Film Flash: Barbie

 

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

Barbie = People who think they're smart made a movie for people they think are stupid.

New Evangelizers Post: The Acid of Resentment

                                                   

 

I have a new article up at NewEvangelizers.com.  

Resentment is a feeling that should be avoided at all costs.

This feeling can worm its way into our hearts in several different ways. We could begin to feel resentment towards someone because of they treat us with seaming disrespect. Or we could begin to resent someone because of they are taller, stronger, more popular, smarter, or more successful than we are. We could even resent someone because of their virtues. If I am someone who struggles with anger, I could resent someone who has a natural calm that I lack.

We can see in the Bible how resentment can eat away at a person. In Genesis, Cain and Abel offer up sacrifices to God. But because Abel gives the best of his possessions to God, He prefers this offering over Cain’s. As a result, God says to Cain “sin lies in wait at the door: its urge is for you, yet you can rule over it.” (Genesis 4:7).

Notice the imagery that God uses: sin waits outside of the person and must be invited into the soul. Cain ignores this advice and lets his resentment overtake him. Instead of having a heart filled with brotherly love, he becomes filled with murderous rage.

This is because resentment acts like an acid that erodes the goodness and truth in a person’s heart. In the story of Joseph the Dreamer, his brothers became filled with jealousy over how he was Jacob’s favorite. Instead of seeing him as their brother, resentment ate away at that image in their hearts.

One of the things that is so pernicious about resentment is how it can creep up on you. It can begin with little annoyances. Perhaps your spouse forgets to put away the milk. But as it continues, we can begin to read into these small acts: “They must expect me to do all of their cleaning for them like I’m their personal maid!”

Notice what has happened here: we take an act that annoys us and we infer a bad motive. Now to be sure, that inference is not always wrong. We are all fallen human beings and our vices touch all parts of our lives. But the inference may not always be correct. Maybe your spouse leaves the milk out because they think that you want to use it next.

If resentment festers, it can affect the way we look at the people in our lives. Our affections for them can be eaten away by these resentments until we are filled with bitterness.

How do we avoid this?

There are two main ways to do this:

The first is to embrace humility. St. Paul writes, “Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.” (Ephesians 4:31-32). Here, the Apostle reminds us that we are in need of forgiveness, which Christ gives us. If I remember that I am a blameless saint, that I have faults that others could resent, then I am forced to confront my own vice. In that light, I should be patient with others.

St. Paul also writes in “Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but [also] everyone for those of others.” (Philippians 2:3-4).

Perhaps I am upset that my spouse never asks me about my day. This can be very hurtful. But do I take a moment and think “Do I ask my spouse about their day?” Or “Maybe my spouse has difficulty showing affection in words, but they show it by working hard for the family or by doing the chores no one wants to do.”

Thinking this way can help diffuse a great deal of resentment.

You can read the whole article here.

Sunday Best: Christopher Nolan Movies Ranked (update 2023)

It's been been many years since I've ranked the films of Christopher Nolan.  To my mind he is one of the best directors working in the industry today.  With Oppenheimer being another enormous hit for him, I thought it would be a good idea to look back at his filmography.

The man has not made a bad movie in his entire directorial career.  It helps that he is very selective about his films and he has incredible personal control over all of the stories he's ever filmed.

So below are all 12 of Nolan's movies ranked in order from least to greatest.

12.  Insomnia

Of all Nolan's movies, this one is the one that feels the least Nolan-y.  And as far as I know it is the only one that is a remake of another film.  But it is still very dark and moody with some excellent performances.  Pacino's guilt is so visibly felt throughout the film and Robin William's turn as a mastermind killer showed a bold choice.  And the film still deals with big ideas about truth and conscience.

11.  Following

I caught this one on Netflix and it is a fascinating noir film about a man who becomes obsessed with following random people that he sees in public.  This could have easily devolved into some kind of psycho-sexual nonsense.  But he sets out early on that it about this a man who cannot connect to people who is drawn into a strange world of pulling the curtain back on people's lives.  It also is the first film that shows Nolan's funky use of chronology.

