DON CHEADLE is one of those actors who seems to be everywhere these days, popping up in After the Sunset, Ocean’s Twelve, The Assassination of Richard Nixon and so on. But his minor roles in those films pale next to his powerful performance in Hotel Rwanda, the true story of Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager who saved over a thousand Hutu and Tutsi lives during the genocidal civil war that afflicted that country ten years ago. Directed by Terry George... Read more
The success of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ has brought renewed attention to the old biblical epics, and if there is any one film that shares Gibson’s visual sensibility and his pious but sometimes lurid flair for melodrama, it would have to be Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings, new on DVD today as the latest classic release from Criterion Collection. Both films feature a hedonistic banquet populated by laughing revelers and a leopard on a leash.... Read more
Editor’s note: The 2003 film Luther comes out on video today. Since Christianity Today magazine already reviewed the film when it hit theaters, we asked Peter Chattaway to compare and contrast three different film versions — from 1953, 1973 and 2003 — about the famous Reformer. (more…) Read more
THERE are two ways to handle a highly controversial issue, especially when you are looking at the form that that issue took several decades ago, before our culture had settled into its current attitudes and assumptions. Two recent films, both of which take place in the post-war era, offer a stark study in contrasts between these two approaches. (more…) Read more
Years ago, when I was a teenager obsessed with history, I began to wonder why Christ had come to Earth at the particular time that he did. Why not a century or two earlier or later? I eventually settled on the idea that he had come at the time that would have been most opportune for spreading the gospel — a time after the Greeks had unified many of the world’s cultures and bestowed on them a common language, and... Read more
About eight years ago, something happened to Nicolas Cage. Known until then as an offbeat but fascinating charactor actor, Cage won an Oscar for playing an alcoholic who literally drinks himself to death in Leaving Las Vegas — and then he suddenly turned into an action hero. Many, but not all, of Cage’s onscreen adventures since then have been produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, including the R-rated action movies The Rock and Con Air and the PG-13 heist flick Gone in... Read more
One of my favorite films of all time is The Family Way, a comic drama from the mid-1960s about a newlywed couple from the north of England whose honeymoon plans fall through and who struggle with the fact that, a few months after the wedding, their marriage remains unconsummated, possibly because they are compelled by economic necessity to live with the husband’s parents. In one scene, the husband and wife go for a stroll through the town, where they are... Read more
Film is perhaps the most technological of artforms, and it relies increasingly on computers for its simulations of the real world. Not surprisingly, films have also expressed concern over the directions in which our technology is taking us, and these days, as spyware snoops around our hard drives and governments assume more powers unto themselves, the issue that crops up repeatedly in films is that of control. Who has it? Who uses it? And to what degree have the devices... Read more
Talk about timing. The same day a new movie about Martin Luther opened in Canadian theatres, the Daily Telegraph reported that German archaeologists had discovered the toilet on which he allegedly composed the 95 Theses that sparked the Protestant Reformation in 1517. “This is a great find,” said Stefan Rhein of the Luther Memorial Foundation, “particularly because we’re talking about someone whose texts we have concentrated on for years, while little attention has been paid to anything three-dimensional and human... Read more
FR. THOMAS Hopko may have retired as Dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary in New York two years ago, but he still keeps quite busy. Last month, the author of numerous books and articles on Eastern Orthodox Christianity spent nearly three weeks on the road, during which time he visited churches in Victoria and Vancouver and spoke at functions hosted by Regent College, Trinity Western University and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. The indefatigable Fr. Hopko sat down to talk about Orthodox-evangelical relations... Read more
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