Sometimes our journey is lined with detours. We think we know where God wants us to be but then he sends us in another direction. For Pete Bauer, every time he seemed to draw closer to his goal, he was sent down another road. In the end, however, every detour proved to be a time […]
The recent release of the movie WARRIOR has prompted many different “takes” on the story. I would like to focus on the impact of addiction as portrayed in the film. The Conlon family, having been torn apart by the father’s violent alcoholic behavior, is in a situation that many people, unfortunately, can identify with. Alcoholism […]
An interview with Gavin O’Connor director of WARRIOR WARRIOR is a motion picture story about two bitterly estranged brothers who end up fighting in a cage for the mixed martial arts world championship. It is also about their relationship with their father, whom neither can forgive. The violence we see in the cage is visceral. […]
Often I hear Christians complain about the protagonist in a movie because he or she made one or more immoral decisions, and is therefore a poor role model. Another oft heard criticism is that movies are filled with too much on-screen conflict or violence, thus giving audiences the wrong idea about how to resolve problems. […]
The 5th Quarter is a captivating true story of perseverance and as such it is a story for us all. It is a riveting story for anyone who has ever suffered through personal tragedy from which one thought there was no way to recover. It is an emotional story for any parent who has ever […]
Pop quiz — I’ll give you the plot; you name the movie: Up and coming rookie sports star in need of an attitude adjustment accidentally strands himself in a small heartland America town where he runs into a former top performer in his sport who left the limelight years ago but has profound life-changing wisdom […]
Science and art are not as distant from one another as it might seem. I suggest that one of the reasons “science nerds” also tend to be the “fantasy nerds” is that they are attracted to the same thing: fantastical worlds full of myriad laws and multifarious beings, whose interactions cannot be determined in advance, […]
In an emotionally charged scene, Tom Conlon, seated at a slot machine, is shouting at his father, Paddy Conlon. With a pleading tone, Paddy is patiently trying to empathize and reconnect with his son. Tom will have none of it, and tells his father it’s too late, lamenting how his dad wasn’t the father he needed […]
WARRIOR’s story is a gripping, won’t-let-you-go study of what it means to fight for noble causes, what it means to love, forgive, and find redemption.
There’s an art to the way one lives one’s life. Perspective, serenity, openness to beauty, the ability to see goodness in things – these qualities are only possible when one is in balance. And right now film director Gavin O’Connor is in balance, though perhaps a precarious one, pulled as he is in so many […]
For those of us decrepit enough to remember the original* made-for-TV Planet of the Apes with Charlton Heston (human) and Roddy McDowell** (ape), Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a high-tech, far cry from the DISCOUNT HALLOWEEN COSTUME STORE RUBBER-MASKED primate sci-fi drama. Rise is about Big Pharma and Big Research and Big […]
Lest the dreamy title throw you, this is not a dreamy film. The title means, quite literally, that in this film there is another Earth dangling above us, quite visibly. But the film is not really sci-fi. It’s a drama. A tad existential, but for those of you who did NOT appreciate Tree of Life, […]
My first exposure to Procter and Gambles’ and Wal-Mart’s Family Movie Night program was Secrets of the Mountain a Nancy Drew-type story, billed as an action/adventure film, with the protagonists a divorced mother and her three children instead of a teenaged detective and her friends. The basic theme was of a family drawn together by […]
Spoiler alert: Please do not read this article if you have not read the books and plan to see the last movie. I came to the Harry Potter books late. I didn’t read them until my children wanted to read them. As a result, unlike those who had to wait patiently or not so patiently […]
Great new DVD from the makers of The 13th Day, Finding Fatima is shot in the same Bresson-esque and super-stylized way as The 13th Day. While hearkening to and honoring filmmaking’s past, the Brothers Higgins are simultaneously bringing the story and message of Fatima to a new generation. As much as I love watching documentaries, I was […]
Super 8, written and directed by the prolific TV/movie guru, J.J. Abrams (Alias, Lost, Star Trek prequel, Cloverfield), is a collaboration with his hero, Steven Spielberg (who similarly started very young shooting “movies”). Actually, Abrams has known Spielberg since he was 15, but that’s another story. Super 8 is a semi-autobiographical story—set in 1979–about a […]
On Tuesday, May 10th, together with two co-workers, I headed down to Menomonee Falls, WI to attend a promotional screening of the movie Courageous. Courageous is the fourth production of Sherwood Baptist in Albany, GA. Sherwood’s previous productions are, “Flywheel,” “Facing the Giants” and “Fireproof.” Facing the Giants was Sherwood’s first big hit, followed by […]
Perhaps about five years ago I began to hear the word “random” with increasing frequency, usually from a teenager, and often as a one-word commentary on life’s apparent incongruities. FreeDictionary.com defines “random” as “a concept of non-order or non-coherence in a sequence of symbols or steps, such that there is no intelligible pattern or combination.” […]
Have you ever considered what might have happened if Jesus had come to earth not as God, but merely as a man, whose sole purpose was to heal suffering people from their infirmities? If so, you might be intrigued by Sympathy for Delicious. Its premise is simple: a young musician, who has lost his career […]
I am one of the apparently few people who have seen There Be Dragons, Roland Joffe’s film about St. Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei. Only it isn’t really about Josemaria at all. It’s about Spain. The photography is beautiful and the settings are wonderful (so good that they made me homesick for Spain, where […]
Christians have a deep ambivalence about Ayn Rand that probably draws as deeply from the facts of her biography as from her famous novels. When the refugee from the old Soviet Union met the Catholic William F. Buckley, she said, “You are too intelligent to believe in God.” Her atheism was militant. Rand’s holy symbol […]
You don’t have an invite to the Royal Wedding and can’t make the beatification of John Paul II this weekend? Well, all is not lost. You can still salvage your weekend by going to see Hoodwinked Too, Hood vs. Evil. And thanks to this article on Catholic Lane, you can enjoy the show even more knowing […]
According to a 1991 Book of the Month Club / Library of Congress survey that asked what book had most influenced their lives, the two top picks by respondents were the Bible and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. Coincidentally, this is a big week for both Christians and Randians. The former are celebrating the resurrection of Jesus […]
Bethany Hamilton has an extraordinary story to tell. Working hard to enter the ranks of professional surfing, by the age of 13 she already had a sponsor. But her life was shattered one morning in 2003. Out in the water, on a beautiful day, she was attacked by a 15-foot-long tiger shark. The shark bit […]
