Amazon Prime’s The Underground Railroad, based on the 2017 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, is both great and terrible: It’s a powerful story with some incredible acting (hand an Emmy to Thuso Mbedu right now), but it can be really hard to watch at times. It’s not just the grotesque abuse we see that makes the show so difficult: Rather, it’s in how true it feels. And for Christians watching, it can be particularly convicting. The limited series centers... Read more
Monster, a new film premiering on Netflix today, focuses on 17-year-old honor student Steven Harmon (played by Kelvin Harrison Jr.) who’s been charged with murder. It deals a lot with plenty of issues in the cultural forefront: race, peer pressure and America’s judicial system. It’s not really about faith in the way we normally use that word. But it does come into play. In this clip, courtesy Grace Hill Media, Steve’s mother (Jennifer Hudson) tries to encourage her son through... Read more
His name is Dave, but he likes the kids to call him Pastor D. “I have the greatest job in the world,” Dave (Jeff Ryan) tells the camera. But, of course, he’s lying. I’m sure that being a youth pastor comes with some tremendous rewards, but it just might be the toughest job in ministry, and Dave has it tougher than most. Goth kid Deb rolls her eyes at him every time he opens his mouth. Bespectacled Steven won’t talk... Read more
I’m pretty up on my movies. When the Oscars roll around (as they will April 25), I can sit down and feel comfortable that I’ve seen most of what’s been nominated. That is, until the Best Documentary (Short Subject) pops up. And then I—like most of America—run to the kitchen to grab another cookie or two. Not this year. I saw all the short docs nominated this year, and I have to say, they were well worth my time. So... Read more
Turkish Delight. It’s a candy, of course—a mixture of sugar and starch and tasty bits of flavor that have been made in Turkey since it was known as the Ottoman Empire. In “The Whole World is Watching,” the fourth episode of Disney+’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Baron Zemo (played by Daniel Brühl) used it to discover the whereabouts of Karli Morgenthau, leader of the anti-nationalist group called the Flag Smashers. But for anyone with a familiarity with... Read more
Normally, if your dog digs up something a big, smelly blob in the forest, you’d quickly pull the pooch away and go about your business. Unless you’re in Northern Italy and know what an Alba truffle looks like. Then you might dig it up and sell it to someone for a few hundred Euros. The Truffle Hunters, directed by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, introduces us to a strange, literally underground obsession. As the title suggests, it focuses especially on... Read more
Christian entertainment blooms this time of year. In the space between Palm Sunday and Easter, Christians found plenty of screened-based stories to scratch their spiritual itch, from The Girl Who Believed in Miracles in theaters to Resurrection on Discovery+ to the first episode of The Chosen’s second season on VidAngel. And for those with a more macabre bent, they might’ve stumbled across The Unholy, too. Now, admittedly, Holy Week seems like a strange time to release a horror movie called... Read more
Godzilla vs. Kong isn’t a great work of art. It’s not even a great movie. But it does feature two great big monsters, and everything else—both in scale and in plotting—is really beside the point. And that, in a way, is the point. If there’s one thing the movie makes abundantly clear, it’s that these titans don’t like it when we humans get uppity. Titan, by the way, is the generic name such massive creatures are being called here. (Kaiju... Read more
Resurrection, the newest faith-based movie from Hollywood power couple Roma Downey and Mark Burnett (and just launched on Discovery+), takes a different tack than most movies about Jesus. While many concentrate on his life, teaching and crucifixion, they run the credits shortly thereafter. Mel Gibson’s bloody hit The Passion of the Christ spent most of its two-hour runtime on Christ’s suffering, and maybe 90 seconds on His triumphant return. And I get why. By then all the story’s innate tension... Read more
Pan’s Labyrinth is not, exactly, a horror movie—no matter what my podcast partner might say. Guillermo del Toro’s freaky fable is more like a dark fantasy tale spliced together with, admittedly, an all-too-horrifically real war drama. So to post this on Halloween week feels a little like cheating. But the film includes many elements that’d be right at home in supernatural horror movies: monsters, magic and some surprisingly deep reflections on the nature of evil. It’s also deeply interested in... Read more
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