Best-selling author Tom Rath writes books about how anyone can find more energy and joy. Now his work is explored fuller in a new documentary called “Fully Charged.” Rath and experts from academia, medicine, business, religion, and the military talk about the small changes anyone can make, and demonstrate the extraordinary results.
It is not easy, but it is simple. Eating better, exercising more, getting sleep, connecting more deeply with those we care about, and tapping into our innate gratitude and generosity gives us a feeling of purpose and meaning that gives us more energy, more joy, and more satisfaction. It’s just the thing for for a reminder of what matters in the midst of holiday stress and New Year’s resolutions.
Coming to Theaters: Women of Faith — An Amazing Joyful Journey
Posted on November 13, 2015 at 10:47 am
Women of Faith, the world’s largest producer of inspirational events for Christian women, announces the organization’s first-ever event for cinemas, Women of Faith: An Amazing Joyful Journey with screenings starting February 18, 2016. BY Experience, pioneers of live cinema events, in association with Fathom Events in the U.S. and Cineplex Entertainment in Canada, are distributing the event to cinemas throughout North America. Tickets are on sale now online, Fathom events, and at participating theatre box offices.
The cinematic event takes audiences on the historic journey of the Women of Faith movement through the years—on stage and off—and along their travels with World Vision, sharing how Women of Faith has been an influence in the lives of more than 5 million women.
With lots of laughter and storytelling, this part documentary/part live stage event includes never-before-seen interviews, hilarious outtakes and behind-the-scenes footage that will feature some of the most beloved and popular speakers including Patsy Clairmont, Mary Graham, Jen Hatmaker, Nicole Johnson, Marilyn Meberg, Sandi Patty, Luci Swindoll, Sheila Walsh, and Thelma Wells, as well as music and performances from Christian contemporary artists who have appeared on the tour over the two decades.
Moviegoers will experience firsthand the history and the impact that the Women of Faith events have had on women through exhilarating worship, powerful testimonies, and personal stories shared by incredible communicators since the live events began in 1996.
“Since the beginning, the heart of Women of Faith has been to share real-life stories filled with humor in the midst of the heartache we all experience at times,” says Amy Chandy, who leads Programming for Women of Faith, where she has served for 17 years. “The transparency and authenticity of the women on our stage offer hope that has changed lives across North America and around the world. We’re so excited to share this journey with a new audience through this movie experience.”
Showings:
U.S. Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 7:00pm, with matinee showings on Saturday, February 20; March 3 at 7pm and March 5 for an additional matinee showings.
Canada – Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 7:00pm with an encore presentation Sunday, February 21, 2016 at 1pm. Canada will be on sale on November 20 and guests can go to www.Cineplex.com/Events for more information.
If I wrote this review the way writer-director Angelo Pizzo wrote the script for “My All American,” it would be something like this: I saw a movie. It was about football. Freddie Steinmark worked hard and inspired his team, but then got sick. It was sad. Copyright 2015 Clarius Entertainment
Pizzo wrote two of the best sports films of all time, “Rudy” and “Hoosiers,” but here, in another real-life sports story, he has decided that the audience needs a kind of running commentary from every character to explain — instead of show — the audience what is going on. In an early scene, Steinmark’s mother (Robin Tunney) tells him that because he is smaller than his friends, he will have to work harder. Later, other characters tell us repeatedly what we should be able to see: that he works harder than everyone else, that he is religious, even that he is handsome. This is a movie where a coach actually says that Steinmark has courage and guts. The dialogue is so exposition-heavy that it is like sawing lumber.
It is good to see a biopic that does not rely on the usual scenes of the girlfriend complaining that the lead character does not spend enough time with her. But Steinmark is portrayed as such an all-around saint that he is bland, without any character beyond niceness and determination. All of the characterizations are paper-thin. It is as though everyone on the screen is just another color commentator, not a character.
Steinmark (Finn Wittrock of “The Big Short”) is the son of hard-working Catholics. His father has two jobs, security guard by day, cop at night, but is so dedicated to his son’s athletics that he never misses a practice or a game. When a teammate suggests that perhaps Steinmark’s father is living his own dreams of an athletic career through his son, Freddie says no and the subject never comes up again. Freddie wants to play for Notre Dame and then the Chicago Bears. But college coaches think he is too small — except for Darrell Royal (Aaron Eckhart) at the University of Texas, who recruits Steinmark and his best friend. Steinmark’s devoted girlfriend, Linda (Sarah Bolger, one of the adorable Irish girls from “In America”), is accepted to UT as well.
