Bernie is a movie that questions our ideas of mercy and justice. Is murder ever justified? Should a person be allowed mercy by his or her peers if they too despised the person he or she killed? What proves a person’s character – his or her numerous graces or his or her one, unavoidable sin?
The Avengers is as charming, exciting, funny, visually stunning, and involving as its predecessors, but no more so. The Avengers is equal to its antecedents, but it is not greater than them.
The Raid: Redemption is being hailed as the best action movie in years, and it is subtitled “Redemption.” Is either epigram appropriate?
The movie avoids sentimentality by counterbalancing its religious themes with reasonably candid depictions of less sanitary college antics. Although tame by mainstream standards, the lack of puritanical squeamishness over content typical of Christian movies is refreshing, and it’s long overdue for a generation of evangelicals who, for better or for worse, mostly don’t adhere to rigorous standards of content…
My one complaint with the film is that it all but completely cuts out my favorite character from the book and in doing so, undermines the story’s greatest social worth. Next to Katniss herself, the most important character in the book The Hunger Games is…
Movies have proven to be a consistent source of divine revelation in my life. God meets me in the theater, and I am as ardent a fan of cinema as anyone I know, but I have been as moved by $150,000 productions as I have by $180 million ones. The defining factor seems to be truth reflected off the screen, not the money poured into the image…
When the characters in The Descendants finally act hopefully, graciously, kindly, and forgivingly, it comes as a delightful surprise, as if a breath of life emanates from the screen and fills the audience with a force of life not too far removed from the life that filled Adam in Eden years and years ago…
Abandon thy cynicism, all who enter the theater to see Steven Spielberg’s War Horse, the most unashamedly sentimental film the crowd-pleasing director has directed in twenty years…
There is nothing technically wrong with this movie – it’s not a bad film – but there isn’t anything particularly worthy of note either. If this wasn’t a silent film, I don’t think anyone would care about it at all…
The ugliness that Belle has to learn to look past isn’t just the physical ugliness of the beast. It’s the ugliness that she perceives in living an ordinary life. She has to learn to see the beauty of love even if it means surrendering some of her independence and sense of adventure…
The ugliness that Belle has to learn to look past isn’t just the physical ugliness of the beast. It’s the ugliness that she perceives in living an ordinary life. She has to learn to see the beauty of love even if it means surrendering some of her independence and sense of adventure…
Besides trying to save the world, Holmes’ motivation for traveling the world in this movie is to save his friendship with Dr. Watson. Faced with the doctor’s marriage, Holmes fears losing his friend…
So often these days it seems films feature action played out in front of a green screen, and as good as today’s CGI is, it’s not reality, and CGI stunts just lack peril. Ghost Protocol has peril…
I’ve long been grateful for Jim Henson, for his Muppets and for his graceful search for his “rainbow connection.” In doing so, he approached the joy and happiness we’re all called to. With his weird little camaraderie of puppets, he gave us a clearer picture of what it means to be human than we find in most other places…
Martin Scorsese seems to just really loves movies. Maybe this love stems from this childhood when because of his struggles with asthma, he spent his days in the local cinema instead of playing outside. The imagination of moviemakers awakened young Scorsese to new possibilities, and in Hugo, every character is awakened by the imagination of another…
Hoover’s files are full of recordings and correspondences of a sexually scandalous nature. To Hoover, it seems that the most dreadful secrets to keep are those of sexual malfeasance. Hoover felt oppressed by American society because of his sexuality, so he used sexuality to oppress the avatars of his oppressor. Hoover wielded the weapon he knew best, the very weapon wielded against him…
I think of the too many people I have lost in my life to one form of cancer or another. These are the names I hold in my hand when I shake my fist at the heavens. Their names are the questions that fuel my doubts of God’s goodness and activity in the world. When I think of the ones I’ve lost though, I also think of the ones who stood resolutely beside them through their illness to and beyond the point of death…
Higher Ground is full of characters building to moments of revelation, and the film is about the build-up more than it is about the revelatory moments. In this, Higher Ground is monumentally better than almost all other films I’ve seen concerned with the complexities of the Christian life…
I do not doubt that there is a complicated psychosis beneath Drive’s stylized exterior, but that veneer proves all but impenetrable. Like its hero, Drive reveals nothing of what it is about. The film simply moves and asks its audience to respond…
There are movies that make me feel good about who I am. I see my country/race/gender/religion represented on screen, and I think to myself, this is good. I am proud to be a… whatever is being represented on screen. Machine Gun Preacher is not one of those movies…
