With industry analysts predicting a box-office take of over $300 million, The Passion of The Christ is easily the biggest religious blockbuster in decades. But for sheer popularity, staying power and cultural clout, it would be hard to top the biblical epics of the 1950s. One film towers above them all. According to Box Office Mojo, Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments — which is now available as a “special collector’s edition” DVD — grossed the equivalent of $790 million... Read more
THE MOVIE that everyone said was too risky is now on course to become one of the biggest box-office hits of all time. Mel Gibson’s graphic and controversial The Passion of the Christ surprised everyone — including its own distributor — when it opened last Wednesday. Newmarket, the company that released the film in the United States, predicted that afternoon that the film would gross about $20 million; instead, it made $23.6 million for the day, or $26.6 million once... Read more
Over the weekend thousands of Canadians flocked to movie theatres to see The Passion of the Christ. Peter Chattaway has seen Mel Gibson’s movie on the torture and crucifixion of Jesus…twice. He reviews movies for a national paper called ChristianWeek and contributes to the American website ChristianityToday.com. On Commentary he says he doesn’t think Gibson’s movie rises above the violence and evil it depicts. (more…) Read more
The Passion of The Christ may be the most artistically and commercially ambitious feature film about Jesus to come out of Hollywood since the 1960s. It is certainly the most devout, though at first it seems odd that Mel Gibson should be the one to produce, write, and direct a film about the Prince of Peace. From the buddy-cop Lethal Weapon franchise to revisionist epics like The Patriot, Gibson has specialized in playing violent action heroes who take bloody revenge... Read more
EVERYTHING you know about The Passion of the Christ is wrong. For over a year, the film’s most vocal critics have said Mel Gibson’s movie about the death of Jesus is anti-Semitic, while its most vocal supporters have said no, it’s only an accurate representation of scripture and history. In truth, the film is neither. First, the charges of anti-Semitism. It is true that Gibson’s film tends to divide the Jewish race into those who follow Christ and those who... Read more
Wow, these discs just keep getting cheaper and cheaper. Two years, two months and a few weeks ago, I picked up the then-new two-disc Star Trek: The Motion Picture set for about CDN$32, after tax. Since then, Paramount has been re-issuing the subsequent Star Trek films as two-disc sets packed with extras, at a pace of one every several months, and today, I picked up the two-disc Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country set for about CDN$16. First, I must... Read more
THOUSANDS of Canadian pastors and ministry leaders got a sneak preview of The Passion of the Christ last week, as Campus Crusade and several other evangelistic organizations sponsored a cross-country tour of a rough cut of Mel Gibson’s graphic and controversial film about the death of Jesus. The film was shown to an estimated 9,000 people in nine cities over six days, beginning in Halifax and ending with two screenings January 17 at Pacific Academy’s Chandos Pattison Auditorium in Surrey,... Read more
As per my 2003 Journal, videos and DVDs are in italics. Films I saw for the first time have an asterisk (*) next to them. Not counting extras and promo items. Jan 2 — 21 Grams * Jan 3 — The Statement * Jan 4 — Cold Mountain * Jan 5 — Girl with a Pearl Earring * Jan 5 — The Butterfly Effect * Jan 5 — The Last Temptation of Christ [w/ audio commentary] Jan 7 — Monster... Read more
FROM THE extra definite article in the film’s title to the digital re-colouring of actor James Caviezel’s eyes, Mel Gibson is still tweaking The Passion of the Christ, his film about the death of Jesus. The film, which was originally going to be titled The Passion, was re-named The Passion of Christ a few months ago when it turned out Miramax had already registered ‘The Passion’ for an adaptation of the Jeanette Winterson novel of that name. Gibson has since... Read more
SO MUCH for the salvation of humanity. When The Matrix first came out four and a half years ago, many Christians were intrigued and excited by the film’s many biblical allusions. The protagonist was a hacker named Neo (Keanu Reeves) who discovered that the entire human race was trapped within a virtual reality, and all people were living in a computer-generated dream state to hide the fact that the world had been conquered by machines that were using human beings... Read more
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