10.  Tenet

There is a line in this movie where someone tells the protagonist something along the lines of "feel it, don't think it."  This is the way you are supposed to watch the film.  However, Nolan's movies tend to lack the strong emotional core that would allow for this.  Tenet is technically a brilliant film.  The use of reverse time is fascinating.  But the story is so convoluted that it sounds smarter than it actually is.  

9.  Dunkirk

Again, I don't think anyone can criticize Nolan's technical mastery of cinema.  All of his powers behind the camera are on full display in this movie.  The film draws you into the harrowing life of the men who went through that horrible battle.  But there is an emotional distance that keeps this movie from forming a permanent bond in your memory the way something like Saving Private Ryan does.

8.  Oppenheimer

I will have a full review for this up soon.  The main problem with Oppenheimer is that Nolan's wants to do too much in one movie so that the movie feels too long and too short at the same time.  Having said that, it highlights some of his best cinematic work.  Many will point to the Trinity test, but I would look at Oppenheimer's post Trinity speech, where Nolan shows you visually what the main character is feeling in a unique way.

7.  The Prestige

This is a movie that will mess with your head.  Even when you figure out one twist (which I did a bit too early), when the film finishes and you understand the implications of what the last 5 minutes reveals about obsession… it sticks with you long after the movie is over.  This is a movie that gets better with every subsequent re-watch.

6.  Batman Begins

Nolan modeled this film after Richard Donner's Superman and it shows.  He tells a story that is epic in its scope and takes us on Bruce Wayne's journey in a way that no other cinematic Batman has.  In many ways this is very different than most Nolan films.  You can almost feel him trying to adapt his style to the comic book genre.  But even within those constraints, he gave us a great Batman movie.

5.  Interstellar

This is easily Nolan's most emotional movie.  It is not that his other movies are cold or are not moving.  But this was the first time I ever saw him reach deep and pull at the heartstrings while once again wrestling with the big ideas of life.  While the ending does stumble a bit, the emotional themes carry through all the way to the end.  On top of this you have some real edge-of-your-seat moments that hold your attention all the way through to the end.

4.  The Dark Knight Rises

Unlike many of its detractors, I think the final chapter of Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy is fantastic.  He does an excellent job of drawing elements from the previous movies and weaving them into a film that feels like a definitive goodbye to his story.  To this day I get chills when Selina Kyle tries to get Bruce to leave with her saying that he doesn't owe anything to people of Gotham and that he already gave them everything, to which he responds: "Not everything.  Not yet."

3.  Inception

I have seen this movie over and over and I find it fascinating every time.  The layers that stack upon layers never suffocate the action through line of the story that holds you up until the very last second.  I love the way the movie keeps you enthralled and fascinated.  It lays out the plan so meticulously and then throws the plan out right away.  Someone pointed out how the movie is partially an allegory for film-making itself.  Usually I find these kind of analyses reductive.  But in this case, it makes the movie all the more enjoyable for me, since it gives me a glance into Nolan's artistic process.

2.  The Dark Knight

Arguably the greatest super hero film ever made, Nolan understood that he could make a film that transcends traditional genre walls and talk about something deep about human nature.   People often play up the violent and dark nature of the Joker, but it shouldn't overlook Nolan's ultimate message which is that people are naturally decent.  That is a radical message in today's cinema.  You can see the evolution of his style between this and Batman Begins.  If I didn't know better, I would have said two different directors were used for each film because of how different they look.  But Nolan's insistence of grounding The Dark Knight in the real world makes it all the more terrifying and engaging all the way until the final line.

1.  Memento

I have never seen a movie like this.  The level of complexity, artistry, execution, and transcendence continues to blow me away more than a decade later.  When I used to teach film, I would show this movie to my students to walk them through how a great director plans his shots and what they mean.  The movie has Nolan's trademark sense of intelligence, but it also has at its heart the primal desire for retribution, which marries the logical with the emotional.  When people see this movie they rethink what movies can be.  And that is why this is his best film.

Thoughts?

Film Review: Sound of Freedom

 

Sexuality/Nudity Mature

Violence Mature
Vulgarity Mature

Anti-Catholic Philosophy No Objection

This movie injured me.  

