Begin Again: Born Again

Last updated on: November 2, 2014 at 10:43 pm By Paul Asay

With only Jake Gyllenhaal’s disturbing Nightcrawler new in theaters this past weekend, I want to revisit Begin Again, a little indie flick just released on video Oct. 28. Begin Again, starring Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo, opened in theaters June 27, the same day that Transformers 4 plowed into multiplexes with all the subtlety we’ve come to expect from the series. While Transformers thundered to a $138 million weekend, Begin Again earned just a little over $500,000. And yet, this rare R-rated (mostly... Read more

The Exorcist and Frightening Faith

Last updated on: October 30, 2014 at 8:16 pm By Paul Asay

It’s Halloween and, given the date, it’s only fair that I offer y’all a scary-movie post today. So let me humbly offer this: A take on The Exorcist—considered one of the scariest movies ever—originally published on my personal blog last year. In honor of its 40th anniversary, The Exorcist was recently re-released on Blu-ray, complete with a director’s cut and a special little book that has who-knows-what sorts of horrors in it. Grace Hill Media—an organization that helps market largely secular... Read more

Entertaining Churches, Preachy Movies

Last updated on: October 30, 2014 at 8:05 pm By Paul Asay

I had breakfast with an old friend of mine yesterday morning. He’d done some work for The Song, a Christian movie that got reasonably good reviews and was largely ignored at the box office. My friend drew my attention to the Twitter account of Richard Ramsey (@RichieRamsey), the writer and director behind The Song—and one tweet in particular. “Evangelicals,” Ramsey wrote. “We choose churches that entertain us and movies that preach to us.” I am now a Richard Ramsey fan. I... Read more

St. Vincent: Not Much of a Saint, But Getting Better

Last updated on: October 27, 2014 at 9:06 pm By Paul Asay

“It is what it is.” We hear that a lot in the indie movie St. Vincent—much to the frustration of our titular hero (Bill Murray). The bank uses those words when he’s turned down for a loan. He hears it again when his beloved wife, stricken with dementia, is going to be turned out of her care center. “It is what it is,” he’s told. But while that may be true of Vincent’s money woes, it’s not true of people. Not... Read more

Birdman: Finding a Life of Flighty Purpose

Last updated on: October 24, 2014 at 12:38 pm By Paul Asay

It’s been a week since I saw Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), and I’m still thinking about it. This is a film that sticks with you, like a splinter you just can’t tweeze. You can check out my Plugged In review to get a rundown of all the movie’s nasty stuff, of course. So with that out of the way, an admission: I liked Birdman. A lot, actually. It’s both utterly real and utterly absurd,... Read more

Exodus: Gods and Kings, Sneak Peak

Last updated on: October 21, 2014 at 7:50 pm By Paul Asay

I had a chance to see about 40 minutes worth of footage from Exodus: Gods and Kings Monday night. I’ve been curious about what Director Ridley Scott might be cooking up with this biblical epic: The man is unquestionably a great director (his resume includes Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator and so on), but his interaction with religion in his work, while frequent, has been mixed. Scott, an atheist, has said that religion has been the source of much of the... Read more

Celebrate Diversity … in Christian Film

Last updated on: October 19, 2014 at 5:37 pm By Paul Asay

Salon’s Edwin Lyngar thinks that Christian films are awful. He’s not alone in that. I have seen my share of awful Christian films myself. But Lyngar believes all Christian films are downright horrid—and they’re all horrid in much the same way. He writes: You can’t judge Christian films like other movies, Any casual examination shows them to be conventionally terrible without exception. But they are not meant to be good, but rather they are designed to deliver pointed messages, spurring... Read more

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: Jimmy Stewart Plays Jesus

Last updated on: October 17, 2014 at 7:28 am By Paul Asay

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, directed by Frank Capra, premiered 75 years ago today in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The screening was sponsored by the National Press Club, which in itself is kind of interesting, since Mr. Smith spends a portion of the movie punching journalists in the face. Mr. Jefferson Smith (played by Jimmy Stewart, classic Hollywood’s favorite everyman) is small-town hero in flyover country, selected to fill a vacated senate seat for a couple of months before... Read more

Hearts and Souls in the Walking Dead Premiere

Last updated on: October 14, 2014 at 3:57 pm By Paul Asay

I know, I know. I wrote a short Walking Dead blog last week. But I recently watched the Season Five premiere “No Sanctuary” for review, and I kinda feel like talking about it. It was bloody. Boy howdy was it bloody. Heads bashed. Throats slit. People eaten alive. And we won’t even talk about what a bad episode it was for the undead. Even Dracula would look at the goings-on here and gone, “Ewwww!” But the episode also wallowed into... Read more

Putting Down the Pickets

Last updated on: October 13, 2014 at 11:15 am By Paul Asay

The season finale of Cartoon Network’s Black Jesus aired a few days ago Oct. 9, and the A.V. Club marveled about how strangely uncontroversial the show was. “Nothing ever really feels important enough to get anyone on this show to put their joint down, let alone protest,” writes Eric Thurm, adding the program is “inoffensive, easygoing and responsible” (his emphasis, not mine). Well, I’d not go that far. It’s true that Black Jesus didn’t generate the sort of controversy that... Read more