Amazon’s Prime Video is set to trot out its lavish series, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power this Friday. Amazon reportedly spent $465 million on the eight-episode series (making it the most expensive television show ever), and it looks it. The show’s not entirely true to J.R.R. Tolkien, from what I gather. It takes place in Middle Earth’s 3,000-year-long Second Age (The Lord of the Rings trilogy takes place in the Third), and most characters the casual Tolkien... Read more
It rains movies in August. The summer’s big blockbusters have come and gone, and studios are desperately trying to snag a few more ticket sales or a few more eyeballs on TV screens before the kids go back to school and footballs fill the air. And that can lead to some pleasant surprises. Take Luck, a G-rated animated film on Apple TV+. Admittedly, Luck comes with baggage before you even flip it on. Former Pixar wizard John Lasseter—who left Pixar... Read more
Thor: Love and Thunder is all about gods. Not God: gods. If you’ve seen it, you know. You see literally hundreds of them here—maybe thousands. They fill a massive auditorium in Omnipotence City, the decadent meeting place for galactic deities. Admittedly, earth seems to have way more than its fair share of representatives there: You see some Incan and Mayan gods at the corners, and the Greek god Zeus (played by a rather dough-like Russell Crowe) leads the whole caboodle,... Read more
Give the doc its props: Stay Prayed Up is as good as its name. It opens with a prayer, it closes in prayer and it’s filled with prayer—spoken or sung—throughout. As a kid tells us at the very outset, “If you guys love church, this event is really churchy.” And it’s churchy in the best, most melodic of ways. Stay Prayed Up, now in limited theatrical release, introduces us to Lena Mae Perry, founder and driving force of the gospel... Read more
Kamala Khan is just an ordinary teen with an extraordinary twist. Is it her powers? Her ability to stretch or create matter out of thin air? Nah. We’re talking about Marvel, after all. You can’t throw a rock in Times Square in the Marvel Cinematic Universe without hitting a superpowered individual. And given that Kamala is the protagonist of an MCU show called Ms. Marvel, well, the biggest twist would be if she didn’t have superpowers. No, what makes Kamala... Read more
Alex Garland might be one of the most provocative directors working right now. His works can feel like enigmatic fever dreams: You might not know exactly what Garland’s saying, but boy, is he saying it with conviction. Garland began his directorial career with the much-lauded Ex Machina, featuring a very unusual lover’s triangle that mulls consciousness and humanity. He followed that up with Annihilation, which might just be the strangest alien invasion story ever told. Devs, an eight-part miniseries on... Read more
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness gobbled up a whole multiverse of money this weekend. It earned $185 million and shows little signs of slowing. Too bad it wasn’t really that great. You can read my Plugged In review of the Multiverse of Madness here, and I may have more to say about Doctor Strange et al in this space later. But for now, I wanted to mention a movie that just might be the ultimate in counter-programming. No... Read more
Last November, a quiet little Christian movie rolled into a handful of theaters nationwide. Based on a stage play written and starring Max McLean, The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C.S. Lewis came and went before most people even knew it was there. But now the film is available on streaming platforms (Apple TV and Google Play) and on Blu-ray and DVD. And it’s well worth a look. The Most Reluctant Convert focuses on noted scholar, author and... Read more
The Bad Guys are just the worst. The Ocean’s Eleven-like crime team is made of the sorts of critters we’ve always known were up to no good. Mr. Wolf and his kind have huffed and puffed their way into many a story—and never as the hero. His best friend, Mr. Snake, comes from a lineage that’s been looked down on (literally) since the Garden of Eden. Mr. Shark, Mr. Piranha and Ms. Tarantula (known to her friends as “Webs”) round... Read more
As an actor, Mark Wahlberg has been a cop and a crook, a boxer and a foul-mouthed bear’s best friend. But I don’t think he’s ever played a priest before. For Wahlberg, Father Stu—a movie which he produced as well as starred in—was a true passion project. He spent “millions” of his own money to make sure the movie was made. He told Insider.com that he prayed “every day about getting this film made,” and—as also reported by Patheos blogger... Read more
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