Decent Films Blog
Which Disney Villain is the Most Evil?
Prince Philip battles Maleficent in dragon form in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. Transforming into a dragon is really evil.
An intriguing question posed to me in another forum:
Who is the worst Disney villain? Mother Gothel in Tangled is bad (kidnapping, brainwashing). The evil Queen from Snow White?
For me, I think it’s Scar in The Lion King. He kills his brother and sets it all up for Simba to be screwed up for life. His minions are also pretty bad.
Most people overlook Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, but he is pure evil. Frollo in Hunchback has no redeeming qualities either. Just thinking out loud (obviously).
Hm. Some thoughts:
To start with, Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty not only declares herself to be the “mistress of all evil,” but transforms into a dragon embodying “the powers of hell”—and the Prince battles her bearing a shield with a cross on it. That puts her a league worse than the Queen in Snow White, I think. (Incidentally, for what it’s worth, the Evil Overlord List includes the resolution, “I will not turn into a snake. It never helps.” It may not help, but it doesn’t stop them from trying.)
Continue reading at NCRegister.com >
The Ides of March (30 Second Review)
Here’s my 30-second review of The Ides of March, now on home video (somehow I neglected to post it before, so here it is).
On the Air: Catholic Answers Live, 01/20/2012
Friday, January 20, I’ll be on the first hour of Catholic Answers Live! (6pm–7pm EST). Patrick Coffin and I will be talking about the best and worst films of 2011 and much much more. Listen live!
The Devil Inside
At last, a horror film for disaffected Catholic traditionalists embittered against the Church for post-Vatican II changes; who see the Church itself, not just the larger culture, as compromised by modernism, and impeding orthodox clerics from carrying out true spiritual work.
Not, of course, that that particular demographic was clamoring for a horror movie to call their own. Other than Mel Gibson … and E. Michael Jones … I’m not sure how many disaffected traditionalist Catholic horror-movie fans there are out there, although as worldviews go radical traditionalism does seem eminently suited to the perverse paranoia and melancholy permeating the genre. At any rate, if I considered Pope Benedict XVI a tool of a Masonic plot against the Church, I imagine I might take some satisfaction in knowing that The Devil Inside was getting the message out, after a fashion.
Less encouraging, to be sure, would be the horrendous response to the film, which opened at the top of the box office on the strength of a canny marketing campaign—and the fact that it hadn’t been screened for critics. Lest anyone think that its impressive numbers betoken a previously untapped Lefebvrite horror audience, audiences hated it. Word of mouth has been atrocious, and the film tumbled after opening day. Audiences awarded it a CinemaScore rating of F, and critics, when they got around to seeing it, were no kinder: The Devil Inside is currently pulling a mere 6% at Rotten Tomatoes.
At the movie’s Wikipedia entry, an unreferenced claim notes, with a bit of hyperbole that might itself be further canny marketing: “It has been suggested that the ending in particular may be the worst in the history of cinema.” Admit it, you want to see it now, don’t you? Either way, thanks to the film’s low-budget “found footage” pseudo-documentary style, The Devil Inside was already profitable on opening day. There is actually discussion about a possible sequel.
Continue reading at NCRegister.com >
Spotlight: Beauty and the Beast (1991)
This weekend Disney’s latter-day classic Beauty and the Beast returns to theaters in a 3D converted version. I was looking forward to taking the whole family to last weekend’s 3D screening, but life got in the way. As for the film itself, I have nothing to add to my recent review; here it is.
On the Air: Drew Mariani & Al Kresta
Tuesday, 1/10: This afternoon I’ll be on Catholic radio twice in the 5 o’clock hour (EST) discussing a pair of movies with very Catholic themes (a comment that should not be taken as an endorsement!).
First around 5:15pm EST I’ll be on Relevant Radio’s Drew Mariani Show, talking about the new exorcism movie The Devil Inside (listen live).
Then around 5:35pm I’ll be on Ave Maria Radio’s Kresta in the Afternoon talking about the home video release of There Be Dragons, starring Charlie Cox as St. Josemaria Escriva. (Al’s got copies to give away, so if you want to see the film, listen live.)
Thank You, Image Journal
Recognition and praise are always appreciated, but this month’s shout-out from Image Journal naming me their Artist of the Month for January 2012 is especially gratifying. They have some thoughtful comments about my film writing, both with respect to craft and content, and the guy they’re describing sounds to me like the guy I try to be. Suz says they nailed me. What do you think?
