Cinemavenger

   The funniest, nastiest movie reviews anywhere.

Walk with Me

Girlfriend:  Do you want to watch a documentary about Zen Buddhism?

Cinemavenger:  Um . . .

Girlfriend:  If you go with me, we can finally have that threesome you've been dying for with my smokeshow bestie.

Cinemavenger:  Om!

Thanks to the promise of the Holy Grail of Fucking, this week Cinemavenger trades in explosions and violence for serenity and mindfulness with a journey to the local art house theater for a showing of Walk with Me, a documentary about the second most famous, living Buddhist, Thich Nhat Hanh.

The biggest difference between the multiplex and the art house is size.  There couldn't have been more than 40 seats lined up in front of Chez Frou Frou's postage stamp-sized screen.  The biggest similarity is that assholery knows no bounds.  At the multiplex, it's the idiot in the Coors hat arguing with his wife about which one is the "good" Applebee's.  At the art house, it's the perfectly manicured house frau in Michael Kors shoes bitching about having to have her maid deported if she doesn't start polishing the silver properly.

The previews for Walk with Me make it seem like the flick is going to drop some serious Buddhist wisdom bombs and dish some inside-the-golden-circle dirt on Zen Master Hanh.  Which just goes to show that Hollywood doesn't have a monopoly on lyin'-ass advertising.  Walk with Me devotes all of three sentences - two of which appear on title cards - to Hanh's background and relates only a toddler's handful of "teachings."  A couple are spoken by Hanh, and the rest are delivered via voice-over narration by a half asleep Benedict "Cabbage Patch" Cumberbatch.

Beyond a Bodhi Tree shadow of a doubt the best thing about Walk with Me is that it shows Buddhism to be just as tail-chasingly fuckdiculous as Christianity, Judaism, Islam or any of the other "organized" religions.  Buddhism, in a nutshell, is the belief that the secret to happiness is overcoming suffering.  Suffering is caused by desire (I.E. wanting stuff), so getting rid of desire gets rid of suffering and results in happiness.

So what in the name of Dick Cock Wad are the Buddhist monks and nuns at Hanh's Plum Village Buddha Superstore in France doing playing music all the time?  The very first thing a musician has to do in order to play an instrument is to want to play the correct notes in the correct order at the correct time.  A musician must have the desire to play well.  Which, by definition, makes the fiddlin', strummin' monks and nuns in Walk with Me the shittiest Buddhists ever.

Om canwe havda threesome now?

September 1, 2017