Steinmark is so remarkable (as everyone keeps telling us and telling us and telling us) that he is made first-string in his sophomore year. He leads the defense so successfully that the championship is within reach. And then he begins to have a problem with his leg.
There are very clumsy attempts to do what “Rudy” and “Hoosiers” did in creating a sense of time and place. Here, the references to the war in Vietnam (and the protests), the moon landing, long hair, and 60’s songs are jarring and haphazard. The absence of any person of color may be authentic as regards the team, but on the campus? In the hospital? It is so strange that it becomes a distraction. The framing story of an interview decades later with Royal adds nothing. The football scenes are capably staged, but do not move the story forward.
There are references to Steinmark’s faith — he goes to mass every day and we see him pray and encourage his friend to pray. But we never get a sense of what the faith means to him or how it helps him understand his illness. There is more drama and more character in a throwaway scene involving another player who loses his position than there is in the portrayal of Steinmark’s story.
And there is only the slightest reference to one of the most interesting parts of the story; the lack of treatment options for someone with cancer in 1969. Steinmark’s diagnosis came just before the United States made its first major commitment to a “war on cancer,” with federal funds being used for research. This is the kind of context that could have provided the story with the impact it fails to muster.
Parents should know that there is brief strong language and a brief view of a bare tush, as well as discussions of serious illness and a sad death.
Family discussion: Were you surprised by Bill’s reaction to being replaced? What was it about Steinmark that made him so important to his coach?
If you like this, try: “Rudy,” “Hoosiers,” and “The Express”
“Spotlight” is about the ultimate betrayal of trust from an institution that literally represented the Word of God to many people. And it is about whether we will continue to have institutions that serve the essential function of monitoring the gap between aspiration and actuality, between what people say they are and do and the reality. Copyright Open Road Films 2015
Spotlight is the name for the investigative group of journalists working for the Boston Globe. While their colleagues reported on stories that could be reported and written in days, the Spotlight group had the luxury and the responsibility of taking as much as a year to do the kind of in-depth original research necessary for more complex and difficult subjects.
The staff at Spotlight was let by Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton) and included Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), and Matt Carroll (Brian d’Arcy James).
Like most of the members of the Globe staff they were Boston born and bred, Red Sox fans to the end, and raised Catholic. They had just finished work on a long-term piece when their new editor arrived. He was not Boston born and bred, not a Sox fan, and not Catholic. And perhaps most important, he was not a Boston Globe lifer. He was Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), most recently from Miami. He was an outsider in every way and they correctly suspected that the Globe was just a stop on his career trajectory. (He is now at the Washington Post.) They were not inclined to follow his idea of what stories they should cover.
But when he asked them about following up on a story about a priest who abused young boys, they could not come up with a reason not to other than it was too awful to imagine that it might be true. They begin to investigate. It turns out it was not one priest. It is a city-wide problem. A priest abuses children, is put on “medical leave” and transferred. The families of the boys are paid off and silenced. Then it happens again.
Director Tom McCarthy (“The Station Agent,” “Win Win”), writing with Josh Singer, really captures the culture of a newsroom, the stale coffee, the stale-er jokes, but the passionate curiosity that drives them all. This film will be compared to “All the President’s Men” because they are both true stories about young reporters getting huge stories everyone else missed. But the more important comparison is the way both movies capture the numbing work that goes into reporting. The doors knocked on. The doors slammed. And in this case, the nine years worth of diocese phone directories gone over, line by line (this was one of the last of the eras of off-line, analog document searches) to follow the “medical leave” priests took weeks of meticulous checking. It shows us reporting on the cusp of monumental technological change as well, when the paper makes the then-innovative decision to make the underlying documents available to readers online.
The reporters face enormous obstacles, starting with overcoming their own assumptions and then the powerful people who try to stop them. The church is an overwhelming force, politically and culturally. Do readers really want to know? Will the paper lose subscribers and advertisers?
There is no betrayal more devastating than to have the most trusted of institutions, the one most intimately involved in family joys and sorrows to be countenancing the abuse of those most deserving of its protection. But by the end of the film, that atrocity, already known to us, is not as troubling as the idea that news organizations may not be able to bring us the next one.
Parents should know that the theme of the movie is the investigation of widespread child sexual abuse and its cover-up, with sexual references, some graphic, and some strong language.
Family discussion: How did the arrival of an outsider affect the decision to do this story? Do today’s newspapers have the resources and support they need to do in-depth investigations like this one?
If you like this, try: “All the President’s Men” and “Truth” and the documentaries “Deliver Us from Evil” and “Twist of Faith”
