Normally, if your dog digs up something a big, smelly blob in the forest, you’d quickly pull the pooch away and go about your business. Unless you’re in Northern Italy and know what an Alba truffle looks like. Then you might dig it up and sell it to someone for a few hundred Euros. The Truffle Hunters, directed by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw, introduces us to a strange, literally underground obsession. As the title suggests, it focuses especially on... Read more
Christian entertainment blooms this time of year. In the space between Palm Sunday and Easter, Christians found plenty of screened-based stories to scratch their spiritual itch, from The Girl Who Believed in Miracles in theaters to Resurrection on Discovery+ to the first episode of The Chosen’s second season on VidAngel. And for those with a more macabre bent, they might’ve stumbled across The Unholy, too. Now, admittedly, Holy Week seems like a strange time to release a horror movie called... Read more
Godzilla vs. Kong isn’t a great work of art. It’s not even a great movie. But it does feature two great big monsters, and everything else—both in scale and in plotting—is really beside the point. And that, in a way, is the point. If there’s one thing the movie makes abundantly clear, it’s that these titans don’t like it when we humans get uppity. Titan, by the way, is the generic name such massive creatures are being called here. (Kaiju... Read more
Resurrection, the newest faith-based movie from Hollywood power couple Roma Downey and Mark Burnett (and just launched on Discovery+), takes a different tack than most movies about Jesus. While many concentrate on his life, teaching and crucifixion, they run the credits shortly thereafter. Mel Gibson’s bloody hit The Passion of the Christ spent most of its two-hour runtime on Christ’s suffering, and maybe 90 seconds on His triumphant return. And I get why. By then all the story’s innate tension... Read more
Pan’s Labyrinth is not, exactly, a horror movie—no matter what my podcast partner might say. Guillermo del Toro’s freaky fable is more like a dark fantasy tale spliced together with, admittedly, an all-too-horrifically real war drama. So to post this on Halloween week feels a little like cheating. But the film includes many elements that’d be right at home in supernatural horror movies: monsters, magic and some surprisingly deep reflections on the nature of evil. It’s also deeply interested in... Read more
I can’t tell you when you’ll be able to see The Healing Garden. My understanding is that the makers are looking for a distributor now. But hopefully it’ll get one, because there’s definitely an audience for a movie like this. It is as stereotypically Christian a Christian movie as I’ve seen in the last few years. For those who aren’t up on the Christian movie genre, faith-based films tend to follow a formula—as strict as you might find in an... Read more
Time, a powerful new documentary directed by Garrett Bradley and available now on Amazon Prime, looks at the criminal justice system through the eyes of Fox Rich, a woman trying for nearly two decades to get her husband released. But the film highlights faith, too. Because when it can’t have faith in the system, this family finds it elsewhere. Fox Rich—also known as Sibil Fox Richardson—helped her husband rob a bank in 1997. They were trying to keep their own... Read more
Zach Sobiech wasn’t expecting a miracle when he went to Lourdes. His family made the trip to France shortly after doctors told Zach that his cancer had moved into his lungs. The 17-year-old songwriter was dying. And while he and his mother, Laura, believed that something might happen when Zach waded into those waters—waters that, since 1858, believers have said were miraculous—they knew that miracles were rare: That God might have other plans for Zach. That’s really the most overt... Read more
Words on Bathroom Walls, a teen romantic drama released to theaters this past weekend, takes on two subjects rarely dealt with—or, at least, dealt with well—in film: schizophrenia and confession. Adam is schizophrenic, which means he’s never alone. Aspects of his mind take on physical form for him: a hippy, well-meaning guru; a tough-as-nails bodyguard; a bathrobe-wearing schlub that, according to Adam, feels pulled out of an ‘80s-circa romcom. But Adam’s mind contains a darker voice, too—one that pulls Adam... Read more
Tom Hanks’ new movie Greyhound takes place during what Winston Churchill called the Battle of the Atlantic, a six-year contest between Allied and German forces to control the ocean linking war-torn Europe and the United States’ bustling factories and resources. But it’s also about a captain—Commander Ernest Krause (played by Hanks), who helms a boat nicknamed Greyhound and leads a handful of Allied destroyers as they shepherd a convoy of merchant vessels through hostile waters. And in a way, it’s... Read more
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