In June, The Amazing Spider-man will swing into theaters, take us on a high rise ride over an IMAX-sized city and even kick us in the face straight through our 3D glasses. Personally, I’m excited for the fresh take on our friendly neighborhood wall-crawler, and don’t even mind the gimmicky format. My 3 reasons?
- If any hero seemed suited for 3D, it’s the web-swinging Peter Parker. (Classic artist John Romita practically drew him EXPLODING off the page into your face.)
- I’m happy just to have something to wash the taste of that third movie out of my mouth, something that ISN’T a musical with songs by Bono. In both cases, we know that Spider-man should swing, not dance.
- Finally, I can’t deny I love Denis Leary, who has a prominent role as Gwen Stacy’s father and the police captain chasing our misunderstood web-head. If you haven’t seen the most recent trailer, check it out.
What’s so special about Spider-man anyway?
I grew up on Looney Tunes, but my favorite – by far – were the ones featuring the Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. Now that several decades have passed, having witnessed the 575th anvil fall on the head of poor Carnivorous Vulgarus and the 963rd rock crush his emaciated canine body, I had to ask myself: why do we like these Looney Tunes – and particularly this one – so much? Why has he endured (particularly with so many concussions and bodily trauma)?
If you’ve never seen an episode, you can check out the classic “Fast and Furryous” (NOT a film with Vin Diesel) HERE.
“It couldn’t be any worse than the first one,” I convinced myself… and am reminded sharply that I shouldn’t always listen to that voice in my head. Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance was an artistic nightmare that fails on almost EVERY level… yet surprisingly hits three biblical truths…
One of my favorite films of 2011, J.J. Abrams’ flashback/homage to the classic works of Spielberg taps into 4 essential components of his filmmaker’s late 70s to early 80s films:
- panoramic, storybook skylines
- extraterrestrials disrupting suburban, middle-class life
- relational struggles between parent/child
- excessive use of lens flare
You can just feel the entire film is a narrative expression of J.J. looking at Steven saying “I love you man!” However, the film isn’t just your typical, monster/alien-incursion-forces-coming-of-age-story…
“You don’t believe in ghosts, do you?”
The Woman in Black has been a book, a play, and a 1989 film prior to the most recent incarnation in the 2012 film starring Daniel Radcliffe. Each time the query and frightening prospect remain the same: what if we linger after death, our unresolved issues lingering in our ghostly soul, creating ghastly results for those left behind? This notion, of the spectral spirit that brings death, is what Arthur Kipps (Radcliffe) encounters when he visits a remote village on business.
Dealing with Loss
A young man, in an understated yet appropriate performance for a post-Potter Radcliffe, Kipps is haunted already by the death of his wife and with mixed feelings for the son she left behind. Adding more loss, with a dead woman and endangered children, the situation makes him confront his own feelings and fears about death and coping with loss. People who have suffered the death of loved ones show the viewer the range of human emotions, from stoic to withdrawn, from irritable to irrational.
I asked our readers what I should watch (and review) for Valentine’s Day, and The Princess Bride was suggested. Some people in my college dorm watched the film back in 1991 ad nauseum and put a bad taste in my mouth for this 1987 Rob Reiner movie, but the reality remains that the fanciful film is an enduring classic for men and women, boys and girls of all ages in all ages. Examining the narrative, is it any wonder why?
“It was the book my father used to read to me when I was sick, and I used to read it to your father. And today I’m gonna read it to you.”
As the story opens with a jaded, video-game playing grandson irritated by his grandpa’s visit, the romantic notion that there is a story told by father to son, generation to generation, one being passed down that is about “true love” either makes us roll our eyes or warms our heart. Would that there might be a story worth teaching “diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” – Deuteronomy 6. Maybe it might even be a story that, as the grandfather promises, contains “fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…”
“You’re never going to get these people to see themselves as they really are, ’cause it’s the lies that we tell ourselves… they introduce us to him.”
Is a movie called Devil automatically evil? Can it actually provoke conversation about his existence, and God’s ultimate authority and triumph over his schemes? In our first post about this film, we featured a segment on scary movies more generally, and how they play an important part in storytelling. Now we dig in deeper to this particular film with the second segment, which is best listened to after you’ve seen the film and contains spoilers…
Is the Devil real? Does he have power over us? A PG-13 film that captures the spirit of old stories like The Twilight Zone, Devil (directed by John Erick Dowdle) explores the terrifying possibilities of the world we don’t see. The film opens with 1 Peter 5:8 scrawled on the screen – “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” – and thus the movie’s narrative begs for discussion.
Why do we watch these movies???
