Film Flash: Is This Thing On

 

  

15 words or less film review (full review to follow soon)

Will Arnett gives an amazing performance in a frustrating film about middle-aged marriage

New Evangelizers Post: The Cappadocian Settlement and the Trinity

                                   

I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.  

Today’s article is going to take a bit of a deeper dive into Church history and theology. Particularly, we are going to look a the Cappadocians and their influence on our theology of Trinity.

When people refer to the Cappadocians, they often mean the early Church fathers from the 4th century located in Central Asia Minor, in and about the region of Galatia. Among these are great saints such as Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus. And these men wrote extensively about the Trinity and helped shaped this central doctrine of the faith.

To understand this, we have to understand the Cappadocian settlement. In the early Church there was a great deal of confusion about the Trinity. It was clear that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit were divinely connected, but there was difficulty squaring it away with the uncompromising monotheism that Christians inherited from Judaism. If God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, does that mean that there are 3 Gods? This was obviously contrary to Scripture. But if you said that the Son or the Spirit were not God, then you would fall into heresies like Arianism, Subordinationism, and Modalism. This led to the Cappadocians, who lived in the Eastern Church in and around modern day Turkey, to come up with a way to talk about God’s oneness and threeness as seen in the symbol.

Part of the issue deals with the language used to describe the Trinity. It was settled by the Church that God is one ousia. This word was synonymous with the word hypostasis, which means substance. It is very clear that God is one substance. The first Capodocian settlement made the distinction between ousia and hypostasis. In this view, ousia would still mean substance. So no matter what, God is still one substance. But the Cappadocians now took hypostasis to mean idiomata, which means the qualities of being a Person. On this view, God is one ousia and three hypostasis.

But the Father is not the Son, nor the Spirit. The Son is not the Spirit nor the Father. And the Spirit is not the Father nor the Son. That is because they are distinct hypostasis. Each has distinct qualities of personhood. For example, the Cappadocians saw that the Father’s idiomata was unbegottenness, the Son’s idiomata was begottenness, and the Spirit’s idiomata was procession. The Father cannot be the Son, because the Son is begotten and the Father is unbegotten. He also cannot be the Spirit, because the Father does not proceed from the Son and Spirit. The Son cannot be the Father, because the Son is begotten and the Father is not. The Son cannot be the Spirit, because He is begotten by the Father, but he is not in procession between the Father and the Spirit. And the Spirit cannot be the Father nor the Son because of the reasons already mentioned.

The second Cappadocian settlement had to deal with Aristotle’s 10 Categories. Aristotle categorized qualities of substances into ten categories. There was one essential property: being. The other properties like posture, relation, etc, were accidental properties. Because being is an essential property, it properly belongs to God. That is why Father, Son, and Spirit are God, who is Being Itself. But the Cappadocians took one of the remaining 9 categories and pointed out that it was also an essential quality of God: relatio or relation. For the Cappadocians, God’s very nature necessitated that each person of the Trinity was in relationship to the other. This, Cappadocians argued, was not an accidental property of God, but an essential one. God is not only essentially one Being, but He is also in relationship to each Person in the Trinity. That is why the Father cannot be the Son and neither of them are the Spirit. That is because relatio requires distinct persons for each Person of the Godhead to be in relationship to.

You can read the whole article here.

Sunday Best: Spring Movie Season 2026

   We are in the odd time for theatrical movies.  Summer is when a number of the big blockbusters are released.  Fall and Winter are when we see more of the prestige pictures.  But the spring season is strange.  Yes, there are some bigger movies coming out, but it always feels like this is the time when studios keep their powder dry and get ready to fire their big guns later.

That isn't always the case.  Deadpool, I believe, was a February release.  And that film went on to do some amazing business.

So here are some of the movies that are coming out along with my level of excitement.  My ability to get out to the theater may be limited this time around.  But I will try to get to the ones that really excite me.

Here is a list, with a few brief thoughts of my own, including on a scale of 1-5 stars my likelihood of seeing it in theaters (1 being “Not at all” 5 being “Cannot wait!”).

January 9th

Greenland 2: Migration (*)

I didn't see the first one, though I heard it's not bad.

