Meet a Failure

It’s hard to tell what lesson(s) the makers of Meet the Robinsons are trying to bestow on their audiences, but I imagine each of the seven screenwriters had their own intentions. This Disney release lacks all the humor and originality of more successful recent animated installments like the Toy Story or Shrek series. I went anticipating such humor and perhaps a message for the kids but found neither. In fact, they could have kept showing the old Disney shorts like Boat Builders that preceded the film, and my money would have been better spent. [Read more]

Spying Redemption

I can only imagine that the race for best foreign language film in this year’s Oscars was down to the wire.  Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth took home three Oscars for makeup, art direction, and cinematography, but failed to take home best foreign language picture.  This went to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others, a brilliant German film about the State Security agency in East Germany in 1984.  Many viewers might quickly draw parallels between the Stasi’s spying and interrogation tactics and current questions surrounding American policies of torture, imprisonment, and interrogation and rightfully so.  However, the film focuses more intensely on the life of one man living and working within this corrupt system and his ability to make good, redemptive decisions.  However, though this film sees redemption, it does not wrap it up in a pretty package. [Read more]

Warriors of God…

~Reviewed by Mary M. Dalton

The documentary feature Jesus Camp generated a lot of buzz in some festival circles last year and won the top prize at SILVERDOCS: AFI-Discovery Channel Documentary Festival 2006 (one of the most highly regarded documentary festivals in the world). It was an auspicious launch for an unpretentious film, which went on to land an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary. An Inconvenient Truth, another of the most important films of 2006, actually won the Oscar this year, but Jesus Camp deserves the critical praise lavished on it and, hopefully, a wider audience will follow now that it is available on DVD. [Read more]

Apocalyptoprah

Oprah has made her newest selection for her book club. You can read the details here:

Oprah’s latest book pick: gloomy ‘The Road.’

This is one of the greatest books that I have ever read and certainly one of last year’s best. I felt the same way about McCarthy’s ‘No Country for Old Men’ when I read it (I am also eagerly awaiting the film version to be released later this year), but he has truly one-upped himself here. His gut-wrenching post-apocalyptic tale of a man and his young son’s fight for survival stayed with me for weeks like few horror or suspense films ever have. I doubt that a more bleak situation could be created, and I doubt that any other writer could find a glimmer of hope where cannibalism, starvation, rape, and depression so ravenously thrive.

Childish Things: A Second Opinion of Little Children

~Reviewed by Daniel Skidmore

“God helps those who help themselves.” Although not a biblical saying and, in fact, can be seen as opposing a Judea-Christian theology, this statement has merit. With this idea of working with God to bring about a better future for the world and for ourselves, I want to re-examine the movie Little Children. [Read more]

A Good Samaritan…

~Reviewed by Wendy Arce

“Just like a bird without a feather – I am lost without your love.”

In spite of advice received to the contrary, I saw Craig Brewer’s latest film, which is no doubt as controversial as his first. In both Hustle and Flow and Black Snake Moan, my inner feminist cringed at the sight of stereotypical gender roles, images of violence against women, and the portrayal of women as sexual objects. However, in spite of my knee jerk reaction to their marketing scheme, Black Snake Moan actually digs deeper than a strange sadomasochistic fantasy of a chained and prostrate Ricci in her underwear and a domineering Jackson towering over her. [Read more]

Spirituality in Popular Music

~by Alan Ackridge

For most of the latter half of the 20th Century, a significant portion of the Christian church opposed popular culture. However, beginning in the 1980’s, politically paralleled with the rise of the “moral majority,” Christians have stopped shunning culture and have again attempted to shape it. Some of this effort has yielded better results than others. Christian Heavy Metal, Rock, and Rap have had their own particular kind of success and occasionally “cross over” appeal; however, other musicians have experienced a via media. [Read more]

A Pop Theologian’s Dream…

I believe we have yet to see the best of or the end of what could be called 9/11 art.  The passing of time creates the distance necessary for some artists to reflect creatively on this tragic event.  This is not to say that good 9/11 art does not already exist.  Certainly, visual artists, whether in painting or sculpture, have already expressed their anger, grief, sorrow, and even hope through the creative process.  Filmmakers have begun to tackle this momentous day as well.  Some address it directly in films like United 93, Flight 93, or World Trade Center.  However, other filmmakers take a more indirect approach with stories located in New York where the memory of the terrorist attack lingers like a thick fog in the distance.  Rather than focusing specifically on the event, they look at individuals and how they continue to make their way in this world.  The latter approach interests me a great deal more, and so, I eagerly awaited the release of Mike Binder’s Reign Over Me. [Read more]

An Imaginative Path to Forgiveness

Muted in the popularity (or controversy) of other films released in 2005 like Brokeback Mountain, Crash, or Hustle and Flow, a simple western film showed audiences the difficulty and power of forgiveness. Directed by Tommy Lee Jones, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada proved his worth both behind the camera and in front of it as well.  The film received much critical acclaim, but as a contemporary film, its theological implications have yet to be explored.  In his directorial debut, Jones uses the borderland of Texas and Mexico as a palette on which he paints a critique of the “American dream,” commentary on immigration, and an imaginative view of forgiveness and reconciliation so desperately needed in both these issues.  By walking this imaginative path to forgiveness, this film shows, in one way, how we as a society may break the cycles of violence that enslave us. [Read more]

An Eternal Prayer

In 1984, German filmmaker Philip Groning wrote to La Grande Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps to get permission to make a documentary of the Carthusian monks there. Sixteen years later, they contacted him and told him they were ready. Groning shot for six months without a crew or any artificial lighting, and the result is Into Great Silence, a two hour and forty minute documentary of almost pure silence. [Read more]

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