-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Teens & Up*
The Ninth Day digs beyond rote charges of ecclesiastical complicity and counter-arguments to explore various levels of resistance and protest — and their consequences.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up
The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ is a remarkable relic from the very dawn of cinema.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up*
Witness the astonishing
animation of scale at work in capturing the towering monuments of
Egypt, or the host of departing Hebrews: few if any traditional
animated films have ever captured the sheer sense of size
in this film. Watch the subtle storytelling in an early scene as
the infant Moses, caught up in the Queen’s arms, eclipses the
toddler Ramses in her line of vision, leaving him standing there
with outstretched arms; foreshadowing the rivalry and ultimately
the enmity between the heir to the throne and his Hebrew foster
brother. Notice the small details in those quiet numinous
moments: the pebbles rolling back at Moses’ feet at the burning
bush; the halo of clear water around his ankles as the Nile turns
to blood; the horror of an Egyptian servant as the surface of the
water bubbles and the first frogs begin to flop out of the river
onto the palace stairs; an extinguished candle flame or an
offscreen sound of a jar crashing as the destroying angel swirls
in and out among the Egyptians.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up*
In The Miracle Maker, the film’s makers have a small miracle of their own: a simple, modest retelling of the gospel story of the ministry and passion of Christ that does little more than present the bare events of the gospel narratives, without adornment or invention, without idiosyncratic "explanations" or editorial spin, without elaborations for the sake of amusement or excitement.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+2|
Teens & Up
Like the Paramount logo mountain peak in the now-famous opening dissolve that started it all nearly three decades ago, Raiders of the Lost Ark towers over the surrounding landscape. It is the apotheosis of its genre, the Citizen Kane of pulp action–adventure, definitively summing up all that came before and setting the indelible standard for all that comes after.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Teens & Up
Faithfully adapting its source material, Catholic novelist
Georges Bernanos’s fictional autobiography of a soul, the film
profoundly contemplates the spiritual meaning of suffering and
persecution, conversion and incorrigibility, and the dark night
of the soul with a rigor and insight evocative of Augustine’s
Confessions or Thérèse’s Story of a
Soul.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Teens & Up*
The notion of art as a "religious
experience" is sometimes bandied about too freely. Tarkovsky is
one of a handful of filmmakers for whom this ideal was no cheap
or desanctified metaphor, but literal truth.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+3|
Kids & Up*
“No one is born to be a failure. No one is poor who has friends.” These platitudes, plastered across the packaging of home-video editions of Frank Capra’s evergreen Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life, exemplify the film’s popular but misleading image as sentimental, schmaltzy “Capra-corn.” Yet the film itself is leavened by darker themes and more rigorous morals about self-sacrifice, disappointment, and the fragility of happiness and the American dream.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up
Without context or explanation,
Lukaszewicz plunges the viewer into Faustina’s world, confronting
us with with an early experience from Faustina’s childhood,
challenging us to take this story on its own terms. It’s a
surprisingly powerful approach, as transcendent in its own way as
the restraint of Bresson or Dreyer.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Teens & Up*
A tightly wound, middle-aged carpenter named Olivier (Olivier
Gourmet) works with young boys at some sort of center. His inner
life, his motives and emotions, aren’t revealed to us, and he
doesn’t seem preoccupied with them himself. He wears a leather
back brace, and has perhaps been injured at some point; and his
work itself may be a similar sort of prop against some injury of
his past.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up
The screenplay, well adapted by Robert Bolt from his own stage play, is fiercely intelligent, deeply affecting, resonant with verbal beauty and grace. Scofield, who for years starred in the stage play before making the film, gives an effortlessly rich and layered performance as Sir Thomas More, saint and martyr, the man whose determined silence spoke more forcefully than words, and who then spoke even more forcefully by breaking it.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up*
Religiosity
in sports isn’t without ambiguities. At times the message can be a bit
glib, as when athletes credit God with helping them when they win,
though when they lose no one ever says God helped the other team. On
the other hand, it’s hard to be too cynical about the sight of NFL
players kneeling on the field after the game with players from the
other team in acknowledgment of a fraternity that transcends
competition.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up
In the end, perhaps the most enduring achievement of The Gospel According to Matthew is an ironic one, given Pasolini’s Marxism: No other life-of-Christ film is so contemplative, inviting the viewer simply to meditate on the life and teaching of Jesus.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up
Rossellini doesn’t cater to contemporary sensibilities by reinventing Francis as a mere eccentric free spirit, a medieval flower child, such as we find in Zefferelli’s Brother Sun, Sister Moon. Francis remains challenging to modern audiences here, his childlike spirit joined to insistence on strict religious obligation and ultimately to zeal for evangelization.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Teens & Up*
Ordet means "the word," but what is the word? What is Carl Dreyer’s somber, ponderous masterpiece, adapted from the stage play by Lutheran clergyman Kaj Munk, really about?
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up
In the end, Babette’s Feast is a quiet celebration of
the divine grace that meets us at every turn, and even redeems
our ways not taken, our sacrifices and losses. Whatever we think
has been given up or lost, God gives back in greater abundance,
one way or another. It may not be till heaven that we truly
become all that he intends; but his grace is here and now,
whatever our circumstances, and with him all things are possible.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Teens & Up
Monsieur Vincent, director Maurice Cloche’s beautifully crafted, award-winning biopic of St. Vincent de Paul, celebrates the saint’s single-minded devotion to the poor without romanticizing the objects of his devotion and recipients of his charity.
Read more >
-
A+ |
**** |
+4|
Teens & Up
Sophie Scholl is one of a very few films that accomplishes one of the rarest and most valuable of cinematic achievements: It makes heroic goodness not just admirable, but attractive and interesting.
Read more >
-
A+ |
***½ |
+4|
Kids & Up
Joan of Arc, the warrior-saint who wore men’s garb and was burned at the stake, would at first glance seem to be an odd role model for a girl whose greatest aspiration was to wear the habit of a cloistered nun and who died in the convent of tuberculosis.
Read more >
-
A+ |
***½ |
+4|
Teens & Up
Riveting and edifying, this WWII drama stars Gregory Peck as
Msgr. Hugh O’Flaherty, a plain-speaking, straight-dealing Irish
priest who boldly aids enemies of the Third Reich under the
watchful eye of Christopher Plummer’s Nazi Lt. Col. Herbert
Kappler. Their cat-and-mouse game is thrilling and great fun, and
culminates in a startling showdown in a very significant
setting.
Read more >
-
A+ |
***½ |
+4|
Kids & Up
Based on the historical novel by Jewish author
Franz Werfel, the beloved classic The Song of Bernadette
stands head and shoulders over most religiously themed fare from
Hollywood’s golden age.