Primate (*)

I'm not into horror movies

January 16th 

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (*)

I haven't seen any of the sequels and this one feels like it is going to be anti-Christian.

January 23rd 

Mercy (***)

I like the cast, but the plot feels like a gimmick that will wear away after the first act.

January 30th

Send Help (**)

I like Sam Raimi and this could be interesting, but it looks like it is going to be very dark and twisted.

February 6th

Solo Mio (****)

I like that Angel Studios is branching into mainstream films, with the hope that it keeps its moral content.  I like Kevin James and this looks like it could be a sweet romcom.

The Strangers: Chapter 3 (*)

See my note on horror movies.

February 13

GOAT. (*)

The animation looks good, but nothing really appealed to me about the trailer.

Wuthering Heights (*)

This movie just looks bad from start to finish, unable to decide if it is a classic period piece or a modern re-imagining.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (***)

The latest trailer makes this movie look insane in a good way, in a way that reminds me of early Edgar Wright films like Shaun of the Dead.  If they can hit that exact right tone, this could be good.

February 27th

Scream 7 (*)

See my note on horror

 

March 6th 

Hoppers (*)

This movie looks truly awful.  Everything about this looks like its going to be terrible.  It feels like the story was developed during a zeitgeist whose time has already passed.

The Bride(**)

While this looks like it has a strong style and interesting performances, it feels like a grosser version of Bonnie and Clyde.

March 13

The Breadwinner  (****)

Big fan of Nate Bargatzee and the trailer made me laugh.  I'm not expecting much from this film, except to laugh and feel good when I leave.  But that's more than most movies in the previous year have offered.

 

Reminders of Him  (**)

Super melodrama romance that l might take the wife to see if there is nothing to do that weekend.

 

March 20

Project Hail Mary (****)

I am hopeful for this movie, but not excited.  It has the potential to be as good as The Martian, but we will have to see as we get closer.

March 27

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (**)

Didn't see the first, though the trailer looks interesting

They Will Kill You (*)

What's weird is that this has almost the exact same feel and tone of Ready or Not

April 3

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (****)

This seems to be the optimal time for a hit video game movie (early April).  I enjoyed the first one and will probably go with the family to see this one.

A Great Awakening (**)

This is a maybe.  The idea looks good, but it also looks a little on the cheap and cheesy side.

April 10

You, Me, and Tuscany (**)

Looks like a by-the-numbers romcom.

April 24

Michael (***)

At this point, I think I would go only to enjoy all for the music.  Nothing is really grabbing me about this film otherwise. 

Thoughts?

New Evangelizers Post: Real Life in Christ

                                  

I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.  

“Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.” John 17:3

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus speaks about bringing life. But this is no ordinary life: it is eternal life.

However, one of the great mistakes we make, according to Pope Benedict XVI, is that we think of “eternal” life as primarily about the after life. On this view, Jesus promising that if we follow Him that we will go to heaven. To be sure, this is a teaching of the Christian faith that we hold to be true. But to think of “eternal” life as only about the future and not the present is a mistake. There is so much more to the “eternal” life that Jesus brings.

To help us understand, we must remember that the New Testament was primarily written in Greek. In this language, there are two words for life: bios and zoe.

Bios is talking about earthly, physical life. This is why the study of life is called “biology.” Bios is that thing we possess from the moment of conception until death. I had a great biology teacher who once broke down biological life into two imperatives: food and sex. What he meant by that was that the two biggest drives in our biological nature is to find and consume nutrients and to procreate. If you’ve ever wondered why foods that are heavy in sugars, salts, and fats taste so good if they are “bad” for you, it’s because from a fundamental biological persepective they are not bad. According to some evolutionary biologists, because we have a taste for these things, we are able to bring in enough nutrients and calories to live long enough to procreate. Once we have done that, we are a successful biological life form. It is true that later in life that these foods will not lead to longevity. But from the perspective of bios, that does not matter. What matters is that you have eaten enough to survive to the point of having children.