The honor comes three months after a piece I wrote for Image Journal, “A House Divided,” about households and houses in crisis in family fantasy films. It’s a piece I’m particularly pleased with, bringing together my thoughts about broken family films in general and imaginative connections I’ve been thinking about for years in films ranging from The Wizard of Oz to E.T. to Pixar’s Up, which in some ways is a kind of pinnacle or climax for the themes in question. Check out the essay here at Decent Films or at Image Journal.
Still Christmas: Christmas Viewing (Good & Bad!)
Olivia Hussey as the Virgin Mary in Franco Zeffirelli’s “Jesus of Nazareth”
Following up on my “Still Christmas” post on Advent and Christmas family traditions, Christmas movies are an important tradition in many households. For me, Christmas movies are an especially important way of marking the continuing Christmas season. In general, I would rather watch Christmas movies with my kids after Christmas day, rather than before, as a way of celebrating the Christmas season.
The one Christmas classic I’d really like to watch before Christmas is, alas, one that hasn’t been made yet. I mean a Christmas classic about the real meaning of Christmas, the birth of the Lord Jesus. There have been movies made about this, notably The Nativity Story, but nothing that rises to real classic status. (For more on The Nativity Story’s artistic and theological merits and limitations, see my various pieces at Decent Films.)
That doesn’t mean there’s nothing worth watching on the real meaning of Christmas. In particular, I like to watch the first hour or so of Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth with my family around Christmastime. Praised by Pope Paul VI as “an example of a fine use that can be made of the new ways of communication that God is offering man,” Jesus of Nazareth honors both the Jewish context in which Jesus was born and the Catholic sensibility that has celebrated Him for 2000 years.
In particular, Olivia Hussey is an iconic Virgin Mary, and the numinous Annunciation scene is the best I’ve ever seen. Peter Ustinov as Herod the Great has a wonderful scene offering an outside perspective on Judaism and the phenomena of prophecy and Messianic hope. There are down sides, most annoyingly the Magi’s avoidance of Herod’s court, and Herod fretting about the same. And you have to be willing to deal with Mary suffering birth pangs (for more, see my essay on Catholic teaching and The Nativity Story, which raises the same issue). Overall, though, it’s the best we have so far.
Continue reading at NCRegister.com >
Still Christmas: Advent & Christmas Family Traditions
All Advent long, observant Catholics and other Christians hold the line against premature Christmas, holding off on decking the halls and singing Christmas carols during what is meant to be a time of preparation.
Now, as the world is busily dismantling what’s left of its Christmas trappings, it’s time for Christians to double down on the continued celebration of the Christmas season, which continues through the Christmas Octave (to January 1, the eighth day after Christmas, and thus the day of Jesus’ circumcision, celebrated as the feast of Mary the Mother of God) until after Advent to the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. (This year that means that Christmas runs through January 9, and ordinary time returns on January 10.)
This is especially important for families with young children, I think, to instill in them a proper sense of liturgical time at an early age.
As far as the larger culture goes, the notion of the Christmas season would seem to be a lost battle. (Suz commented recently how depressing it was to get an “After Christmas Sale” catalog before Christmas actually arrived: “It’s like it’s never actually Christmas!”)
Within our families and churches, though, we can sustain a culture of resistance. How do we do this?
Each year it’s good to take a look at the traditions with which we shape our lives. In this post I’ll share some things that we do in the Greydanus household (or Huis Greydanus, to invoke my Dutch family roots). This includes Christmas movies, of course—but I’ll save that for a follow-up post. Please share your own family traditions in the combox at NCRegister.com.
Continue reading at NCRegister.com >
Steven Spielberg’s Tintin & War Horse
It’s been well over a decade since Steven Spielberg directed a family film. Now he has two out in the same week—both based on juvenile literary source material, and both European-set period pieces, redolent of nostalgia of one sort or another.
The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is Spielberg’s response to a decades-old vote of confidence. Hergé, the Belgian cartoonist who created the globally popular adventure comic book hero Tintin and spent over half a century writing and illustrating Tintin’s adventures, died in 1983, but not before seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark and pronouncing Spielberg the right director for Tintin.
I’m not sure why Spielberg waited three decades before finally taking a crack at Tintin —or why he chose to work in performance-capture animation, a technique most associated with the uneven output of Spielberg’s protégé Robert Zemeckis (The Polar Express, Disney’s A Christmas Carol).
Perhaps he was waiting for the right team of collaborators. If so, you would think he found it: The story is adapted from a trio of Hergé’s adventures by “Doctor Who” honcho Steven Moffat, English comedy filmmaker Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and English comedian Joe Cornish (Attack the Block). Peter Jackson co-produced with Spielberg.