Read more >
-
A+ |
***½ |
+3|
Kids & Up*
L’Chaim! Life itself, joyous and tragic, is the subject of the boisterous, comic, heartbreaking vision of Fiddler on the Roof.
Read more >
-
A |
**** |
+3|
Teens & Up
A stark, unsettling vision of human cruelty,
folly, and destructive behavior, leavened by an icon of innocent
suffering, Au Hasard Balthazar may be Robert Bresson’s
most poetic, haunting, personal work — the culmination of the
filmmaker’s style and concerns, the most "Bressonian" of
films.
Read more >
-
A |
**** |
+3|
Adults
The Decalogue, Kieslowski’s
extraordinary, challenging collection of ten one-hour films made
for Polish television in the dying days of the Soviet Union,
doesn’t answer those questions either. What it does is pose them
as hauntingly and seriously as any cinematic effort in the last
twenty years.
Read more >
-
A |
**** |
+3|
Adults*
Tim Robbins argues his point fearlessly, not taking the easy
way out, not stacking the deck by emotionally manipulating the
audience, but instead taking a worst-case scenario: Rather than
giving us a murderer who isn’t really so bad, merely
misunderstood and mistreated and so forth, Robbins gives us a
thoroughly revolting individual, one who spouts racist propaganda
not because he believes it but simply because it is shocking and
antisocial and hateful; who tries to humiliate the one person
interested in his welfare with leering come-ons aimed at her
consecrated chastity.
Read more >
-
A |
**** |
+3|
Teens & Up
“A Going My Way with substance” is how Elia Kazan’s classic, controversial On the Waterfront was recently described in a lecture at Boston College.
Read more >
-
A |
**** |
+3|
Teens & Up*
Kon Ichikawa’s deeply humane, spiritually resonant masterpiece The Burmese Harp is routinely but reductionistically described as “pacifist” or “anti-war,” though in fact war is merely the occasion for the story’s theme, not the theme itself. That theme is nothing less than the intractable mystery of suffering and evil, an affirmation of spiritual values, and the challenge to live humanely in evil circumstances.
Read more >
-
A |
**** |
+3|
Teens & Up*
Peter O’Toole roars magnificently both in laughter and in rage; his Henry is a simple, direct, utterly unprincipled man who sees the world in two great categories: (a) things he wants, and (b) obstacles to getting them.
Read more >
-
A |
**** |
+3|
Kids & Up*
At nearly 2½ hours long, the 1925 version is still an hour shorter than the 1959 version, yet the story is essentially the same, and the scale similarly impressive.
Read more >
-
A |
**** |
+2|
Kids & Up*
For good and for ill, it’s as much a testament and a fixture of traditional American ideals and affections as a courthouse display of the stone tablets, and as weighty and solid.
Read more >
-
A |
**** |
+2|
Teens & Up*
A compelling thriller, a smoldering love story, a thoughtful study in comparative cultures, and a respectful exploration of religious community and nonviolence, Witness is one of the high points of 1980s American cinema, and remains one of Australian director Peter Weir’s best films as well as his first American film.
Read more >
-
A |
***½ |
+3|
Kids & Up*
Viewed as a whole, “Jesus of Nazareth” may or may not be
the best life of Jesus film ever made, but it remains in some
ways the standard by which other Jesus films are judged.
Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew and
Gibson’s The
Passion of the Christ may be better films, but no other
Jesus film offers an interpretation of the gospel story as
comprehensive and definitive as “Jesus of Nazareth”.
Read more >
-
A |
***½ |
+4|
Kids & Up*
Cecil B. DeMille’s biblical silent masterpiece The King of Kings, until now available in home video only in DeMille’s shortened 112-minute 1928 cut, is now available in a new restored DVD edition from Criterion that includes both the original 155-minute 1927 “roadshow” version and the shorter general release version.
Read more >
-
A |
***½ |
+4|
Kids & Up
The Face, a remarkable two-hour documentary produced in
conjunction with the Catholic Communication Campaign, is a
visually sumptuous and spiritually rewarding exploration of
Christian art that surveys the history of how Jesus Christ has
been portrayed, and how Christian teaching has been understood,
interpreted, and given different emphases by the art of different
times and places.
Read more >
-
A |
***½ |
+3|
Kids & Up
The art of cinema had advanced dramatically in the few years
between the two films, and From the Manger to the Cross is
far more sophisticated — though I actually find the earlier, more
primitive Life and Passion more effective. Even so, both
are worthwhile, and they make a good double bill.
Read more >
-
A |
***½ |
+2|
Kids & Up*
The grandest of Hollywood’s classic biblical
epics, William Wyler’s Ben-Hur doesn’t transcend its
genre, with its emphasis on spectacle and melodrama, but it does
these things about as well as they could possibly be done.
Read more >
-
A |
***½ |
+3|
Kids & Up*
In the crowd of TV documentaries on the life of Pope John Paul II, there is Witness to Hope, and there is everything else.
Read more >
-
A |
***½ |
+4|
Teens & Up
Thirty years after its original release, The Hiding Place remains one of the best films ever produced by a faith-based group (Billy Graham’s World Wide Pictures).
Read more >
-
A |
***½ |
+3|
Teens & Up*
Though thematically similar to Dead Man Walking, Longford grapples more directly and thoughtfully with religious themes, and doesn’t glorify its eccentric, somewhat tragic protagonist the way Dead Man Walking extols Sister Préjean.
Read more >
-
A |
***½ |
+4|
Kids & Up
The 13th Day is the best movie ever made about Fátima — the most beautiful and effective, as well as one of the most historically accurate.
Read more >
-
A |
***½ |
+3|
Kids & Up
Like its protagonist, Saint Joseph Desa of Cupertino, throughout much of his lifetime and most of the film, Edward Dmytryk’s 1962 film The Reluctant Saint is a modest affair that has attracted little attention, but has more to offer than meets the eye.
Read more >
-
A- |
**** |
+3-3|
Teens & Up*
Starkly existential, boldly poetic, slow and grim, Ingmar Bergman’s great classic The Seventh Seal has haunted film aficionados, baffled and bored college students, inspired innumerable parodists, and challenged both believers and unbelievers for nearly half a century.
Read more >
-
A- |
***½ |
+4|
Teens & Up*
From the unforgettable opening sequence, with its stunning depiction of the martyrdom of a silent Jesuit missionary at the hands of equally silent South American natives, the film is shot through with piercing, haunting imagery, pictures of enduring imaginative force.
