Tags: Bible Films
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.
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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.
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The original DVD edition of The Passion of the Christ was a “bare bones” edition featuring only the film itself. This week’s two-disc “Definitive Edition” is packed with extras, from
The Passion Recut (which trims about six minutes of some of the most intense violence) to four separate commentaries.
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In blogs, discussion boards, and other fora, a range of criticisms and objections concerning
The Nativity Story have been raised by concerned Catholics. Some of these critiques are thoughtful and worthy of consideration, and raise issues regarding the film that have merit, or are at least defensible. Other complaints are more problematic, resting on misrepresentations of the film or even of Catholic teaching.
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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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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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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A+ |
**** |
+4|
Teens & Up
As I contemplate Mel Gibson’s
The Passion
of the Christ, the sequence I keep coming back to, again and
again, is the scourging at the pillar.
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Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League declared recently that Mel Gibson’s
The Passion of the Christ is
not antisemitic, and that Gibson himself is not an anti-Semite, but a “true believer.”
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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").
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A+ |
**** |
+4|
Kids & Up
The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ is a remarkable relic from the very dawn of cinema.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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