The first leg of this 2-part audio podcast features less on the 2010 film and more on why you, me, or anyone goes in for scary movies at all and most particularly movies dealing with Old Nick, Old Scratch, Lucifer, the Accuser himself: the devil. Some would say even speaking about films like these, let alone watching them, let alone making them, is inherently evil. However, if we take an informed view of storytelling and the place of the horror story in an oft-horrific world, we might find we’re missing something very important about both the genre and ourselves.
Take a spin down scary storytelling 101 – if you dare. I promise no black cats will jump out of the cupboard, and there are no demons embedded in the mp3. I also have a little fun at M. Night Shyamalan’s expense, so beware of bad puns…
“Winter, slumbering in the open air, wears on its smiling face a dream… of spring.”
What to do now that we’ve got six extra weeks of winter? We find ourselves in the shadow of Groundhog Day…
Hard to believe a cute little 1993 feel-good film about Punxsatowney Phil and Gobbler’s Knob, starring SNL alumnus Bill Murray, would be deemed by some “One of the best films of the last 40 years…” and “required viewing for the course ‘Religion, Ethics, and Film”. Still, when a spritely holiday comedy film by Harold Ramis finds itself being compared to the works of Nietzsche and Camus, you can’t help but scratch your head. Is this the result of a great story, or people reading into things because they’re holed up due to six extra weeks of winter?
A Twilight Zone style event makes an irascible weatherman relive the same day over and over again, until he’s forced to confront some important things about himself, the world around him, and what he’s living for. A great article by Justin Taylor praising the film made me relive it all over again, and we hosted a film event where I got to sift the host of commentary on the film and sprinkle in some apt scripture as it applied. If you look deep enough into this film, might it look into you? Let’s see who swerves first…
When thrust into a violent Alaskan landscape where death seems almost certain, a formerly despondent man suddenly manifests an incredible will to survive, to fight, to lead a group of men through the wilderness and combat the wolves at their heels.
Less an action film and more an essay on naturalism, on what it looks like to truly build on Bertrand Russell’s firm foundation of unyielding despair. It evokes Solomon’s lament about the similarities and differences between man and beast in Ecclesiastes 3.
The film is an incredible treatise on why we choose life and fight to survive that demands conversation with a mixed crowd. Does the ending satisfy? Why or why not? Like it’s name, The Grey doesn’t give a black and white answer and crashes that plane across the landscape of conversation. Go deeper in our short video review…
It’s no secret that Steven Soderbergh essentially just built a movie around MMA fighter Gina Carano because he caught one of her fights. While the backdrop of Haywire is seemingly a web of international intrigue, it’s actually pretty simple, and the director seems less interested in making a film so much as toying with action movie conventions, improvising like a jazz musician. It’s appropriate that the score employs various jazz tunes set during the non-fighting sequences (which have no music, and no enhanced fisticuff effects) and the music, like the movie, has moments that gel and moments that don’t.
While not a great film, it’s intriguing to watch Soderbergh riff, see the surprisingly all-star cast that surrounds Carano (Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, Bill Paxton, Michael Douglas) and realize that she stands her own in screen presence and acting chops. I’m certain we’ll see more from her.
As a black ops soldier seeking payback after being betrayed and set up, Carano plays Mallory, a woman so enigmatic she’s effectively a force of nature (albeit very human and fallible in Soderbergh’s steady hands). It’s hard to glean a lot from her stiff-lipped character in the narrative, but as we see a string of men get their comeuppance at the hands of this relentless woman, I realized there are very human reasons why they fall under her strong will, which make it intriguing as a character study less of Mallory and more of the men who misjudge her.
“You shouldn’t think of her as being a woman. That would be your first mistake.”
“This is a new war. And it’s only beginning.”
In a film that tonally hits closer to the first Resident Evil film than it’s Underworld predecessors, Awakening serves up non-stop action and holds true to the quote above; it is undeniably fun to watch, but there isn’t much plot to chew on as it merely establishes the landscape and effectively leaves us with a cliffhanger for more.
We’ve covered the previous entries in our reviews for Underworld, Evolution, and Rise of the Lycans with the moody, provocative themes explored in the original trilogy. This fourth film introduces a new season for our protagonist, new storyline and locale in the same way a new creative team might take over a comic book or television series; it’s the same character (Selene) operating in a new environment with a tweaked style. In comparison with the other films, it succeeds as an entry of equal caliber (unlike the fourth Resident Evil) but has so much action and establishing to do it doesn’t offer much in the way of plot. Although video games now offer far more complex storylines, this one follows the classic first-person shooter scenario, even with a “boss fight” at the end, not unlike last year’s Battle: Los Angeles.