Read more >
-
A- |
***½ |
+3-2|
Adults*
Duvall, who also wrote in addition to
directing and starring, persuasively brings these contradictory
elements together to create a convincingly realized portrait of a
man with whom we cannot quite sympathize nor quite condemn; a man
who wrestles with God with the emotion and frankness of a Job,
yet without Job’s moral uprightness; a man who genuinely and
sincerely preaches Jesus Christ and the gospel as he understands
it everywhere he goes — who, indeed, cannot help preaching Jesus
Christ, who knows nothing but preaching Jesus Christ — but who
also cannot stop sinning.
Read more >
-
A- |
***½ |
+3-2|
Teens & Up
Anthony Hopkins plays “Jack” as a somewhat abstracted ivory-tower
academic rather than the robust and jovial figure he actually was. But
Lewis’ penetrating intellect and faith are here, as is his love for Joy
(Winger), and the crippling grief that came afterwards. A challenging
and inspiring film.
Read more >
-
A- |
***½ |
+3-2|
Teens & Up
God bless Sister Helen Travis, with her foul
mouth, black wimple, "I ♥ Jesus" T-shirt, and
irascible, abrasive attitude. She might be a bit crazy, this
feisty, diminutive 69-year-old Benedictine nun living in a
rundown South Bronx building with as many as 20-plus male drug
addicts and alcoholics abiding by her strict regiment of curfews,
urine tests, community service, and biweekly house meetings. But
she’s also the best thing that’s happened to many of them in a
long time.
Read more >
-
A- |
***½ |
+2|
Teens & Up
Au Revoir Les Enfants, Louis Malle’s semi-autobiographical film about life in a Catholic boarding school for boys in Nazi-occupied France, has been called an elegy of innocence lost, though in fact the youthful characters are never truly innocent, only clueless, and what they lose is not innocence but something more elusive.
Read more >
-
A- |
***½ |
+3|
Teens & Up
Not to be confused with any version of the story of Dr. Kimble and the one-armed man, this Fugitive is director John Ford’s underrated adaptation of Catholic novelist Graham Greene’s masterpiece The Power and the Glory.
Read more >
-
A- |
***½ |
+2|
Kids & Up*
Like director John Huston’s similarly themed The African
Queen, the film finds conflict mixed with romantic tension in
a tale of a demure religious woman thrown together with a rugged
male loner. Here, though, the complicating factor is not
fastidiousness on the part of the religious woman, but the
woman’s vocation.
Read more >
-
A- |
***½ |
+3|
Kids & Up
The story is propelled by ordinary (though sometimes philosophically elevated) dialogue, and a mysterious character in the play, Adam, becomes a simple priest — a rather Wojtyla-like priest, actually, who takes the young people of his parish on nature hikes in the mountains.
Read more >
-
A- |
***½ |
+2|
Kids & Up*
If the toe-tapping gospel music of The Fighting Temptations appeals to you but you were put off by that film’s negative Christian stereotypes and lack of even rote Hollywood spiritual uplift or pro-faith sentiment, treat yourself to this engaging,
gospel-infused documentary tribute to the African-American men and women who first began combining the heart and soul of Negro spirituals with the infectious rhythms of jazz and blues.
Read more >
-
A- |
***½ |
-1+2|
Teens & Up
Millions is a rare and special family film: a moral parable rather than a morality tale; a film that combines high ideals and hard realities; a story of hope and faith in something more than Santa Claus. Which is not to say that Santa Claus, or rather St. Nicholas, doesn’t show up. But when he pops on a bishop’s mitre rather than the familiar red Santa hat, it’s clear we’re not in Hollywood movieland here.
Read more >
-
A- |
***½ |
+2|
Teens & Up
Hitchcock’s underrated I Confess may or may not not quite rank with his greatest masterpieces, but it offers perhaps the most compelling variation on the director’s favorite theme, the innocent man wrongly accused.
Read more >
-
A- |
*** |
+4|
Teens & Up
It is, so to speak, not "based on" St. John’s Gospel at all, so much as it is St. John’s Gospel — visualized and enacted to be sure, and to that extent interpreted and glossed, but not "adapted" in the usual sense.
Read more >
-
A- |
*** |
+4|
Kids & Up
Eschewing both the slickness and Hollywood sentiment of The Song of Bernadette and the speculative psychology of Alain Cavalier’s contemporary Thérèse, Delannoy’s unembellished, straightforward account seeks only to tell Bernadette’s story in a clear and compelling way.
Read more >
-
A- |
*** |
+3-2|
Teens & Up
Like The Mask of Zorro, Monte Cristo balances its anachronistic sensibilities and over-the-top set pieces with genuine emotion and a real moral dimension — even, in Monte Cristo, a spiritual dimension. This is an action movie that’s also a morality play, a tale of injustice and vengeance that actually reckons on God, faith, and divine justice.
Read more >
-
A- |
*** |
++2-2|
Teens & Up
A native of Belgium, ordained in Honolulu, at the age of 33
Fr. Damien volunteered to become the first and only priest serving
the leper colony. There he spent himself attending as best he could to
the people’s needs, both spiritual and physical, offering the
sacraments but also dressing wounds, helping to shelter them from the
elements, even constructing coffins and digging graves.
Read more >
-
A- |
*** |
+4|
Teens & Up*
It’s a melancholy truth that religion is often
a key ingredient in long-standing conflicts festering in certain
troubled regions around the globe: the Middle East, Northern
Ireland, the Balkans. Final Solution depicts the way
religion has been involved in the racial strife in South Africa — but it also points to the role that faith can and should play in
reconciliation and healing as well.
Read more >
-
A- |
*** |
+4|
Teens & Up*
The first feature film from the Paulist Fathers’ moviemaking
division, John Duigan’s Romero tells the true story of
Latin America’s best-known and most revered modern martyr, Oscar
Arnulfo Romero y Goldamez, a man whom John Paul II described as a
"zealous pastor who gave his life for his flock," and at whose
tomb in San Salvador Pope John Paul II has prayed when visiting El
Salvador.
Read more >
-
A- |
*** |
+4|
Kids & Up
Warner Bros’ The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima may be better known, but Daniel Costelle’s 1992 Portuguese production Apparitions at Fatima is a more historically accurate and spiritually sensitive account of the visionary experiences of three young Portuguese children in 1917, culminating in the miracle of the sun witnessed by thousands.
Read more >
-
A- |
*** |
+3|
Kids & Up*
From It’s a Wonderful Life to A Christmas Carol, from Miracle on 34th Street to Tim Allen’s Santa Clause films, there are more Christmas movies than you could watch in all twelve days. Yet even at the height of Hollywood biblical epics, the real meaning of Christmas was essentially ignored (a few brief scenes in Ben-Hur notwithstanding). The Nativity Story goes a long way toward redressing this historic omission.
