Posted on February 18, 2011 at 3:56 pm
The Grace Card is the story of a policeman who must find his way through bitterness and despair after the death of his son. When he is assigned a new partner, a part-time pastor, they find a way to help each other to healing and hope.
The film-makers have put together a Church resource kit about the film as well.
Posted on February 18, 2011 at 8:00 am
I was delighted to find the neglected gem “Stairway to Heaven” (sometimes known as “A Matter of Life and Death”) available on Hulu. Fans of classic movies and spiritual themes should be sure to take a look.
It is a 1946 British film starring David Niven about a WWII pilot who saves his crew and then, realizing that his plane cannot make it back, and with his parachute destroyed, leaps from theplane, preferring to die by falling than in flames. But because his “guide” from the other world does not pick him up, he is caught between this world and the next.
The story works on two levels; you can see it as a literal struggle between heaven and earth or you can see it as a metaphor for what is going on internally as he struggles to recover from a head injury. On both levels, the strongest tie he has to life is the connection he made in a brief conversation with an American military radio operator (Kim Hunter) just before jumping.
This is a beautiful and deeply moving film and very resonant with the themes of “The Adjustment Bureau,” opening next month, inspired by a story by Philp K. Dick.
Posted on February 3, 2011 at 8:00 am
Be sure to take a look at this excellent interview by Dann Gire with John Wells, writer-director of “The Company Men,” about the lessons he learned from his clergyman father and how they influenced the film.
When you grow up as I did in a very socially progressive, Episcopalian household, there’s a great deal of importance placed on the teachings, the parables and the notions of Christianity, teaching a certain generosity and kindness and understanding and empathy for others.
I think that colors all of my work. It would be impossible for me to separate that out from what I write, what I think, and how I hear things. Everything I hear is filtered through that moral framework I grew up with.
Posted on January 27, 2011 at 6:00 pm
Actors! They just can’t help themselves when a juicy part comes along. And that is why Oscar-winner Sir Anthony Hopkins finds himself in “The Rite,” an “inspired by a true story” thriller about an exorcist who struggles with his own demons.
Actors who go over the top are often described as “chewing the scenery.” Sir Anthony here doesn’t just chew the scenery; he grinds it into dust.
The movie begins with Michael (“The Tudors'” Colin O’Donoghue), preparing a body for burial, the artifice of stuffing the inside of the mouth and sewing it shut to make it look comfortingly “real.” Michael and his father are undertakers, working out of their home. “We serve the dead but we don’t talk about them,” Michael’s taciturn father (Rutger Hauer) responds when Michael asks about her. Michael is not at all sure he is a believer, but in his family the only options are mortician and priest, so he enters seminary.
Four years later, he plans to leave. He is still not sure of his faith. One of his teachers persuades him (in part by threatening to turn his scholarship into a six-figure loan) to take a class at the Vatican in exorcism.
In Rome, he meets a Welsh priest named Father Lucas Trevant (Hopkins) who lets him watch as he tries to exorcise a demon from a pregnant teenager. Michael acts as the representative of the audience by expressing his skepticism — how do the priests know that it is not just mental illness? Can we believe, in an era of science and empiricism, in demonic possession?
Director Mikael HÃ¥fström has a good eye and a deft touch. He films the settings beautifully. And he knows when to lighten the mood with a little comic relief, though it is a bit much when someone comes to the door and Trevant says, archly, “Speak of the devil!” O’Donoghue has an appealing screen presence and holds his own on screen with Hopkins.
But the movie falls about the same time Hopkins’ character does. Up to that point, it does a pretty good job of balancing the spooky-horror gotcha schocks with some sincerity about the validity of demonic possession. But once Hopkins starts unraveling, the movie — and the interest of the audience — does, too. (more…)
Posted on January 20, 2011 at 2:56 pm
I don’t have an embed code, but you can visit YouTube to see an animated version of a Talmudic story in honor of today’s celebration of the Jewish holiday of Tu B’Shvat that gives thanks for trees and other things that grow.