Continue reading at NCRegister.com >
The Adventures of Tintin: In 30 Seconds
Here’s my 30-second take on The Adventures of Tintin.
Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol: In 30 Seconds
Here’s my 30-second take on Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.
Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Trailer
I usually stay far away from trailers. I like to experience movies as cold as possible. But this is Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, and my fine principles have failed me. The film itself is still a year off … and I can’t wait that long to satisfy my curiosity. Have a look:
What do you think?
I think it looks fantastic, for the most part. Of course it’s a trailer, and so the material has been carefully selected, but I love much of what we see here.
Continue reading at NCRegister.com >
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: In 30 Seconds
Here’s my 30-second take on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Hugo: In 30 Seconds
Here’s my 30-second take on Martin Scorsese’s Hugo.
Arthur Christmas: In 30 Seconds
Here’s my 30-second take on Aardman Animation’s Arthur Christmas.
Programming note: “Reel Faith,” 30-Second Reviews & Catholic Answers Live
Last week’s “Reel Faith” season finale is now online at the show’s website. This is the end of regular “Reel Faith” programming until next year’s summer season, although we may come back for one-off episodes a couple of times in the interim, and we’ll continue to produce 30-second reviews.
Because the show will be up at the website for a while, we worked extra hard on it, reviewing five films including Twilight: Breaking Dawn – Part 1, Happy Feet Two, Arthur Christmas, The Descendants and The Muppets. We think it’s one of our best episodes, and I hope you enjoy it.
Now that “Reel Faith” is over for the time being, I’m breathing easier and catching up on a lot of things. One thing I’m trying to work on is getting all the 30-second reviews separately available in individual blog posts. This morning I posted four of them: Tangled, The Smurfs, Rabbit Hole and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1. I’ve added them to the blog and where appropriate linked them to the corresponding written reviews (along with a few others that I blogged but hadn’t linked to the written reviews).
Finally, remember to tune in tomorrow to the first hour of “Catholic Answers Live” (6:00pm Eastern) as Patrick Coffin and I discuss all the latest movies.
Tangled: In 30 Seconds! (A review in verse)
Disney’s Tangled in 30 seconds — in rhyming verse.
Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows: Part 1: In 30 Seconds (A Review in Verse)
Here’s my 30-second rhyming review of Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows: Part 1.
On the Air: Catholic Answers Live, 11/23/2011
This Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, I’ll be on the first hour of “Catholic Answers Live!” with Patrick Coffin. We’ll be discussing The Muppets, Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 1, Happy Feet Two, Arthur Christmas, J. Edgar, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, Tower Heist, In Time and more. Listen live!
Programming note: Latest reviews and the “Reel Faith” season finale
Tonight’s episode of “Reel Faith,” is the season finale, and partly for that reason this week I attended an almost unprecedented four screenings: the latest Twilight; Happy Feet Two; Arthur Christmas and The Muppets. Another reason for the heavy screenings was for the sake of my Friday morning radio shows (since of course I’ll be off next week.
This has left me little time for writing, but my written review of The Muppets is almost finished and will be in the next National Catholic Register and appearing at NCRegister.com. I’ve also done new 30-second video reviews of Twilight and The Muppets, which will be available early next week, along with written reviews of Happy Feet Two and Arthur Christmas.
For now, though, if you missed my radio appearances this morning, and if you’re interested in my reviews of Twilight, Happy Feet Two, Arthur Christmas and The Muppets, be sure to tune into the season finale of “Reel Faith” tonight at 8:30pm Eastern (watch live).
In Time: In 30 Seconds!
Here’s in Time in 30 seconds from my “Reel Faith” co-host David DiCerto. For a second opinion, see my associated review.
Spam filter snafu
Dear readers: I just discovered a large number of reader emails incorrectly flagged as spam by my email client’s spam filter. If you wrote to me in October and I haven’t written back, that may be the reason why. If you wrote to me before October and I haven’t written back, I’m afraid your email may have been automatically deleted. I apologize for this and will be more vigilant about watching the spam filter in the future. I hope you’ll write again.
Broken Family Films
How family films reveal or obscure the realities of divorce and brokenness — and how literal a “broken home” can be in films like Zathura, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Monster House and Up.
A broken home in Disney’s Lilo & Stitch.
I think it was six years ago, coming home from a screening of Zathura, that I started seriously wrestling with the problem of what I’ve come to call the Broken Family Film.
On the one hand, marriage and an intact household with father and mother raising children together is and will always be the ideal, the standard, the norm. Divorce has become “normal” in the sense that it is a matter of common experience, but we don’t want it to be normalized in the sense of being accepted as something that just happens and is just an inevitable part of life, something that is nobody’s fault or is all for the best.