Read more >
-
B+ |
**** |
+2|
Teens & Up
Intolerance is a grandiose composite epic, interweaving
four separate morality plays from different eras and settings,
from 20th-century America (the "Modern Story") to Old Testament
times (the "Babylonian Story"). Rounding out the four are a brief
survey of the life and death of Christ (the "Galilean Story"
[sic; most of it is set in Judea, not Galilee]) and events
from the 16th-century persecution and massacre of Huguenot
Protestants under the Medicis, including the St. Bartholomew’s
Day Massacre (the "French Story").
Read more >
-
B+ |
***½ |
+3-2|
Teens & Up*
Alain Cavalier’s stark, austere reflection on the mystery of the little saint of Lisieux’s romance with Jesus… is a reverie rather than a meditation, built of fleeting minimalist vignettes, almost snapshots, glimpses of its subject rather than an integral portrait. There is no sense of judgment, of approval or disapproval of its subject’s life, or even, finally, of real understanding. His Thérèse is a riddle, and we must make of her what we can.
Read more >
-
B+ |
*** |
+3|
Teens & Up
Bonhoeffer notes the seeming oddity of the prominence of its subject, whose celebrity today may seem from one perspective disproportionate to his importance as a theologian and ecumenist and certainly as a relatively unimportant conspirator in a failed assassination attempt. Yet as another 20th-century saint once said, “We are called upon not to be successful, but to be faithful.” Bonhoeffer was faithful to the giving of his own life, which he did as willingly and serenely as any martyr.
Read more >
-
B+ |
*** |
+3|
Kids & Up
Old-fashioned, reverent, basically faithful to the facts, The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima never quite emerges from the shadow of the earlier, superior The Song of Bernadette, but it ups the ante with sterner opposition (militant Marxists rather than freethinking civil authorities) and a more dramatic climax.
Read more >
-
B+ |
*** |
+2|
Kids & Up*
There’s an easygoing, folksy charm to this film, accentuated by a country-themed soundtrack and characters who say such things as “I’m gonna need a longer street for that talk” and “Lord knows I’m ready for both sides of the bed to be warm again.”
Read more >
-
B+ |
*** |
+2|
Kids & Up
(Review by Mark Shea) I know. It sounds uninspiring on paper, if you haven’t seen
them. But — you gotta trust me on this — these guys are really
funny, a sort of strange brew mixing Monty Python, MTV, your
third grade Sunday School teacher and a tiny bit of Robin
Williams — all with a G rating.
Read more >
-
B+ |
*** |
+0|
Kids & Up
Some thought and research has clearly gone into the anatomical
itinerary of the microbe-sized crew, which includes Stephen Boyd,
Raquel Welch, and Donald Pleasence. The Cold-War premise involves
an assassination attempt against a top scientist defecting from
the "other side," leaving him with an inoperable brain injury
that only the bionauts can access and treat. There’s also the
requisite threat of a traitor among the ship’s crew, and a brief
bit of nonsense about whether or not to allow the head surgeon’s
female assistant (Welch) on the mission.
Read more >
-
B+ |
*** |
+3|
Kids & Up
Smith is determined to move on, but soon agrees to a day’s
work; and proceeds to find himself faced with one task after
another. Exactly how much Mother Maria intends to ask of him — and how much she is able to pay him — are not immediately clear;
nor is the extent to which the language barrier is a hindrance to
her and the extent to which she is hiding behind it.
Read more >
-
B+ |
*** |
+3|
Kids & Up
And yet, compared with most Hollywood biblical epics, The Greatest Story Ever Told manages to sustain a spirit of genuine reverence and religiosity over showmanship and pageantry. Its deliberate pacing and dreamlike, otherworldly ambiance offer neither the entertainment value of The Ten Commandments nor the comparative psychological realism of Zeffirelli’s subsequent Jesus of Nazareth, yet it is arguably more evocative than either of the spirit of biblical literature.
Read more >
-
B+ |
*** |
+3|
Kids & Up
In 2003, Charlton Heston reprised his greatest role, if in voice only, in an animated made-for-TV version of Ben-Hur from the director and producers of the animated “Greatest Heroes and Legends of the Bible” series.
Read more >
-
B+ |
*** |
+3|
Teens & Up
Not to be confused with the identically named 1984 Herbert Wise film starring Albert Finney, Pope John Paul II is the first — so far the only — dramatic presentation to do anything like justice to the life and reign of the 20th century’s most popular pope.
Read more >
-
B+ |
*** |
+3|
Kids & Up*
One of the most magical effects in Andrew Adamson’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe isn’t rippling computer-generated fur, ice castles, or battle scenes. It’s the wide-eyed wonder and delight on the face of young Lucy Pevensie (Georgie Henley) as she passes beyond the wardrobe for the first time into the winter wonderland of the Narnian wood.
Read more >
-
B+ |
*** |
+3|
Kids & Up
Given the inherently less dramatic structure, The Passion of Bernadette doesn’t “tell a story” the way the original film does, but the portrait of Bernadette’s unassuming heroic sanctity and occasional tart rejoinders remains moving and worthwhile.
Read more >
-
B+ |
*** |
+2|
Teens & Up
In the end, Bella has something to challenge everyone, pro-life or otherwise. For pro-lifers, the inspiring ending represents a call to love of neighbor. It isn’t enough just to oppose abortion: We are called to love those in need with the love of Christ, potentially at a cost to ourselves. For those who favor abortion, the ending represents a challenge to recognize that life is a beautiful and precious gift even in far from ideal circumstances, and the choice to embrace life, even when it involves great sacrifice, is also beautiful.
Read more >
-
B+ |
*** |
+2|
Teens & Up
The title reflects the supporting role of Isaac Newton, played with gusto by Albert Finney, as a penitent ex-slave ship captain, now a mentor of sorts to Wilberforce as well as the writer of the beloved American hymn. (“A wretch like me,” Newton was not afraid to call himself in the original lyrics, with a biographical and theological honesty too direct for the revisionist vandals of hymnody responsible for many missalettes and hymnbooks.)
Read more >
-
B+ |
Though the documentary plays like a “a day in the life” at the Vatican, National Geographic
filmmakers actually spent three months in Rome amassing footage and
interviews. The result is a well-rounded portrait, or series of
portraits, of Vatican life: Vignettes include the ordination of a
bishop, the restoration of a priceless tapestry, the swearing-in of a
Swiss Guard soldier, reception of world leaders, and a race to
digitally preserve disintegrating documents.
