King Arthur: Legend of the Sword isn't exactly Oscarbait. Director Guy Ritchie is known for two things: His visual flourishes and his narrative indifference. From his relatively gritty early crime films to the silly Sherlock Holmes franchise (with Robert Downey... Read more
MTV doled out its annual MTV Movie and TV Awards last night, and Beauty and the Beast’s Emma Watson accepted the award for “Best Actor in a Movie”—the first major gender-neutral acting award. “MTV’s move to create a genderless award for acting will mean something different to everyone,” she said. “But to me, it indicates that acting is about the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. And that doesn’t need to be separated into two different categories.” The... Read more
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 doesn't dilly dally. The film opens with an action sequence, our heroes battling a massive, mouthy interdimensional creature with a taste for expensive batteries. They shoot and stab at the thing while the beast... Read more
The Silver Chair is getting a movie. And I’m … cautiously optimistic? I know, I know. Foolish, right? Previous films based on C.S. Lewis’ beloved Chronicles of Narnia haven’t given me a lot of reason for optimism. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was fine but flat. Prince Caspian was a grim, gloomy slog. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was actually pretty fun—if you could forget everything you knew about the book. OK, so for bibliophiles like me, the... Read more
The biggest revelation from National Geographic’s Genius: Albert Einstein could be kind of a jerk. Oh, he was certainly a genius too, as NatGeo’s original series makes quite clear from the title on. Most everyone knew it the moment he walked on the campus of Swiss Federal Polytechnic in Zürich as a cocky 16-year-old. And, sure, he was a likeable jerk. His friends loved him. The public adored him. He was as much a celebrity as scientist, which speaks to... Read more
You could call Ralph Winter one of the fathers of the modern cinematic superhero. Before Spider-Man made a mint in 2002 and Iron Man put an Arc reactor into the genre in 2008, the Hollywood producer shepherded X-Men to theaters in 2000—proving that serious superhero movies could be both good and lucrative. He’s also one of Hollywood’s most prominent Christians. His latest project, The Promise, in theaters tomorrow, April 21, straddles both the secular and spiritual worlds. It’s predicated on... Read more
On Easter, my second father was actually dying. Read more
A couple of days ago, the big-budget drama The Promise was screened at The Vatican. Director Terry George, producer Eric Esrailian and some of the actors were at the screening, and Variety says the whole affair was “a clear sign of Catholic Church support ahead of the film’s upcoming U.S. release.” Whether that means that the Catholic Church loves the movie, well, that’s perhaps not so clear. But to just screen the movie at all was indeed a strong statement that will ruffle... Read more
A couple of days ago, the big-budget drama The Promise was screened at The Vatican. Director Terry George, producer Eric Esrailian and some of the actors were at the screening, and Variety says the whole affair was “a clear sign of Catholic Church support ahead of the film’s upcoming U.S. release.” Whether that means that the Catholic Church loves the movie, well, that’s perhaps not so clear. But to just screen the movie at all was indeed a strong statement that will ruffle... Read more
Heard of Slamma Jamma? I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s pretty awful. Or, depending on how you look at it, awful pretty. It’s the story of Michael Diggs, a college basketball star who spent six years in the slammer for armed robbery and/or being an accessory to murder (we hear both), but who now believes in God and wants to find redemption through a series of slam dunk competitions. The basketball gymnastics we see here range from the credible... Read more
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