Ridley Scott isn’t the first filmmaker to tackle the story of Moses, and he certainly won’t be the last. There’s drama in the prophet’s confrontations with the rulers of Egypt, there’s spectacle in the miracles he performed to liberate his people, and there are lessons to be learned from the way he led the Israelites and forged them into a nation, not least by giving them the Law. And filmmakers have been turning to Moses’ story for inspiration since pretty much the dawn of cinema.
Moses at the Movies / When we trace more than a century of movies about the Exodus, what do we learn?
December 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment
A Passion for Women’s Rights
June 23, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Jim Caviezel and Steve McEveety, who played critical roles in The Passion, expose human rights violations in Iran through their new film, The Stoning of Soraya M.
Timing, they say, is everything. The Stoning of Soraya M., which depicts the rigged trial and execution of an Iranian woman whose husband has grown tired of her, goes into limited release this Friday after playing at a few film festivals — and it happens to be coming out at a time when the eyes of the world are on Iran and the crackdown that has taken place there against the protestors who claim the June 12 election was rigged by the authorities.
Review: Year One (dir. Harold Ramis, 2009)
June 19, 2009 by Leave a Comment
It had to happen eventually. It has been five years since The Passion of the Christ brought the Bible epic back to the big screen, and nearly four since Judd Apatow began producing and directing a string of raunchy comedies — a few of which, such as the musical pseudo-biopic Walk Hard, have dabbled explicitly in genre parody. It was only a matter of time before Apatow or someone like him turned their attention to the religious epic, and the result is Year One, a buddy comedy that takes a relentlessly lowbrow look at the Book of Genesis.
Saints, Sinners, and Salvation
May 20, 2009 by Leave a Comment
The Terminator franchise — including the new Terminator Salvation — is full of religious imagery, much of it ultimately embracing hope for mankind.
Whenever people ask me what my favorite Christmas movie is, I tell them it’s The Terminator — and I’m only half-joking.
The film, which celebrates its 25th anniversary later this year, is not exactly a religious movie or even a holiday movie on any obvious level. It’s an R-rated sci-fi action film with plenty of violence, a fair bit of profanity, and a sex scene that was standard fare for modestly-priced B-movies of that time. And yet, there is something about the storyline, written by director James Cameron, that has always brought the Nativity to mind.
Review: Angels & Demons (dir. Ron Howard, 2009)
May 15, 2009 by Leave a Comment
It may have been boring and heretical, but the film version of The Da Vinci Code was also one of the biggest international hits of all time when it came out three years ago — bigger than The Passion of The Christ, bigger than the Narnia movies, bigger even than at least one of the Star Wars movies. So it was pretty much inevitable that Tom Hanks and director Ron Howard would reunite for an adaptation of the other Dan Brown novel that features Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon. [Read more…]
Review: Star Trek (dir. J.J. Abrams, 2009)
May 7, 2009 by Leave a Comment
The trailers say this isn’t your father’s Star Trek, but they could just as easily have said this isn’t your grandfather’s Star Trek. The series really is that old: it has been 45 years since Gene Roddenberry produced the first of two pilot episodes for the original TV show, and as James Bond could tell you, that’s a long time to let a franchise run without taking things back to square one and giving yourself a fresh start. So now, here comes the reboot: directed by J.J. Abrams (producer of Lost and Cloverfield) from a script by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman (the Transformers movies), the new Star Trek is a hotter, sexier, flashier, more youth-oriented version of the sci-fi series than we have ever seen before. But it doesn’t completely sever its ties with the original series — indeed, it puts those ties front-and-centre — and the result is a movie that may leave Trek fans feeling deeply ambivalent.
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