Focus on Film

Focus on Film

Films, like books, are as diverse as the people who create them. Many portray rare and beautiful stories of dignity, courage and compassion. Others depict characters and situations so disturbing, it can take a few days to "shake them off."

The films below cover the gamut. Some would probably not be classified as "spiritual." These are the ones that need to be wrestled with bravely. They need to have their ideological underpinnings exposed and evaluated again, in the light of faith.

Our job is to take our faith to the movies and stay alert. Spiritual messages may be overt and readily apparent, or they may be discerned only in our reactions to the scenes and stories we see on the screen. Sometimes the best message we can come away with is to follow an alternate way, God's way.

In focusing on film as a spiritual resource, explorefaith hopes to acknowledge the present reality of our popular culture from a position of faith. That doesn't mean that we agree with, or approve of a film under scrutiny—only that, rather than letting movies dictate a position to us, we go to the theater mindful of God within us, and intentionally create a space into which God can speak. 

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HARRY POTTER AND THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE
For Torey Lightcap, the sixth Harry Potter film gives us just what we'd expect in the fight between good vs. evil. But don't think that will last...

THE VILLAGE: A FILM BUILT ON QUESTIONS
In his 2004 film The Village, M. Night Shyamalan uses a 19th century Shaker-like community to pose pointed questions about purity, innocence and the utopian dream.

A PBS REQUIEM FOR THOMAS MERTON
Airing nationally on December 14, the documentary Soul Searching and its companion volume give us new insights into the life, work and faith of Thomas Merton.

ABOUT SCHMIDT
At first brush, Warren Schmidt, the central character of this acclaimed film, would be easy to dismiss—his spiritual hunger appears negligible; his existence mundane—except for one thing: He is a whole lot like many of us.

AMAZING GRACE
I had mixed feelings about the film Amazing Grace, which opened in theaters on February 23. It was powerful, inspiring, and important—but it was also, at times, confusing and incomplete.

BATMAN BEGINS
Batman Begins is the first truly great superhero film. While most superhero films tend to emphasize spectacle over story, Batman Begins is more akin to a character study masquerading as an action movie.

BLADE RUNNER, THE FINAL CUT (2007)
Many fans of Harrison Ford know nothing about this, his most intriguing, challenging and disturbing film.

BROKEN FLOWERS
Broken Flowers, the latest film from director Jim Jarmusch, is something of a puzzle. The movie is centered around Don Johnston, played by Bill Murray, a preoccupied man who lives in the luxury penthouse/prison of his own narcissism.

CLOVERFIELD
Cloverfield is the product of three people whose pedigrees are mostly built on television.... these men have a strong sense for the postmodern aesthetic, where meaning is left to the viewer, narrative is based on the putting-together of loose strands, and the standards of beauty are entirely subjective.

CRASH
When people of faith go to the movies, they’re often on the lookout for spiritual content. For some films the search is more fruitful than for others. In the case of Crash, 2006's Academy Award® winner for Best Picture, the spiritually minded will not be disappointed.

DARK MEN BROODING
We might boldly ask of these films, and those who populate them, what they would teach us about our faith lives.

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1
Torey Lightcap shines his light on the dark and desolate landscape of the latest film in the Harry Potter series 

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE
With each installment of the series, author J.K. Rowling has increased the spookiness and seriousness and danger, inching us along a seven-year tale of darkness and division and looming death-crusades, as we have learned who Voldemort is, what makes him so, and what he’ll do to earn his own brand of everlasting life.

HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX
Before he undertook the Herculean adaptation of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, J.K. Rowling’s fifth installment in the inextinguishable Potter series, the director David Yates dwelt mostly in the world of television, making small-stage dramas about power—how it’s wielded, who has it, how quickly it can transmogrify into the apparatus of the corrupt or of the good.

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN
Harry Potter fans who have been eagerly awaiting the bespectacled young wizard’s return to Hogwarts will not be disappointed.

HOTEL RWANDA
The majority of films are forgettable. A slim minority are entertaining. A precious few are insightful. And then, every so often, a film comes along that is truly significant. Hotel Rwanda is one such film.

HOW SHOULD WE WAIT?
LET BILL MURRAY SHOW THE WAY

We know we must wait during Advent. In his 1993 classic film Groundhog Day, Bill Murray shows how to and how not to do just that.

LEVITY
Levity—featuring the stellar cast of Billy Bob Thornton (Manual Jordan), Morgan Freeman (Miles Evans), Holly Hunter (Adele Easley), and Kirsten Dunst (Sofia)—has earned major yawns from the professional movie critics who can't stand it and sustained applause from those who highly appraise it. Such ambiguous responses point to the movie's value for the religious seeker, for the film plumbs one of faith's most ambiguous themes—the price of redemption.

MEL GIBSON'S THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
The movie is like an extended nineteenth-century revivial sermon that is long on judgment and short on grace.

MILLION DOLLAR BABY
Right when the formula calls for a “Rocky-like” character to start shouting “Adrian! Adrian!” with his/her eyes swollen shut and arms raised in victory, Eastwood pulls the old “one-two” and knocks us face-first onto the canvas.

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