It really hurt my heart.

Sound of Freedom centers around Tim Ballard (Jim Caviezel), a Homeland Security officer who has arrested many pedophiles during his tenure.  However, the job is getting to him and he is haunted by the fact that he arrests the criminals, but he never rescues the children.  So he decides to step up and ends up rescuing Miguel (Lucas Avila).  But rather than settling his heart, Ballard is haunted by the knowledge that Miguel's sister has also been sold into human trafficking.  Ballard decides to go undercover with the help of a former cartel man Vampiro (Bill Camp).  But as the challenges mount, Ballard has to make increasingly difficult choices in pursuit of his goal.

The biggest detriment to this movie is that is not written very well.  The scenes are disjointed and too short.  It's almost as if screenwriters Rod Barr and director Aljenadro Monteverde had to keep each scene to one page of script.  This is especially noticeable regarding Ballard's wife (Mira Sorvino).  Here you have an Academy Award winning actress who only has a handful of lines that seem randomly sprinkled throughout the film.  In addition, the character arcs are essentially flat.  Ballard and everyone else in the film are pretty much the same at the beginning of the story as they are at the end.

Normally, this would be enough to completely sink a film.  But the craft of the other parts of the film compensate.

The best comparison I can make is to the movie United 93, about the airplane on 9/11 when the passengers rose up against the terrorists.  Because the movie wanted to stay as factually accurate as possible without much embellishment, they didn't add the normal script elements to create large character arcs or a flowing narrative.  And yet I found myself crying in the movie theater because what was presented on the screen touched me so deeply.  

Monteverde perfectly balances the horror of human trafficking without devolving into exploitation.  He never lets you turn away from the ugliness of this world, but he is restrained enough to only imply the crimes while giving you the full emotional impact of these crimes.  I'm not an angry person, but part way through the movie, I said to my wife "I want to kill all of these human traffickers."  That rage carries so much of the narrative as you desperately want and need Ballard to succeed.  Monteverde knows how to frame a shot and how to use the camera to build up horrible tension that puts you on the edge of your seat.

The other thing that helps this movie from overcoming the script problems are the performances.  Caviezel is fantastic.  As emotional as the subject is, his performance is wonderfully restrained.  He projects a masculine power that is holding in his breaking heart.  The scenes where he has to pretend to be undercover are fascinating to watch as you can see his contempt masked under a smile.  Camp is also wonderful as Vampiro.  He has a wonderful monologue in the middle of the film that is delivered with pitch-perfect emotional depth.  The child actors are also wonderful as they show us their harrowing experience.

The movie sees itself as a modern day Uncle Tom's Cabin (this is an explicit analogy made during the credits).  It wants to be a clarion call to end modern slavery.  Like most message movies, it hopes that this message will cover its script mistakes.  Most of the time, this does not work.  But in the case of Sound of Freedom, it does.  That's because you cannot help but getting emotionally entangled in the story.  Watching these poor children be exploited by heartless men and women is heartbreaking.  It forces you to imagine the terror of this happening to those whom you love.  And the sad fact that this is a true story about things that are happening right now only further drives the knife into the heart.

As a film critic, I cannot say that the movie is good simply because it has a good message.  But in spite of the script, the movie is able to use their other story-telling powers to make a truly deep connection to the audience and move them.

Sound of Freedom will break your heart if you let it.  

And you really should let it.

Film Review: Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part I

 

Sexuality/Nudity Acceptable

Violence Acceptable
Vulgarity Acceptable

Anti-Catholic Philosophy Acceptable

Being a movie star means that your name becomes a brand.  And Tom Cruise is a movie star.

In the last 10 years, he has starred in 6 excellent movies: Oblivion, Edge of Tomorrow, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, Mission: Impossible - Fallout, Top Gun: Maverick, and now Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I.

