he removes an entire half of the brain (a hemispherectomy) of a young girl suffering from seizures. Apparently this surgery has become a regular treatment for the condition displayed in the movie.

This was a wonderful, feel-good movie, showing what difference pure determination can make in some situations.

Zorba the Greek

Really...save your two and a half hours and do something else. Really. The movie is about, wait for it....Zorba, the Greek, who works for another man in the mines. And then he goes off to buy stuff for the guy. And then he falls in love with someone out there, shunning the woman he had been showing his affections to before then......and then he comes back and gets pseudo-married to the woman, and then she dies. Oh yeah, and the other guy gets involved with this other lady, and then she dies, while he looks on, doing nothing. Yeah, real winner, there. And then at the end....Zorba teaches the man how to dance. THE end. Yeeha. Borrring.