And to be clear, there is nothing wrong with our biological nature per se. God made us as these physical beings whose bodies are repaired by eating. And he designed us to bring about new life by entering into marriage and sharing our bodies with each other. All of this is in accord to God’s plan. But if this was all we were meant for, then this could also describe all of the beasts of the world. They also eat and procreate. But we are more than beasts. We are made in God’s image and likeness.

This is where zoe comes in.

As far as I understand it, in the entire Gospel of John, Jesus never uses the word bios. He only uses zoe. Jesus is not really interested in bringing us more biological life. In fact, he introduces the great paradox of dying in order to live: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies in remains but a grain of wheat. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24). An increase in zoe could lead to a shortening of bios.

You can see this confusion in both John 4 and John 6. When Jesus speaks to the Samaritan woman at the well, He tells her that if she drinks the water He gives that she will never thirst. She thinks he is refering to physical water for her biological life. When Jesus speaks to the crowds about how those who eat the Bread of Life will never die, they are thinking in terms of biological death.

But Jesus is talking about something much bigger than that. He is talking about zoe: eternal life.

As I wrote above, one of the big misconceptions is that zoe is only talking about an after life. The reason why this is potentially problematic is that this view falls right into the hands of atheistic views like Marxism. Karl Marx called religion “the opium of the masses.” He meant that religion is like a drug that dulls you to the pain of this life with the hope that things will be better in the next. In his view, hope for heaven blinds you to reality.

But when Jesus speaks about eternal life, He is speaking about life here and now. However, he is not talking about biological life. Instead, He is speaking about spiritual life.

When Jesus speaks of zoe, He is talking about entering into the Divine Life with God. I ask my students if I could cut off the branch of an apple tree, bring it into my house, and then have it grow apples. They all say no, because the branch is no long attached to the tree. When I ask them what the branch shares with the tree that lets it grow fruit, they tell me this: they share life.

Jesus said “I am the vine, you are the branches.” (John 15:5). The vine is not just near the branch or like the branch. The branch and vine share life. Zoe means that we share life with God: He lives in us and we live in Him.

And this is not something that we have to wait to happen until after we die. If you look at the saints, they are the ones who lived zoe. They experienced the fullness of life in God. Because of this, they were filled with the most fulfilling human experiences of any people who ever walked the face of the earth. Their lives were powerful and invigorating adventures, even when ladden with the heaviest of crosses. Even in the midst of all their struggles, even when bios was taken from them, they never lost the joy of zoe.

You can read the whole article here.

Sunday Worst: Bizarro Awards 2025

 

 My good friend the Doctor said that I should do a parallel list to my Kal-El Awards that reflect to worst in pop culture from the year.  He suggested that I call them the "Lenny Luthors" after the horrible Jon Cryer character from Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.  The rational for choosing Lenny was that "he is terrible in every way that Superman is awesome."

I liked the idea, but I thought instead of Lenny Luthor we would name the awards after the true opposite of Superman:

Bizarro.

Bizarro is the anti-Superman, literally.  He even maintains speech patterns that are the opposite of what he means.  "Good-bye, me am not Bizarro.  Me like you!  Live!"  said by Bizarro actually means "Hello, I am Bizarro.  I hate you! Die!"

So since Superman is my mark of excellence.  Bizarro will be my mark of utter awfulness.   Unlike the Kal-El awards, these will be focused mostly on movies.  The reason is that serialized work like television and comics require a longer time commitment in order to understand the material.  You may have to watch a show or read a comic for several months before you discover if it is truly bad or good.  It took me a few episodes to understand the logic behind Vincent D'Onofrio's performance in Daredevil.  The investment of time and/or money also precludes a lot of unnecessary sampling, so my exposure to bad material is a bit less.

With a movie, you can have a complete understanding of the product after 90-180 minutes.  So I only have two TV categories:


-Worst TV Show I Stopped Watching
-Worst TV Show I Still Watch

In both of these cases I will be giving my critical condemnation of shows about which I have some significant experience and thus have a basis for calling them critical failures


So now, here are the Bizarro Awards for movies this past year.  (based on the movies I have seen).


WORST MOVIE

A Minecraft Movie

A number of movies this year were boring or unenjoyable.  But it is a rare movie that has me actively hating it.  And that is the case with A Minecraft Movie.

