**_Good message, decent movie, albeit really odd_** That pretty much sums up this 1990 film starring Tom Hanks as a miserable man stuck in an uninspiring job. After learning he's going to die in six months, he accepts an offer to live it up for a couple of weeks and sacrifice himself in a volcano on some nondescript Pacific island. Right off the bat, the movie tips off that it's more fantasy than reality.…

Bare with me here, because things are hazy. I distinctly remember renting this at our old small town independent pre-Block Buster video rental establishment. Back when it stopped selling porn (for a few years) and devoted the back room to Betamax and Laser Disc before they moved on to a bigger building. I remember riding my bike there with my father when I was ten. I remember seeing the poster in one of the…

"Joe Versus the Volcano" is a most off-beat and unusual film, but the central message it advocates is a common one. Life is worth living and this is never more relevant and meaningful than when life is slowly ebbing away and coming to an end and perhaps the circumstances leading up to that final terminal breath allows for a period of reflection. How awful would it be if all you were to see is a succession of missed…