Read more >
-
B |
***½ |
+2-2|
Adults
To “rip open the inconsolable secret,” to
awaken the spiritual hunger for something beyond the
materialistic scope of our fragmented, desacrilized modern
existence, was the burden of Andrei Tarkovsky, cinematic poet
laureate of the Russian soul.
Read more >
-
B |
***½ |
+2-2|
Teens & Up*
The Dead End Kids have dirty faces, all right — but they’re no angels. Tough-talking young hoods much given to slapping one another’s faces and terrorizing their lower East Side Manhattan neighborhood, they may tolerate sincere, savvy Father Jerry Connolly (Pat O’Brien) and his efforts to divert them from the dangers of life on the street; but it’s in Fr. Jerry’s boyhood chum, infamous gangster Rocky Sullivan (James Cagney), that the Kids find a mentor and kindred spirit.
Read more >
-
B |
***½ |
-2|
Teens & Up*
Then re-anchor the story to reality by asking whether there
are really any ghosts at all — whether apparently spectral
manifestations might not in fact be no more than an unstable
woman’s imaginings, or the cruel pranks of a spiteful child, or
the malicious work of mysterious servants with unguessable
motives. Bear in mind that moviegoers are increasingly wise to
Sixth-Sense style tricks, and will carefully analyze each
of these characters in turn, trying to figure out what might not
be as it seems.
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-
B |
***½ |
+2-1|
Adults
The Nun’s Story certainly doesn’t offer the positive depiction of religious life common in 1950s Hollywood, but it’s not an anti-religious or anti-Catholic depiction either.
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-
B |
*** |
+2-1|
Teens & Up
Pope John Paul II gets the A&E “Biography” treatment in Pope John Paul II — Statesman of Faith, a 50-minute documentary made in 1993 focusing particularly on the Holy Father’s crusades against totalitarianism and violence.
Read more >
-
B |
*** |
+3|
Kids & Up
Joseph’s own dreams — the two biblical ones plus an extra one — are the best; I caught my breath at the first glimpse of these
dreams, which look like living, flowing Van Goghs. The dream-sky
swirls like Starry Night, and the grass ripples under the
dream-Joseph’s feet like ripples in a pond. The dreamlike quality
of these sequences is undeniable and memorable.
Read more >
-
B |
*** |
+2|
Kids & Up
The bishop (Basil Ruysdael) is a decent enough chap,
sympathetic to the sisters’ mission but daunted by the practical
difficulties. As their cause goes forward, however, he begins to
suspect that what’s driving them is an irresistible force before
which there is no known immovable object: "There hasn’t been for
2000 years."
Read more >
-
B |
*** |
+2-1|
Kids & Up*
Scenes of silent, unstructured Quaker meetings are contrasted
without comment or judgment to the boisterous singing of the
local Methodist church, but — despite Eliza’s best efforts — the
film is largely an account of the compromises the Birdwells are
and aren’t willing to make. Their principles are repeatedly put
to the test, at the local fair, on the Sunday morning ride to the
meeting house as a smug neighbor blows past Jess’s slow horse
every week, and so on. One of the best vignettes concerns an
impasse between Jess and Eliza over the shocking purchase of an
organ, and the delightful way the conflict is finally
resolved.
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-
B |
*** |
+3|
Kids & Up*
Beautiful, rugged UK landscapes, splendid old castles and other shooting locations, and some fairly impressive sets help create a sense of authenticity. At the same time, with the earlier episodes especially limited by modest production values, rudimentary special effects, and uneven acting, the Chronicles can’t be held even to the standard of such American TV productions as the Merlin and Arabian Nights miniseries.
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-
B |
*** |
+1-1|
Teens & Up
In particular, his investigation focuses, not on any of the
relics of the True Cross itself, but on a wooden relic purported
to be a fragment of the titulus crucis — the placard
placed over the head of the crucified man bearing the charge
against him, in this case "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews."
For centuries this relic has been housed at the Santa Croce
Church in Rome, where tradition holds it was brought by the
mother of Constantine, St. Helena, following her pilgrimage to
the Holy Land in search of Christian artifacts. However, these
claims had not been critically investigated prior to Thiede’s
research.
Read more >
-
B |
*** |
+2-2|
Adults
A line in the trailer for The Exorcism of Emily Rose, felicitously cut from the final film, observes that “There’s no pill for the devil.” More to the point, there’s no diagnostic test or scan for him, either.
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-
B |
*** |
+2|
Kids & Up*
Starring Anton Rodgers as an avuncular Lewis at home in Oxford in 1963, the year that he died, the short film cuts between Lewis’s running commentary on the events of his life and flashback dramatizations of those events.
Read more >
-
B |
*** |
+2-1|
Teens & Up
Fascinating despite flaws, The Shoes of the Fisherman is impossible to watch first of all as a movie. By a strange twist of chance or fate, it demands to be viewed as a curious, at times almost prescient anticipation of the reign of John Paul II, filtered partly through the lens of the Silly Sixties.
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-
B |
*** |
+2-1|
Kids & Up*
Gregory Peck’s star-making turn as Father Francis Chisom in John M. Stahl’s The Keys of the Kingdom earned him a Best Actor nod and established his screen persona as a ruggedly decent, dignified underdog.
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-
B |
*** |
-1|
Teens & Up*
Directed by Helen Whitney (“John Paul II – The Millennial Pope”), “The Mormons” is at once as scrupulously respectful and sympathetic as any religious adherent might hope for in such a treatment, while also dealing directly and fairly with thorny subjects from Joseph Smith’s evolving accounts of his religious experiences to the Mountain Meadow Massacre of 120 travelers by Utah Mormons and the subsequent church cover-up.
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-
B |
**½ |
+3|
Kids & Up
“Ordinary girl. Extraordinary soul” is the tagline of Thérèse, Catholic actor-director Leonardo Defilippis’s reverent, uplifting, straightforward biopic of the Little Flower. Of the tagline’s two clauses, the film’s special burden seems to be the first part, “ordinary girl.”
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-
B |
**½ |
+3|
Kids & Up
Almost thirty years ago Olivia Hussey played the most venerated woman of all time, the Virgin Mary, in Zeffirelli’s “Jesus of Nazareth.” Now she portrays the most revered woman of the twentieth century in the reverential, Italian-made English-language production Mother Teresa.
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-
B |
**½ |
+2|
Teens & Up
Beyond the Gates is most worth seeing for its uncompromising portrait of a more representative episode in the Rwandan genocide than the events depicted in Hotel Rwanda. At the same time, it offers little insight into the Hutu or Tutsi experience.
