Michael DeNobile's Movie Reviews

A REFLECTION ON SEASON 6 OF GAME OF THRONES Homecomings are bittersweet. While they bring us to a place of relative safety and security, they remind us of what we have lost and what we can never attain once again. Time is a commodity that, while gaining value over time, cannot be reimbursed once it is passed. Sometimes we can only go home for the weekend because we are not the person we once were. Our family just doesn't get it; we cannot be who we once were or we cannot be who they want us to be. And so, you must leave to set out on the next chapter. Other times, going home isn't a homecoming at all, empty of any sentiment, cold as dragonglass or Valyrian steel. Either way, home becomes a larger concept: home is where you love. In other words, that which you love the most becomes the place where home is. Recently, I was speaking with a Brazilian preacher from Rio de Janeiro who went back to Rio on a trip. He grew up there and had been living in the United States for a fe...

A REFLECTION ON SEASON 5 OF GAME OF THRONES We humans are stupid. We squabble over things we feel is of vital importance: power, pride, property, loyalty. Granted, individually these things can be seen as sacred, but when they distract and divide us, what good are they? They are nothing more than pillars of ash we struggle to hold on to. Institutions meant to uplift us can in their most radical forms harm us. Religion and economics, for example, can be uniting forces or they can destroy us from the inside out, until forces beyond our control decide our fate when it is too late to realize our faults. We fight wars amongst ourselves, pitting ourselves against one another for the most ridiculous of reasons: where and how one was raised, occupations, ideologies, whom we choose to love. We create value systems for who we feel is worthy and worth saving, condemning, ostracizing, uniting. Someone steals our toys, and we're plotting revenge before we are even certain we know who ...

A REFLECTION OF SEASON 4 OF GAME OF THRONES All we have as human beings is our words--promises kept, promises broken. You know the mettle of men and women by how they keep their promises, and when they must break them for the greater good. That's why a good name for a sword is Oathkeeper, for that's what a good sword does. The holder makes a promise to bind themselves to another's cause, and a good knight stays true. Marriage is a promise of two people becoming one, whether your betrothed is someone you want to be with or not. When an honorable man is forced to marry a woman who both know does not want to be in said marriage, his watch so begins, because of the promise. We make promises to our family, to right the wrongs of the past, to avenge their honor, or to progress the family name by any means possible. Sometimes our family may not be in blood but in a fraternal unit, and sometimes in order to do right by that fraternity, we must break our vows in order to fur...

A REFLECTION OF SEASON THREE OF GAME OF THRONES  There are times in our lives when choices come into focus. And that choice, right or wrong, though difficult, bubbles up to the forefront as the only choice one can make. When you're alone in unknown territory and fall in love, and the one you love shoots arrows into you: you climb. When all seems lost, your family dead, and all you have is hate and a list of names to avenge your family name, one of which is your captor: you climb. When you're not taken seriously, maybe because you're a woman or a child or have some perceived disability: you climb. When you are forced to marry someone instead of the one you love: you climb. When you endure the death of your father, the abuse of someone you thought was good, and the loss of your ancestral home: you climb. When you are captured and tortured: you climb. When you are thrown in a pit with a bear: you climb. When the snow is deep and the wall is tall, and the only w...

A REFLECTION ON SEASON TWO OF GAME OF THRONES In a room, a king, a priest, and a rich man sit while a sellsword of common birth and common knowledge stands. Each of the three great men command the sellsword to kill the other two: The king commands with the authority of law. The priest commands with the authority of the divine. The rich man commands with the authority of wealth. So, who lives and who dies? One might first side with the sellsword, for that seems logical. Does the sellsword side with duty, faith, or temptation? But that would mean that those with swords hold the power, and we all know that that's not true. Power is a shadow of a thought, a pall where we each individually think it covers. Some believe there is power in titles and blood, differentiating between common names and family names. Power lies in birthrights and laws, whether they are just or unjust. Others believe power lies in the heavens above and the realms below. Here, power lies in faithfulne...

A REFLECTION OF SEASON ONE OF GAME OF THRONES Secrets beget secrets like bastard children of a king. And for the record, lies are not the cousins of secrets--for secrets are nothing more than truth that has yet to see the light of day. The cousin of secrets is deception, the bastard child of lies, for deception is nothing more than the full truth rather than pure lies in a crucible. And when winter is coming, and the light of days dwindles, the secrets in the crucible spark revelation, and those revelations spark wars, fires so hot that only those with dragon blood in their veins can withstand the flames. And in the burning light of revealed secrets, one has a choice to make. As a man of honor, do you swing the sword if you passed the sentence and take the sword when the sentence is passed on you, even when you know you are innocent? Or as a man of dishonor, do you create debts to always be paid, only to slime your way to living another day? Either way, identify with who a...