Now you could make the argument that this movie wasn't meant for me and fair enough.  I am too old for the Minecraft craze so many of the film's inside jokes are lost on me.  But the movie feels like it is constantly talking down to me.  Throughout the whole film I felt the movie saying: "You are so stupid that I am going to spoon-feed you ever part of this inane plot with unfunny jokes and flat characters sprinkled throughout."  

A movie like this can work through suspension of disbelief.  But everything part of this movie felt so artificial that I was counting down the seconds until it was over.

TOP TEN WORST MOVIES

10. Spinal Tap II: The End Continues

9. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

8. The Running Man

7. Roofman

6. The Life of Chuck

5. Wake Up, Dead Man

4. Eternity

3. Marty Supreme

2. Snow White

1. A Minecraft Movie

WORST ACTOR

Jack Black- A Minecraft Movie

Jack Black is very talented and he has had a longer career than many funny men.  But this performance in A Minecraft Movie is barely a performance.  It feels like he stepped into a Saturday Night Live sketch and just kept vamping long after the joke stopped being funny.

WORST ACTRESS

Rachel Zegler- Snow White

She was so horribly miscast in this movie.  I try very hard to separate an actor's real-life persona from the performance.  For example, I was a bit offput by Cynthia Erivo's press tour interviews, but her performance in Wicked last year earned her my Best Actress award.  But I cannot tell if I've let Zegler's personal affect my review.  Whereas Snow White as a character is supposed to be humble, sincere, and kind, Zegler comes off as condescending, arrogant, and cynical.  As she approaches the evil queen's castle towards the end, she is supposed to be projecting heroic confidence, but I can only see haughtiness.

WORST DIRECTOR

Kyle Newacheck- Happy Gilmore 2

I have to say this isn't to say that he does a terrible job, it's just that I cannot tell what difference he made in the movie.  The jokes, the gags, the setups all feel very generic, even when they get a laugh out of me.  But the pacing went on too long and it couldn't hit the sweet tones it needed for its emotional heart.

WORST SCREENPLAY

Mike Flannagan - The Life of Chuck

From my review: WARNING - SPOILERS

 

The movie deals with two high concept ideas: 

1. "I contain multitudes"

2. The Mystery Room of Death

Maybe if the movie had focused on one or the other, it would have worked.  But these two things to do not go together and they really have nothing to do with each other.  They never converge in anything close to catharsis.

Regarding the first idea, this comes from a time when young Chuck listens to his teacher read a Walt Whitman poem where he says "I contain multitudes."  This means that every person that Chuck has ever encountered or imagined exists in some way inside of him.  That's what the entire first act takes place in Chuck's mind.  Marty, Felicia, and everyone else are living in a universe of Chuck's mind.  Throughout the next two acts, the people of of the first act can be seen as background characters.  The movie is saying that when you encounter anyone, you make a little version of them inside of you that lives out an entire life.  But Chuck is dying of brain cancer.  The words, "Thanks, Chuck.  39 great years," are words that his wife (Q'Orianka Kilcher) says to him in his last moments.  The universe is ending because of Chuck.  

The Mystery Room of Death is about the locked room in his grandparents' house.  This movie is based on a Stephen King story and this is the most Stephen King-esque element.  The grandfather has a locked room where he sees people's deaths.  You learn this slowly over the course of the movie, but Chuck's curiosity gets the better of him in the end.  After both of his grandparents are dead, he goes into the room and sees himself dying from brain cancer.  He resolves to live life to the fullest and ends by saying, "I am wonderful.  I deserve to be wonderful.  And I contain multitudes."  

And that is where the movie ends.

This is supposed to be an uplifting message about seizing the day.  Instead, it reminds us that the multitudes in Chuck's mind end their existence in meaningless abject horror and then blink out of existence for no purpose.   There is a subtle implication that this is happening in all of us or that we ourselves might be part of that multitude inside someone's mind.  Rather than being life-affirming, it points us to the meaninglessness of life.  It implies that we are not beings of purpose and substance but random, purposeless chance.  

The characters in the first act are given no resolution.  Their existence is given no greater meaning by learning about Chuck's life.  In fact, Chuck's cancer itself plays out like a cruel, nihilistic joke.  The fact that Chuck knows he is going to die has no bearing on anything that happens in the entire story.  Does he live life to the fullest?  I mean... maybe?  We know he has a wife and child so that is something important.  But we never really get to see his life outside of his childhood and the one day he danced.  He doesn't seem all that happy as an adult, so I don't know what the ending is supposed to be saying.  

Notice too how the Mystery Room of Death adds nothing to the first act and the characters that you care about.  If Chuck knows his death or doesn't, it makes absolutely no difference.  The two ideas are so wildly unconnected that it feels like the movie would have been better served if they had taken one out and focused on the other.

And it's not that the movie had to find a super-fun-happy ending for the Act One characters.  But the movie never pays off its narrative debt.  What I mean is that it gives us characters to empathize with who are going through a crisis.  The story owes it to us to give us a proper resolution (even if it is an ambiguous resolution).  Instead, it leaves them in total darkness and expects you to forget about their fate by the time the movie ends.  It expects you to say, "Well, they weren't really real, so it doesn't matter."  But the movie made them real in Act One and you cannot remove their personhood from the audience.

The movie wants to say something about how life is about the moments of wonder.  And while that is absolutely a part of the magic of life, it ignores the need for purpose and meaning in order to make life worth living.

In the end, I honestly don't know if this was an intentional bait-and-switch, where we are promised It's a Wonderful Life and are instead given Melancholia or if the film makers honestly don't understand the nihilism that is poisoning their supposed optimism.  

Either way, I'd recommended avoiding The Life of Chuck.

 (See the above on WORST MOVIE OF THE YEAR)

MOST ANTI-CHRISTIAN MOVIE

Wake Up, Dead Man

From my review:

I am conflicted about this movie because it has one of the best priests I've seen in movies recently, but it also has one of the worst priests and some of the worst Catholics I have seen.  Fr. Jud is accused of murdering Monsignor Wicks.  Fr. Jud is kind, patient, and speaks about the love of Jesus in a way that does not ring false.  Monsignor Wicks is basically a stereotype of Donald Trump in clerics, who embodies every conceivable wicked stereotype that people have about priests.  But Fr. Jud is the opposite.  At one point in the story as he is trying to get information to help clear his name, the random woman on the phone is going through a spiritual crisis in the family.  I was so so moved when Fr. Jud stops everything to counsel the woman and pray with her over the phone.  It was such a fine moment of priesthood on film.  

But the movie does not know how the Catholic church works, especially in the area of the sacrament of confession.  And director Rian Johnson seems to take too much glee in the destruction of sacred images and objects while his main detective Benoit Blanc trashes the Catholic Church and faith in general.  

MOST MORALLY OFFENSIVE

Wake Up, Dead Man

(see MOST ANTI-CHRISTIAN MOVIE)

WORST TV SHOW I STOPPED WATCHING

Stumble

I want to be fair to this show because I only saw one episode.  But there are so many shows out there that if you do not grab me at the beginning, I don't want to invest the time watching.  It wasn't terrible, but it was a little off-putting with few characters to like.

WORST SHOW I STILL WATCH

Saturday Night Live

(Below are my comments from mostly previous years, but they still apply to this year)

I still hold out hope that in 90 minutes of television there may still be at least 5 minutes of good humor.  But it takes a lot of endurance through horrible sketches to come across a gem like "Crucible Cast Party" or the the Nate Bargatzee George Washington sketches.

Every once in a while there is a sketch that is actually insightful and funny, like the Game Show "Republican or Democrat?"  But most of the time I watch the sketch for the first minute and a half until I find out what the gag is.  Most of the time it is a miss, rather than a hit.

Political comedy is tricky, unless you are only looking to find the funny.  Johnny Carson was the all-time king because he made fun of everyone and everyone from all sides of the aisle could laugh at their own political party.  But if you get a sense that one side is being mocked over another, a lot of that good will is lost.  And since SNL tends to lean heavily into its politics, this makes it a slog to watch.

Thoughts?

Film Review Round-Up: 2025

 As has been the case for many years, I saw more movies in the waning months than I had time to write full reviews for.  In the past, I would just let this go and take the L.  

This year, I am trying something new:  I'm doing a single post where I give mini-reviews to all of those films.  I apologize that these do not have the in-depth plot summaries and analysis.  But I hope these reviews will be helpful to anyone who is thinking about seeing this films:

David

This is an animated musical about the early life of King David from the Bible.  I am usually very hard on Christian films because they tend to emphasize theme over artistry.  But this movie is fantastic.  The animation is on par with anything being put out by Disney/PIXAR.  It is beautiful to watch.  But for me, what really sold it is the music.  They put a lot of effort into these songs to make them big, bold, and sweeping.  "Follow the Light" has been staying with me long after leaving the theater.  

The movie also does something that too few animated musicals do: in the finale, they reprise the major songs and they all harmonize so well that there is a cathartic convergence of song.  This is a movie for the entire family with fun characters and action for the kids but also enough complexity for the adults.

Anaconda

My friends and I used to make silly movies in high school and played around with camcorder filmmaking while in college.  Those were some incredibly fun memories.  This movie captures that same feeling.  Jack Black and Paul Rudd play middle-aged men who try to recapture that same magic by going down to Brazil and attempting to do a low-budget remake of Anaconda.  The movie has at least 4 or 5 really good jokes that had me laughing.  Instead of going for a full parody, they try to create an actual Anaconda horror/comedy, but the plot bogs down the laughs.  But there is enough good will here for it to be enjoyable.

Marty Supreme

The director and the actors used an incredible amount of skill to tell this story.  Only, this isn't a story worth telling.  The titular character is completely and utterly awful from the first scene until the end.  He has a dream of becoming the greatest ping-pong player ever, but for no other reason than the glorification of his own ego.  The philosopher Immanuel Kant formulated his moral system under a few principles including: "Treat other people as ends in themselves and not means to an end."  Marty is the perfect anti-Kantian: everyone is a means to his ends.  He lies and manipulates everyone.  And everyone around him is just as awful.  This was a slog to get through and it felt like a pointless journey.  Its one redeeming quality is that Timothee Chalamet is excellent and will probably get an Oscar for this.

Song Sung Blue

My biggest quibble with this movie is something which is not the movie's fault: I wanted it to be happier.  Without getting into spoiler territory, I went in thinking that this was going to be an feel-good movie.  And while there are moments of heartfelt inspiration, this is a sad melodrama.  But it is a good sad melodrama.  The performances are great.  Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson feel very real as normal people just trying to get by.  Their dreams are modest, their gripes are petty, their struggles are real... they feel like very relatable characters who just want to make a living at music and have a simple, happy life.  In that way, it is superior to most musical bio-pics.

And the Neil Diamond soundtrack is very enjoyable.

Avatar: Fire and Ash

This was better than The Way of Water because it had a stronger sense of intensity in the first two acts.  It became a chase movie with a lot of forward momentum.  One of the interesting story elements (revealed in the trailers) is that the human protagonist "Spider" goes through a procedure that lets him breath Pandora's air.  Realizing the danger that this puts all of the Navi in, Jake struggles with what to do and we have one of the best scenes in the series that is reminiscent of Abraham and Isaac.  While beautiful to look at, the third act does get long and bogged down.  

Also, it is not necessarily a good sign for your story that the most likable and charismatic character is your main antagonist.  I liked Quaritch so much that I almost started rooting for him.  But if you've seen the last two Avatar films, the last act plays out exactly the same.

Eternity

I found this movie to be incredibly mean-spirited.  The performances are very good, especially from Elizabeth Olson, but there is a cynicism that runs throughout.  The premise is that when you die you have to choose a type of eternity (e.g. on a beach, in the mountains, in Paris, etc) and you can never change.  When Olson's character dies, she has to to choose either her first husband who died young or her second husband that she grew old with to spend eternity with.  This story reminded me of how Christ told us that there is no marriage in heaven to avoid horrible situations like this.

The movie is oddly anti-religious.  When one of the people guiding the dead thinks someone is religious, she goes, "Oh, so you're one of those people," and basically says all religions are the same.  But the worst is that while going on a bender, it looks like Olson's character was bing eating the Eucharist.  Some non-religious after-life films are very enjoyable (e.g. Defending Your Life and Chances Are), but this one was very off-putting.

Fackham Hall

I love silly humor and I love the effort that the filmmakers put into capture the magic of Airplane! and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  They are not nearly as successful as I would have like them to be.  And the movie suffers from the same problem as this year's remake of The Naked Gun where the third act has plot requirements that get in the way of the humor and it loses steam.  

But there are enough laughs to keep you going to the end, if this is your type of humor.  If you like scenes where to characters are communicating their forbidden love while JRR Tolkien is in the next room struggling with diarhea, then I'd check out this film.  If not, you won't like it.

Rental Family

As I wrote in for my "Best Screenplay" award:

Rental Family is such an interesting movie because it challenges you with its premise: selling emotional catharsis with performance.  In the film, a company hires actors to play parts to live out moments for emotional fulfillment for clients in Japan.  For example, they act as mourners for someone who pretends to be having a funeral so that he can hear people say good things about him before he dies.  But the company also sells lies.  The main story revolves around Brendan Fraser's character lying to a little girl pretending to be her American father.  

Normally, I would reject this premise out of hand as a horrible set up of deception.  But to the credit of the writers, they draw us in to the complexity of the situation.  First, they point out that there is a big stigma around mental health counseling in Japanese culture, so what they do is the equivalent of therapy.  Second, the story plays out the complications and consequences of telling lies in a way that confronts its own premise head on.  What I loved about the writing was that it invited me as an audience member to look at the situation and use my own judgment regarding the character's actions.  It allowed me to see both sides of the situation without putting its thumb on the scales.  And even when I decided who I felt, there was enough depth for me to have complicated feelings about it.  Depth of this kind is rare in movies and I greatly enjoyed it here.

Running Man

This movie is so disappointing because it has a really good first act.  This was so much so that I was thinking that it was better than the original Arnold Schwarzenegger film from the 1980's.  Instead of being a modern gladiator fight, it was much closer to something like The Fugitive, where Ben Richards has to run and hide throughout America while everyone in the country is trying to kill him.  So Ben has to rely on his quick-thinking and guile, while making smart and stupid decisions.  

But the movie devolves quickly, especially at the half-way point when Michael Cera's character shows up.  For NO REASON, he puts everyone's lives in danger and his storyline goes nowhere.  What's worse is that they bring in Emilia Jones in the third act and try to have her fill the role that Maria Conchita Alonso had in the original.  But it is so late in the film that you never feel an actual connection and her character turn feels artificial.  She seems to be there only so Ben can go on an anti-capitalism rant, which always sounds hollow coming from film makers who are making millions from the movie.

Wake Up, Dead Man

I am conflicted about this movie because it has one of the best priests I've seen in movies recently, but it also has one of the worst priests and some of the worst Catholics I have seen.  Fr. Jud is accused of murdering Monsignor Wicks.  Fr. Jud is kind, patient, and speaks about the love of Jesus in a way that does not ring false.  Monsignor Wicks is basically a stereotype of Donald Trump in clerics, who embodies every conceivable wicked stereotype that people have about priests.  But Fr. Jud is the opposite.  At one point in the story as he is trying to get information to help clear his name, the random woman on the phone is going through a spiritual crisis in the family.  I was so so moved when Fr. Jud stops everything to counsel the woman and pray with her over the phone.  It was such a fine moment of priesthood on film.  

But the movie does not know how the Catholic church works, especially in the area of the sacrament of confession.  And director Rian Johnson seems to take too much glee in the destruction of sacred images and objects while his main detective Benoit Blanc trashes the Catholic Church and faith in general.  

Also, the mystery is kind of stupid, like Glass Onion.  So even though I like the portrayal of the one character, there is too much negative in it for it to be saved.

Playdate

I love Kevin James and I really dug the chemistry he had with Alan Ritchson.  The first half of the movie is very absurd and funny.  But then as the plot gets revealed and they try to do some actual character work, the absurdity becomes less funny and more off-putting.  In fact the any character growth and thematic elements that develop are completely destroyed (literally) in the last minutes of the film.  But for the first part, I enjoyed it enough.