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-
B |
** |
+3|
Teens & Up
Like its heroine Jamie, A Walk to Remember is pious, wholesome, and eminently open to mockery and derision. Also like its heroine, it doesn’t care what people think of it.
Read more >
-
B- |
**** |
+1-3|
Adults
Buñuel makes his case against faith, not by attacking its foolish or corrupt practitioners, but by arguing that the thing itself, even when lived almost to perfection by a near saint, is moot, even harmful. It may be the most breathtaking cinematic cross-examination of faith I have ever seen.
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-
B- |
*** |
+1-2|
Adults*
Is The Wicker Man anti-Christian? Anti-pagan? Anti-religion? Where are its sympathies? Does it have any? Like baffled, blustering Sergeant Howie, blundering about the clannish Summerisle community trying to investigate a missing child, we are asking the wrong questions, assuming the wrong rules, wandering ever further off course, walking into a trap.
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-
B- |
**½ |
+2|
Teens & Up
Signs has the
heart that was lacking in Unbreakable, but stumbles badly
in its treatment of the paranormal, in this case the world of
"X-Files" / "Twilight Zone" sci-fi. Glaring
practical problems increasingly sap the movie’s plausibility,
until eventually suspension of disbelief becomes possible only by
not thinking about it.
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-
B- |
**½ |
+2|
Kids & Up
The Robe is the story of the other Roman soldier at the foot of the cross — not Longinus, but the one who wins a toss of dice and takes home the robe of Christ.
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-
C+ |
***½ |
+2-3|
Adults*
“You just take your pills and you’ll be fine, really,” Chris (Ellen Burstyn) promises her daughter Regan (Linda Blair), but part of the film’s brief is that pills aren’t the answer to everything, and faith and religion may have answers science doesn’t.
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-
C+ |
**½ |
+1-2|
Teens & Up*
The best thing about Hellboy is Hellboy. And he’s a demon.
Read more >
-
C+ |
**½ |
+2-2|
Teens & Up*
Who is right? The issues are complex, and historians and
faithful Catholics disagree (see related article). One
Man’s Hero is sympathetic to the St. Pats and critical of
American "Manifest Destiny" expansionism and
anti-Catholicism.
Read more >
-
C+ |
**½ |
+2|
Teens & Up
Reverent, well directed, and well acted by a respectable cast including Bruce Davison, Tom Bosley and Peter Green, Confession’s weakness is also its promotional gimmick: Meyers directed the film at 24, but wrote the screenplay ten years earlier as a student in a Catholic boarding school.
Read more >
-
C+ |
**½ |
+1|
Kids & Up*
With fans of its two genres, especially in the Bible Belt, Facing the Giants will doubtless be a success. To reach a broader audience, though, the filmmakers will have to scrap their playbook and learn a whole new set of rules.
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-
C+ |
** |
+2|
Kids & Up
Although less speculative and less freely adapted than the earlier film, The Ten Commandments shamelessly rips off interpretive conceits and even specific dramatic beats from The Prince of Egypt, from the menacing of Moses’ basket by a passing croc to the foundering of Ramses’ chariot on the shores of the Red Sea, allowing him to live to see the destruction of his army and the escape of the Israelites.
Read more >
-
C+ |
** |
+1|
Kids & Up
Harmless, diverting, very mildly uplifting, Evan Almighty offers passable family entertainment meant to appeal equally to Bible-believing conservatives and left-leaning environmentalists.
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-
C+ |
** |
+1|
Teens & Up
Like M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs, Henry Poole simply divides the world into two groups of people: those who see signs and miracles, and those who see only coincidence. How either group arrives at or explains particular conclusions, not to mention how people decide which group they belong to in the first place, isn’t explored. We just get Henry with his arms folded defiantly across he chest intoning “Coincidence,” and everyone else serenely shrugging their shoulders saying “Faith.”
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-
C |
*** |
+2-2|
Kids & Up*
Guinness makes a delightfully enjoyable Father Brown, and the film’s dialogue sparkles with flashes of Chestertonian wit. … Alas, this well-intentioned and otherwise enjoyable film is marred by several serious missteps.
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-
C |
**½ |
-2+1|
Adults*
The story, in fact, could largely be described as the failure of moderate Christians to restrain fanatical Christians from oppressing innocent Muslims, thereby provoking justifiable Muslim retaliation against the Christians, both fanatics and otherwise. Yet Saladin himself is not an uncomplicated noble figure. As he prepares to lay siege to Jerusalem, he explicitly rejects the possibility of showing mercy, relenting only when Balian fights him to a standstill.
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-
C |
**½ |
+2-2|
Adults*
The answer, apparently, is that there are many film critics
who can, since Neil Jordan’s film of The End of the
Affair, which he adapted himself from Graham Greene’s novel
of the same name, has been praised not only in general terms but
specifically for its fidelity to the book. And, indeed, the film
may be said to be largely faithful to the book, in the sense that
the great majority of scenes are adapted more or less as they
were written. But this is like saying that the character of Sarah
(Julianne Moore) is largely faithful to her husband Henry
(Stephen Rea) because the great majority of her time she isn’t
sleeping with her lover Bendrix (Ralph Fiennes): the betrayal is
crucial, and gives the lie to the supposed fidelity of the rest.
If it’s not quite like making an otherwise "faithful" film about
the life of Christ that omits the Crucifixion, it’s at any rate
not entirely unlike making a film in which, some time after Good
Friday, it turns out that Jesus hasn’t been crucified after all,
but is actually living in Nazareth doing carpentry, and Pilate
has to send up centurions to apprehend him and bring him forcibly
to Jerusalem, where, after a six-month imprisonment, He is
finally crucified shortly before Christmas. (Okay, it’s not
exactly like that either, but you see what I’m getting at.)
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-
C |
** |
+1-2|
Adults*
The comic-book Constantine is a blond Brit based in Liverpool
(think Sting by way of Christopher Lee in Terence Fisher’s The
Devil Rides Out). For the film, the casting of Keanu led to a
change of setting to California and LA. Similarly, the casting of
Shia LaBeouf (Holes) as
Constantine’s ally Chandler turned the character from a seasoned
comrade in arms into a Jimmy Olsen-like junior sidekick.
(Whatever happened to casting actors who fit the part?)
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-
C |
** |
+1-2|
Adults
Neither Gipson nor Banek makes much of a poster child for the danger of civilized behavior devolving into savagery, since neither of them seems quite stable from the outset. Gipson’s a recovering alcoholic with violent tendencies who seems to cause trouble wherever he goes, while Banek’s a soulless shell of a human being too shallow to realize that he’s as unprincipled as everyone else around him, including his wife (Amanda Peet). That unstable human beings can do unpredictable and terrible things isn’t exactly a dramatic revelation; yet even so the film relies so much on contrivance and arbitrary behavior that the events and their consequences seem to have little to do with the human nature of the characters involved.
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-
C |
** |
+2|
Teens & Up
Christians lamenting the state of Hollywood sometimes flippantly comment that this or that Bible story “would make a great movie — intrigue, sex, violence, spectacle, etc.” This, though, is not a recipe for a great movie, but for a mediocre one. The story of Esther could certainly be made into a great film. One Night with the King is not that film. In some ways, it’s not even that story.
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-
C- |
**½ |
-2|
Teens & Up*
Based on a computer game, Final Fantasy is always
interesting to look at, and is sometimes visually spectacular,
but it hasn’t transcended its gaming origins. The sci-fi
scavanger-hunt premise hasn’t been fleshed out into a coherent or
satisfying story. The heroes, though eye-poppingly rendered,
remain emotionally as one-dimensional as any computer-game
avatar. Even basic rules and motivations never become clear.
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-
C- |
**½ |
-2|
Teens & Up*
Joe’s wife Emily (Susanna Thompson, Random Hearts) was
his soulmate and best friend. "You were the mind, she was the
heart," observes a friend, presumably not knowing how closely he
echoes the language of Pope Pius XI in his encyclical on
Christian marriage, Casti Connubii.
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-
C- |
**½ |
-2|
Teens & Up*
Where is the other side of the debate? Where is the Darwin who declared it “absurd to doubt that a man might be an ardent theist and an evolutionist”? Where are the likes of Charles Kingsley and Asa Gray — representatives of, respectively, religion and science, who saw no quarrel between their two worlds, and both of whom Darwin cited in this connection? Where, indeed, is the Reverend Innes who vouched that his friend Darwin “follows his own course as a Naturalist and leaves Moses to take care of himself”?
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-
C- |
** |
+1-2|
Adults
Theologically speaking, the question was absurd and
meaningless; but the answer, I think, contained profound insight.
God is both the source and the goal of our being, the meaning as
well as the master of our lives. Imagine reality without God, and
life becomes meaningless; imagine divine omnipotence at the
disposal of anything other than divine love, and existence
becomes infinite horror.
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-
C- |
** |
+0|
Teens & Up*
(Written by Robert Jackson) Gods and Generals is an extremely
one-sided account of the first half of the Civil War.
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-
C- |
** |
+1-2|
Adults
Yet this Brideshead Revisited ultimately subverts Waugh’s subtlest and most subversive achievement: It offers all the foibles and puzzlement of the Flytes’ religious world, while all but obliterating the threads of grace running through their lives.
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-
D+ |
** |
-2|
Adults*
In place of Ford’s iconic but Indian-hating cowboy hero, Howard
gives us two white protagonists who are each, in their own ways, the
antitheses of the John Wayne character.
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-
D |
**½ |
-2|
Teens & Up*
Once you’ve established that your story is set in a world in which Jesus Christ is explicitly not God, and the Catholic religion is a known fraud perpetuated by murder and cover-ups, it sort of sucks the wind out of whatever story it was you were going to tell us next. Langdon could be ironing his chinos and helping little old ladies across the street, and it would still be set in that world, and those of us who care about such things will find it hard to bracket that and just go along with the thrill machine.
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-
D |
*½ |
-3|
Adults
Here is a film so woefully misconceived, so completely devoid of even generic, safely banal Hollywood spiritual uplift, that it made me long for the spiritual depth and religious meaning of Sister Act and Bruce Almighty.
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-
D |
In one sense, I’d like to see more films like this made. At
the same time, Luther is also a seriously flawed film. Relentlessly hagiographical in its depiction of Luther and one-sidedly positive in its view of the Reformation, the film also distorts Catholic theology and significant matters of historical fact, consistently skewing its portrayal to put Luther in the best possible light while making his opponents seem as unreasonable as possible.
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-
D |
Mullan’s black-and-white (or rather black and
more black) depiction of clergy and religious is absolute: Not a
single character in a wimple or a Roman collar ever manifests
even the slightest shred of kindness, compassion, human decency,
or genuine spirituality; not one has the briefest instant of
guilt, regret or inner conflict over the energetic, sometimes
cheerfully brutal sadism and abuse that pervades the film.
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-
D- |
**½ |
-3|
Adults*
That book, with its breathless vignettes of the 19th-century
lower Manhattan underworld, has no central plot or unifying
storyline. Similarly, the most striking moments in Scorsese’s
film come as glimpses into that time and place. When we see
hordes of immigrants milling about in the unguessed catacombs
beneath the Old Brewery of the Five Points neighborhood, or rival
fire brigades brawling in the streets rather than fighting the
fire, it’s easy to feel that here, surely, is a dark and strange
world that would be interesting to explore, a world in which
memorable stories must have taken place.
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-
D- |
*½ |
-3|
Adults*
Even in the silent era, with Douglas Fairbanks playing every
legendary hero from Zorro to
Robin Hood to D’Artagnan,
seeking adventure everywhere from the Spanish Main (The Black Pirate) to Arabian
Nights territory (The Thief of Bagdad) to South
America (The Gaucho), King Arthur was overlooked.
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-
F |
*** |
-4|
No One
By the film’s end, Frankie is faced with a choice that the
priest says could lead to his damnation. The film makes the wrong
choice seem right. But it leaves it an open question, I think,
whether making that choice leads to redemption or damnation.
Million Dollar Baby suggests, perhaps, that the right and
most loving thing to do for someone else may entail one’s own
damnation. This is very far from good way of looking at things.
But it suggests a film that is less complacent, more thoughtful,
less like smug propaganda than some of its detractors allege.
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-
F |
*** |
-4|
Like the creators of Dogma, I feel the
need to begin with a disclaimer of my own. This review is an
exercise in film criticism and commentary informed by Christian
faith. It is neither an anti-Dogma activist polemic nor a
pro-Dogma apologetical treatise. I come not to praise
Kevin Smith, nor to bury him, but to critique his work. I will
tell you what I think is good about it, and what I think is evil,
and why I think the work as a whole deserves its unacceptable
rating (not only from this site but also from the ). But this is a
complex film, and deserves careful evaluation. Those who are only
interested in one-sided spin, whether bad or good, will not find
it here.
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-
F |
*½ |
-4|
Is The Da Vinci Code anti-Catholic? Well, if it isn’t, then we must simply conclude that no such thing as anti-Catholicism exists, or at least that no anti-Catholic movie has ever been made.