On the other hand, given the reality of ever larger numbers of children with parents who aren’t married and don’t live together, we can’t expect every family in the movies and TV—even in children’s entertainment—to look like the ideal. Stories can’t ignore real life, or they become irrelevant. We need stories to explore how life ought to be, but also to explore how life actually is. Children growing up in broken homes need stories that resonate with their experiences.
The thing is, the term Broken Family Films is ambiguous. It can mean family films about broken families, made by and for a culture of broken families. But it can also mean family films that are broken in one way or another. But how? There is brokenness and brokenness—sometimes wholesome, sometimes not.
Sarandon calls pope “Nazi”; ADL calls for apology
Pope Benedict XVI and former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial on May 11, 2009 in Jerusalem.
Memo to Susan Sarandon, vis-a-vis your “Nazi pope” comments this weekend:
Joseph Ratzinger was a victim of the Nazi horror.
When he was a young boy his family was forced to relocate due to his father’s outspoken criticism of the Nazis. Surreptitiously listening to Allied radio broadcasts behind closed doors and drawn curtains—strictly forbidden, of course—Ratzinger and his family learned what was really happening in the war, contrary to German propaganda.
At 14 Ratzinger was briefly conscripted into the Hitler Youth—membership was compulsory—but he refused to attend meetings.
At seminary, a Nazi professor urged him to attend the Hitler Youth just once to get documentation for a tuition reduction—but when he saw Ratzinger’s unwillingness to go even once, he relented and helped Ratzinger get the reduction without attending even once. Eventually Ratzinger was able to get a dispensation from Hitler Youth activities by arguing that it was incompatible with his pre-seminary life.
In 1943, while in seminary, he was conscripted into an antiaircraft unit, but eventually deserted, ending the war as a POW.
“Catholicism” Comes to PBS
For ChristianityToday.com Entertainment Blog
Half a century ago, Archbishop Fulton Sheen’s weekly television series Life Is Worth Living (and later The Fulton Sheen Program) commanded an audience of millions of Americans of all stripes. Sheen was “America’s Priest,” and since then there has been no comparable figure in American culture — and there may never be again.
That said, Father Robert Barron, a priest of the Chicago archdiocese and the Francis Cardinal George Professor of Faith and Culture at Mundelein Seminary, is making inroads into mainstream media in a way not seen since Sheen. On Sunday, October 3, Chicago-based superstation WGN America launched a weekly half-hour television series, “Word on Fire with Father Robert Barron” — the first regular commercial television show hosted by a priest since Sheen. Then there’s Catholicism, an ambitious ten-episode series, episodes of which are now airing on PBS affiliate in over 85 markets across the country.
Inspired by Kenneth Clark’s groundbreaking 1969 BBC series “Civilisation,” which ushered in a generation of globe-hopping documentaries, Fr. Barron and his crew employ a worldwide backdrop that includes the Holy Land, Europe, Africa, India, the Philippines — at least 50 locations in 15 countries. Unabashedly a work of advocacy, even evangelization, Catholicism offers a confident, upbeat overview of the scope of 2000 years of Catholic history, belief, thought and practice.
Much of this is the common heritage of all Christians, and Fr. Barron’s approach is catholic as well as Catholic, name-checking C. S. Lewis and N. T. Wright alongside Thomas Aquinas and Augustine. Evangelicals will feel very much at home for the first few episodes as Fr. Barron expounds upon the disorienting, challenging uniqueness of Jesus, the revolutionary power of his teachings, and the fathomless mystery of God. Other episodes, particularly those dealing with the Virgin Mary and the Eucharist, will challenge non-Catholic sensibilities, but Fr. Barron’s emphasis on Scripture and reason establishes a broad common ground, and open-minded Evangelicals will appreciate his presentation even when they disagree.
Fr. Barron makes an engaging, appealing spokesman for Christianity and Catholicism, and his method is consistently positive and nonpolemical. He discusses topics like Aquinas’s ways of proving God and Catholic Marian spirituality without going out of his way to oppose challenges like “God is a delusion” or “Catholics worship Mary.” The settings are more than window dressing; Fr. Barron goes to Auschwitz to discuss the problem of evil, and magnificent locations including Hagia Sophia, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and the tomb of Mother Teresa help to bring the Faith alive to the senses and the imagination.
Check television listings at the “Catholicism” series website and/or check local PBS listings. “Catholicism” is also available as a five-disc DVD set with or without study program aids and a companion book.
Here is the trailer for Catholicism: