movie

Review: ‘Epic’ a Lovely Tale with Hidden Messages

May 24, 2013 By Rebecca Cusey 4 Comments

Don’t let the apparent eco-centric nature of Epic scare you off. It’s not at all an Earth-worship movie.

And don’t let the movie blurb title throw you off. (I hear the next sequel is called “The Best Movie Yet” and “Amazing Thrill-ride.”) This film deserves a better name, not to mention better marketing.

Once you get past the preconceived notions, Epic is a surprisingly satisfying movie which appeals to boys, girls and parents. Its story aligns powerfully with a Christian worldview and even at times approaches Narnian levels.

I know that’s a big statement to make and I’m not saying this film is the next The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. It’s not that (excuse me for this) epic.

But the film is delightful and a nice break from that which we so often see.

The story starts when young Mary Katherine comes home to her estranged father’s country cabin following the death of her mother. She’s mourning, looking for support from the parent she no longer knows. But she seems out of luck. He’s a wild professor, a half-hinged crusader whose life work has been to study the tantalizing clues found in the forest: He believes a parallel civilization inhabits the green trees and flowered glens of the woods.

Mary Katherine (voiced by Amada Seyfried), like her mother before her, finds his theories embarrassing and his devotion to them a poor replacement for an attentive father.

“Just because you’ve never seen something doesn’t mean it’s not there,” he continually repeats to MK’s eyerolls.

But, like many mystics, he’s absolutely correct. The forest hides not only a civilization but a raging war. A menace harasses the verdant kindgom inhabited by living flowers, roly-poly mushrooms, and leaf people. Mandrake (Christoph Waltz) spreads mold and decay with his arrows of death. He gathers his minions to eat trees from the inside out, to block the sun, to wither all that is green and lively.

But Mandrake fights a losing war because every time he spreads death throughout a portion of the kingdom, Queen Tara (Beyonce) users her power of life to revive it. No sooner does Mandrake reduce a glen to ashes than Tara’s seedlings and tendrils push through the decay to reach for the sun again.

Her loyal captain at arms is Ronin (Colin Farrell), dedicated to her personally and all she stands for.

But when Mandrake’s most daring attack yet succeeds in felling Tara with a poison arrow, the Queen uses her dying moments to draw MK into their parallel world and charge her with the care of a pod that will become a new queen.

With the help of a snail and a slug (Aziz Ansi and Pitbull), and a handsome but wayward leaf soldier named Nod (Josh Hutcherson), she must help the bud bloom and thrive.

The movie succeeds in having it all: A beautiful, gown-clad fairy princess type for the girls, not to mention flower people and soldiers mounted on humming birds; Courageous, upright, and brave soldiers for the boys, with plenty of derring-do in the offing. There’s plenty of humor, especially from the snail and slug with ambitions beyond their genus.

Rated PG, the film doesn’t have the type of body humor or rude humor that turns parents off, much less buried innuendo. The action sequences are not particularly scary. This is a film that would work for elementary school students.

The images of decay and destruction fighting the powers of life is particularly useful for people of faith. Where evil intends death, life blooms again. It’s the message of the gospel. This is not entirely wishful thinking, I’m guessing, as once character even marvels that MK “risks everything to save a world that is not her own.”

Sound familiar?

Based on the books The Leaf Men and The Brave Good Bugs by William Joyce, this is the type of movie we so often wish Hollywood would produce more often. Look for most critics (swayed by their innate secularism and addiction to cynicism, poor dears) to pan it. It’s better than they say.

In fact, it’s worth a trip to the theater.

Filed Under: Children's Movies, Featured, In Theaters, Movie Reviews Tagged With: Epic, movie, review 4 Comments

Soft Heroism of the Jackie Robinson Story “42″

April 12, 2013 By Rebecca Cusey

The Jackie Robinson biopic is rated PG-13. The only reason for the 13 part of the PG-13 is the frequent and extensive use of the n-word that refers to African-Americans.

Other than that, it is nice, soft, heroic, and inspiring.

Which is blessing and a curse.

It is a blessing because you can take your kids to see this movie about a great American hero. The whole family can be inspired.

But it is a curse because the great American story of Jackie Robinson deserves a great movie and this isn’t it.

The story of Jackie Robinson isn’t nice. Not nice at all. That’s what makes it great.

Jackie Robinson was signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, becoming the first black man to play Major League Baseball. He integrated a sport at the very heart of America’s identity. Along with mother and apple pie, baseball defined what it meant to be American.

Until Jackie Robinson, baseball meant white players in the Major League and African-American players in the Negro League. That was the way things were, the racism forming the everyday life of every American as ubiquitous and generally unquestioned as the air they breathed.

Then, as now, you didn’t go to a baseball game to think about social injustice, poverty, or racism. You went to cheer your team on, to beg for autographs from idolized players, to track the stats and marvel over the crack that sent a ball flying over the fence.

This is exactly why integrating baseball was so important. It functioned at a deeper level than rational thought.

In the film, Dodgers executive Branch Rickey is played by Harrison Ford with guttural country colloquialisms. Partly because of his deep faith and party because, as he says, dollars aren’t black or white, but green, Rickey leads the charge to sign a black player to the Dodgers ranks. The film matter-of-factly portrays his faith and the answering faith of Robinson. Rickey picks Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) as much for his character as for his baseball skill.

The man who integrates baseball must be strong, strong enough to stand up against the rage that will come. He must be courageous. He must be level-headed. Above all, he must play the long game, passing by chances to punish his taunters in physical fights or shouting matches for the ultimate prize of beating them on the field.

With the support of his wife Rachel (Nicole Beharie), Robinson is that man. Turned away from airlines, refused a room at hotels, mocked by other players, jeered by the crowds, Robinson keeps his head down and calmly, deliberately, excellently plays baseball.

That is the beauty of the movie and the story: That one well-placed man, just doing his job, can impact the very soul of a nation.

That is why this is a movie that you can be proud to take your children to, a movie to share and discuss.

And yet, I left the film feeling dissatisfied.

Last year, Steven Spielberg brought another great American story to the big screen. Lincoln, like 42, told the story of a great man in a time that needed him.

I left Lincoln feeling not only that I knew the story, but that I knew the man. And even more that that: The movie contained questions left unanswered, a level of cinematic poetry that touched beyond its story to the core of humanity.

In the fine, very nice movie 42, you leave knowing the story and a bit about the man, but there are still depths to plumb and poetry to bring to life. We need to know more than the story. We need to know what it felt like to be denied access to a bathroom or a seat on a plane. We need to understand the unconscious ugliness of post war race relations.

And as much as I wanted it to, 42 did not reach those heights.

It’s a shame because there are no American stories greater than those of Jackie Robinson and heroes like him. Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., just to name a few, are great Americans and their stories deserve to be told every bit as well as Lincoln and his ilk.

It’s been a while since a bloom of great movies about African-Americans, since Roots mesmerized us on TV and Boyz n the Hood on the silver screen, since Malcolm X, Ray, Do the Right Thing, and Glory. We need African-American directors with the skill and passion to make us feel them, make us know, help us understand our shared history.

I liked 42, but I’d like to see it done again, perhaps not PG-13, deeper, more bothersome, richer, more true.

Filed Under: Faith on Film, Featured, In Theaters, Movie Reviews Tagged With: 42, Harrison Ford, Jackie Robinson, movie, review

Win Movie Passes to see the Jackie Robinson Story in ’42′

April 8, 2013 By Rebecca Cusey

42, which hits theaters this Friday, April 12, tells the story of American hero Jackie Robinson who broke the MLB’s color barrier in 1947. The first African-American to play in the major leagues, he endured an unbelievable level of racism with class and dignity.

Every April, players from all MLB teams don the number 42 jersey to commemorate and celebrate “Jackie Robinson Day.”

His number is the only one to be retired by all Major League Baseball teams.

We are giving our readers an opportunity to win FREE movie passes to 42. Our prize package includes:

Two movie money certificates to screen 42 which is valid at participating theaters for you and a guest.
Two 42 movie baseball caps
42 T-Shirt
42 baseball

Just tell us who is your favorite sports hero and why. Post in the comments section below. One entry per household. Valid in the United States. Contest closes Friday. We will announce on Monday, Jackie Robinson Day.

Filed Under: Entertainment News, Featured, Uncategorized Tagged With: 42, Baseball, giveaway, Jackie Robinson, movie

First Look: ‘The Muppets…Again’

February 5, 2013 By Rebecca Cusey

Did you love The Muppets? Are you eagerly anticipating your next dose of fuzzy, furry goodness?

To alleviate the wait, Disney sends some pictures from the set. This ought to keep your manah manah going for a bit.

The movie sashays into theaters March 21.

Until then, you can follow those trendy Muppets on social media:

“Like” The Muppets on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Muppets

“Follow” The Muppets on Twitter:@MuppetsStudio

“Follow” Miss Piggy on Twitter: @RealMissPiggy

Filed Under: Entertainment News, Featured Tagged With: movie, Muppets, Muppets....Again, pictures

Movie Review: Mr. Ferrell goes to Washington in ‘The Campaign’

August 9, 2012 By Rebecca Cusey

Mitt Romney abandons people to die of cancer. Barak Obama has sent billions of stimulus money overseas.

Had enough yet?

It’s worse in the fictional North Carolina district in The Campaign. Cam Brady punches babies, but on the other hand, Marty Huggins lets people sleep with his wife.

That’s what a country boy calls lower than a tick on the belly of a blood hound.

If there’s one thing needed by a country staring down the barrel of thirteen more weeks of election campaigning, it’s a movie that mocks the entire concept.

The Campaign is that movie, but under the extreme behavior is an optimistic and pure-hearted quest to remind lawmakers why they ran in the first place.

Ferrell plays Brady, a sitting member of the US House of Representatives from North Carolina. Brady is pretty much what would happen if Ricky Bobby and Ron Burgundy had a son, and that son won a seat in Congress. Southern in accent and tastes, focused on his hair more than on his platform, and slicker than sow in a tar pit, he gives lip service to his lovely wife and family, his country, and Jesus. Behind the scenes, he’s just a guy with a hot mistress, a desperate need to keep his seat, and not much else on his mind.

Brady is unopposed until he makes the mother of all campaign errors: Recording a sexy message to his mistress and then mistakenly sending it out to his district as a campaign robocall. Local kingmakers enlist the square, loser son of a local bigwig to run against him.

Marty Huggins (Galifianakis) has a fat wife, two chubby sons, two pudgy pug dogs, and a fanatical desire to please his father.

He’s totally in.

The race becomes a battle between a hapless innocent and a jaded incumbent. However, the movie plays against type as Huggins becomes the one to be seduced by what politicans call special interests while Brady is surprised to find he just may care about the people after all.

In the meantime, the two run the most ridiculous and nastiest of nasty campaigns. Baby punching is only the beginning.

It’s a lot of fun to watch these over the top antics. Especially silly is a campaign tactic in which Brady defends his infidelity with an ad that says “Look at her, she’s hot. Anyone would do the same.” Apparently it polls through the roof with men but not so much with women.

In the first few scenes of the Southern setting of the film, the unsettling feeling sets in that the movie is mocking Southern, conservative Christians. But, like The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, the movie can find humor in its Southern setting without being offensive about it. It mocks politicians that play homage to “America. Jesus. Freedom” without being able to recite the Lord’s Prayer, but not the actual faithful themselves. While it has a lot to say about Southern politicians, it treats Southern people affectionately.

More troubling is the concept that businessmen are evil overlords running the system. Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow play the two Motch brothers, businessmen tired of shipping their jobs to China. They’d rather ship China to the US, open up sweat factories, evade labor laws, and make a little slice of cheap product heaven in North Carolina.

Thinly – or not even so thinly – veiled references to the Koch brothers, the Motch brothers pump secret money into the system, buying any politician that will make the EPA look the other way and the DOL pretend not to notice anything.

This is the latest boogieman in politics and the “get the dirty money out of politics” message will be received well by both the Occupy Wall Street left and the Tea Party right.