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-
F |
0 |
-3|
Adults
Chesterton’s second way is to go to the "opposite extreme" of
focusing on Francis’s religion in a "defiantly devotional" way,
with all the "theological enthusiasm" of the first Franciscans.
The trouble here, of course, is that such an approach would be
impenetrable and unmoving to most audiences today. (Chesterton
gives no example of this extreme, but one may see something like
it in Leonardo Difilippis’s recent Thérèse.)
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-
F |
-4|
No One
A Jesus who commits sins — who even thinks he commits
sins, who talks a great deal about needing "forgiveness" and
paying with his life for his own sins; a Jesus who himself speaks
blasphemy and idolatry, calling fear his "god" and talking about
being motivated more by fear than by love; who has an ambivalent
at best relationship with the Father, even trying to merit divine
hatred so that God will leave him alone — all of this is utterly
antithetical to Christian belief and sentiment. This is not
merely focusing on Jesus’ humanity, this is effectively
contradicting his divinity.
Read more >
-
Constantine might sound like the latest entry in Hollywood’s string of violent costume dramas (Alexander, Troy, King Arthur), but it’s not actually about the Roman emperor who was the subject of such religious films as Constantine and the Cross. In this film, instead of a sign in the sky, the cross is a weapon in the ero’s hands. Starring Keanu Reeves, Constantine is a sort of a cross between Hellboy and The Exorcist with some Matrix attitude thrown in, a violent R-rated action-thriller of the supernatural based on the DC/Vertigo comic book Hellblazer, about a cynical demon-hunter antihero who’s literally been to hell and back. Though he knows that what God expects is belief, self-sacrifice, and repentance, he is futilely trying to earn his way into God’s good graces.
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-
The religious themes in the B-movie horror films directed by Terence Fisher for Hammer Films could fill a book. In fact, there is such a book.
Read more >
-
In its most extreme form, the charge of morbidity has been
laid at the feet of the Christian faith itself. Christianity’s
harshest critics denounce it as "a religion of death." Clearly,
at some point objections of this sort must be regarded as a case
in point of what the scriptures call the "scandal" of the cross.
It is the cross itself, the very suffering and dying of God made
man, and the way Christians respond to this event in their faith
and devotion, that is behind much (though again not all) of the
religious and anti-religious controversy over the brutality of
this particular film.
Read more >
-
B |
Veteran Catholic performer Barry, who calls his apostolate
Radix, has been doing his live one-man passion play for a decade,
accompanied for most of that time by his musical partner, Eric
Genuis. One recorded version has played for a number of years on
EWTN around Holy Week. This version, filmed live in 2003 at the
Orpheum Theatre in Memphis, TN, benefits from enhanced production
values including multiple cameras.
Read more >
-
Even movie-savvy Catholics often haven’t heard of One Man’s
Hero, Lance Hool’s 1999 film about the San Patricios, a group
of Irish Catholic immigrants in the 1840s who joined the U.S.
Army but deserted after suffering religious and ethnic
persecution, fled to Catholic Mexico, and wound up fighting on
the Mexican side in the U.S.-Mexican War. The film, starring Tom
Beringer, never got a proper U.S. theatrical release, and hasn’t
been promoted on video and DVD, even in Catholic markets and
media.
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-
The hero’s nearly religious reverence for rock’s angry
posturing and anti-authoritarianism — reverence culminating in a
pre-concert prayer to the "God of rock" — isn’t quite condoned,
but isn’t put in any larger context either. Rock culture’s darker
side is whitewashed (it’s not about drugs, kids, and groupies are
really just band cheerleaders!), and subjects other than music
(and even music other than rock) get short shrift. Then there’s
the swishing, lisping fifth-grade "band stylist" bringing "Queer
Eye" camp to the grade-school setting.
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-
J. R. R. Tolkien once described his epic
masterpiece The Lord of the Rings as "a fundamentally
religious and Catholic work." Yet nowhere in its pages is there
any mention of religion, let alone of the Catholic Church,
Christ, or even God. Tolkien’s hobbits have no religious
practices or cult; of prayer, sacrifice, or corporate worship
there is no sign.
Read more >
-
The pope’s remarks were both forward looking, speaking to the potential of cinema to become “a more and more positive factor in the development of individuals and a stimulus for the conscience of society as a whole,” and also historically minded, speaking positively of the praiseworthy contributions of “many worthwhile productions during the first hundred years of [the cinema’s] existence.”
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-
From a religious point of view, Kevin Smith’s Dogma comes a lot closer to making sense if you just accept one premise: The angels in it — fallen and otherwise — are all really bad at theology.
Read more >
-
Still others, trying to strike a happy medium, opt for a
tolerant ecumenical openness to various interpretations. "Pray
for ’pre’ but prepare for ’post,’ " advised Fundamentalist singer
Keith Green when asked about his views on the timing of the
rapture and the tribulation. Many likewise feel that the
interpretation of end-times prophecy is an inessential matter
regarding which Christians may legitimately hold different views.
(Incidentally, if you’re already having trouble with terms like
"pre" and "post," try this
summary to get up to speed.)
Read more >
-
Karol: A Man Who Became Pope isn’t the first TV movie on the life of Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II — but among the new crop of Pope movies coming in the wake of the Holy Father’s death, it’s not only the first, but also the only one seen and praised both by Benedict XVI and John Paul II himself.
Read more >
-
Although The Nativity Story doesn’t portray Joseph as a widower, it also doesn’t depict Joseph and Mary’s relationship as a typical first-century Jewish courtship. While the film doesn’t take a stance one way or the other on the Catholic doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity, it finds drama in the obstacles between Joseph and Mary, rather than turning their story, as some retellings have done, into a Hollywood romance.
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Perhaps The Nativity Story will take its place as the missing Christmas film — the one that actually is about the real “real meaning of Christmas.”
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The most serious problem with Constantine’s Sword, though, is not its historical distortions. The most serious problem is its out-and-out attack on Christianity as such. It is not merely antisemitism that troubles Carroll. It is not even only Jesus’ death and resurrection. Ultimately, it is the very belief that in Jesus God did something both unique and definitive, something with universal applicability for all mankind.
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An old witticism has it that Golden Age Hollywood was “a Jewish-owned business selling Catholic theology to Protestant America.” If not strictly accurate, the bon mot contains more than a kernel of truth.
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In a Q&A billed as an “interview” on his own website, Brown writes (in a comment recently highlighted by Carl Olson in This Rock), “My goal is always to make the character’s [sic] and plot be so engaging that readers don’t realize how much they are learning along the way.” Or how much misinformation they’re absorbing.
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