We all know, or should know, it’s not that simple. A Congressman doesn’t have the power to block the EPA, for example. The screenwriters would have been well-served to hire an eight grade civics teacher to scan the script. As a comedy it works. But don’t watch it before taking your AP US Government exam. You would surely flunk. As a public service, I’ve listed the top five electoral errors in the film.

The core, however, of both Brady and Huggins is a desire to make life better for the people of their district. That desire may be buried under self-interest or expressed in strange and semi-legal ways, but it pulses in each heart. It is what makes the core of the movie almost corny. As in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, there is a lot corruption to avoid, but the underlying act of serving one’s country is noble.

They’re practically the same movie, if you take out the baby punching, sexual content, and R-rated language.

Rated R for crude sexual content, language, and brief nudity. About the same level as other Will Ferrell movies, which is to say it earns its R.

Filed Under: Featured, In Theaters, Movie Reviews, Uncategorized Tagged With: movie, The Campaign, Will Ferrell, Zach Galifianakis

‘Deadline’ tells a Sad and Often Neglected American Tale

July 31, 2012 By Rebecca Cusey

With stars like Will Smith reigning the box office and directors like Tyler Perry cranking out movie after movie, you’d think there would be more great films about the most American of stories: the legacy of slavery and racism on both white and black Americans.

They’re few and far between. Films like Glory, Malcolm X, Amistad, Mississippi Burning, and Do the Right Thing come and go, but Hollywood in general is skittish about touching a raw and touchy issue.

Like Oscar nominee The Help, Deadline seeks to shine light on shameful and dark episodes in America’s history.

A young man is gunned down in Alabama. Wallace Simpson is missed by his mother Mary Pell (Jackie Welsch) and the African-American community to which he belonged. Justice, however, turns a seemingly blind eye. No one investigates. No one is charged. After all, the victim is black and in this racially charged South, it’s best to not ask questions.

Heiress Trey Hall (Lauren Jenkins) likes to ask questions. She starts her own investigation, one that will lead to Nashville reporters Matt Harper (Steve Talley) and Ronnie Bullock (Eric Roberts). Together, the three uncover the legacy of dark Southern racism, coverups, and violence. However, they also shine a light on dignity, justice, and the emerging New South.

Adapted from the novel Grievances by Mark Ethridge, Deadline is based on the true story of Ethridge’s journalistic investigation of the 1970 murder of Wallace Youmans in South Carolina.

The murder was not only conceived by white men in a racially motivated act, but justice was thwarted by a system of authorities who turned a blind eye or actively covered up the crime.

This is an essentially American story that continues to this day, as evidenced by the attention circling the case of George Zimmerman, accused of murder in the shooting of a black youth while Zimmerman acted as a Neighborhood Watch volunteer.

Still, we don’t see much of it on screen. For every Crash or Grand Canyon, there are fifty Avengers that sidestep the thorny questions of race relations.

That may be changing.

With the success of The Help, which managed to put a warm, gentle, and kind face on fighting racism, more movies about the issue are in the pipestream. Most notably, Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained will hit theaters in December. Reported to be a brutal and relentless story of vengeance acted out by a former slave, it will be neither warm nor kind. Jaime Foxx stars.

An all star cast is lined up for Steve McQueen’s Twelve Years a Slave, due out in 2013.

Is America ready to deal with its past onscreen? We’re about to find out.

After all, one of the widely acknowledged American movies of all time addresses the issue: To Kill a Mockingbird.

Sometimes a little bravery creates something truly great.

This article was written as part of the Patheos Movie Club for Deadline.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Deadline, movie, race, racism

First Look: Aronofsky Builds his Ark for ‘Noah’

July 11, 2012 By Rebecca Cusey

Aronofsky is clearly building an epic ark for an epic Bible movie, posting on Twitter a picture of a gigantic construction site. It’s the place where he’s piecing together his ark for his story about the Biblical Noah’s flood.

He Tweeted this photo with the message: “I dreamt about this since I was 13. And now it’s a reality. Genesis 6:14 ‪#noah‬”

Genesis 6:14 says: So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out.

Noah stars Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, and Anthony Hopkins. It is due to open March of 2014 and is currently in production.

For more on the movie:

Is the cast too white?

Anthony Hopkins cast as Methuselah

Is Hollywood getting Friendly with Faith?

Update: We don’t want to toot our own horn – well, yes, maybe we do. We beat the big players, Deadline Hollywood, The Hollywood Reporter, and just about everybody else but Aronofsky himself to bring you the first picture of the ark under construction. And we plan to keep doing it. Patheos is on top of movie news, especially when it has a religious hook.

Filed Under: Faith on Film, Featured, slider Tagged With: ark, Aronofsky, boat, Darren Aronofsky, movie, Noah, picture, ship, tweet

Is it Possible for Woody Allen to “get” Rome?

July 9, 2012 By Rebecca Cusey

Ah Woody Allen, the quintessential New Yorker, neurotic, self-focused, consumed with triviality of details.

So can he “get” the Eternal City, a place completely uninterested in the individual? A city infused with millennia, steeped in ancient humanity, the push and pull of empire and faith?

Apparently not, if his movie To Rome with Love, is any indication. (Click through for my review.)

Manhattan, he gets. That’s a given. He captured the magic and fantasy of Paris in Midnight in Paris. He can do Los Angeles and Barcelona and London.

But Rome?

It may be too much for him.

He populated his Rome with New Yorkers, some characters actual New Yorkers imported from the States and others a Roman version of New Yorkers. Here we have a loving couple just needing a sexual escapade to launch them into the perfect marriage. There we have a comic-infused undertaker just waiting to be discovered as an opera singer. Everyone is modern and amoral and sophisticated.

But where are the nuns?

You can’t throw a cannoli in Rome without hitting a nun or priest. Yet, they are M.I.A. from Allen’s movie. Allen’s characters frequent little cafes and walk ancient streets, but don’t enter the churches.

And that’s what Rome is all about, isn’t it? On every corner, art, monuments, cathedrals, statues, and the very framing of architecture point to humanity grappling with the universe, with God, with destiny.

Let’s start with the eight Egyptian obelisks that dot the city. For the most part, they were plundered from the more ancient Egyptian empire during the height of the Roman Empire before the Christian era, a pagan empire plundering the riches and gods of a formerly powerful and long-lasting people. There they stand, although the religion and empire that built them has long crumbled, along with the religion and empire that plundered them.

Or take the Pantheon, built by the Emperor Hadrian in 118, when the Empire seemed destined to last forever and the chorus of Roman gods the apex of all gods. Little did he suspect the seeds of revolution were already sprouting in his empire. They weren’t political revolution – that had been dealt with before, harshly – but a revolution in the very concept of what it means to be human, a revolution that would strip him and his successors of divine status and the gods of their glory.

The Panthenon in Rome

Take the Coliseum, mentioned in the movie, where adherents of a new faith would die before beasts and gladiators, or the catacombs, where the faithful hid among the dead to worship.

Roman Coliseum

Or focus on the Christian era, where corruption and faithfulness battled for a thousand years, where great glory mixed with great shame, and continues to this day. This is the awe-inspiring nature of the Vatican, with its Sistine Chapel altar wall by Michelangelo so vividly showing the struggle between Heaven and Hell, good and evil, salvation and damnation.

None of this weight of history cares much about one neurotic man’s ambition to find a new singer, nor of sexual escapades, nor of the wild and semi-regretted affair with a troubled girl.

Allen is Jewish, a people who have their own long history with Rome, but that doesn’t factor into the movie either. He works hard to avoid all mention of the transcendent.

The very thing Woody Allen specializes in – staring into the trivialities of one’s own experience to highlight the absurdity there – will not do in Rome.

In Rome, triviality washes away, along with the individual.

Allen hints at this. Two different characters bring up “ozymandias melancholi,” the melancholy brought on by the weight of ruins, the feeling that life and empires flash by and nothing lasts forever. But they only speak of it; they do not become changed by it.

Rome – and humanity in general – handles this melancholy by embracing the eternal, coming to terms with mortality, usually by finding faith.

Woody Allen handles it by doubling down on the trivial.

It seems he is incapable, when in Rome, of doing as the Romans do.