This is the seventh film in this massively successful and entertaining franchise.  The story picks up a few years after Fallout.  The government has developed an Artificial Intelligence called "The Entity" which has now become self aware.  The Entity has infected every single intelligence agency computer system and appears to be bending towards world domination.  However, the Entity is hellbent on obtaining two halves of a key.  Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) is tasked with retrieving the keys.  One of the keys is held by Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson), Ethan's partner/rival for the previous two movies.  He also enlists the help of regulars Benji (Simon Pegg) and Luther (Vin Rhames).  Getting in the way is a master thief Grace (Hayley Atwell) who has been hired to get the keys.  Grace is caught in the middle of the IMF team and the Entity's human agent Gabriel (Esai Morales) and his assassin Paris (Pom Klementieff).  As with all Mission: Impossible movies, it is a race against time with the odds against them where they all may not make it out alive.

One of the things that is coloring this review is that I spent the week watching all of the previous films (not counting the awful 2nd film).  Starting with Ghost Protocol, the series begins to build a continuity of character, which was different than the previous stand-alone style.  The last three films have all been directed by the same man: Christopher McQuarrie.  Watching all of the movies in a row helps to create a greater sense of connection and tension because of the connection to the characters.  While Ethan may be wearing invincible plot armor, the rest of the team feels very vulnerable and having spent so much time with them, you feel dread at the impossible challenge ahead.

At first I was not as impressed with the AI enemy.  It seemed a bit too much of a science fiction element.  And the first part of the film feels very boiler-plate M:I fare.  It isn't until the first confrontation with Gabriel in a Venice night club that the story really kicks into gear.  Once that happens, I found myself gripped until the end.

As the movie went on the "Entity" grew on me as an antagonist.  It began to feel like a combination of Skynet and Sauron.  As the Entity is able to worm its way into all computer systems, the group can no longer count on any of its technological advantages.  This helped emphasize the theme about how human begins have become too dependent on computers.  We end up becoming the source of our own destruction.  Even with all this danger, governments want to try to turn the Entity into a weapon of the state.  Only Ethan and his team cannot be corrupted by that temptation to power.

Atwell's Grace was an incredibly refreshing element to this movie.  She is hyper-competent as a thief.  But she also not an unbeatable girl-boss.  She is human in a way that is very relatable to the audience.  When someone fires a gun behind her, she freaks out the way a normal person would.  When in a car with Ethan being chased by dozens of others, she understands that his driving skills are superior and insists he drives.  She won't jump over giant chasms without fear.  But she will summon her courage like a hero.

More-so than any previous M:I films, Cruise lets us feel Ethan's desperation.  You can draw a straight line from the loss of his first time in the original film to his terror at losing anyone now.  The script also finally gives us hints as to Ethan's mysterious past in ways that had not been explored before.  Pegg and Rhames are as good as ever and the chemistry between the three feels comfortable and natural.  I've always been a fan of Morales and he plays his part with a cold confidence that makes him intimidating.  Klementieff plays the opposite of her Guardians of the Galaxy character with great physicality and charisma.

The title "Dead Reckoning" refers to when sailors have to navigate without any of their electronic navigational methods.  This movie lays out the question of human nature.  Are we reducible to a predictable algorithm or are we governed by our free will.  The movie explores the nature of what it is to be human as we continually commoditize the different aspects of our humanity through technology.  There is something wild and defiant about standing  against this reductionist view of who we are.

But above all, this movie series is about fun action.  The only sequence I found a bit too long was a car chase sequence.  Other than that, this was excellent M:I spectacle.  Besides death-defying stunts, the movie did a fantastic job of ratcheting up the espionage tension.  There is a scene at an airport where there are no fight scenes, but the suspense was excellent.

My favorite moment was a part where Ethan tells someone that their life is more important than his.  This responds with "You don't even know me."  To which Ethan simply and sincerely responds: "What difference does that make?"  This exchange is such a wonderful and simple explanation of why Ethan is a real hero.  He puts the lives of others, even those he doesn't know, before his own.  This has the flavor of agape love that Christ calls us to: to love everyone with our lives.  This exchange also helps explain why we keep coming back to this series: 

We want to see real heroes in real action.

And that is what you get in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part I.

Film Flash: Oppenheimer

 

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

There are 2-3 great movies mixed into this overlong, expertly directed and acted biopic.

Film Flash: Sound of Freedom

 

This movie wounded my heart.  It overcomes a bad script with powerful directing and performances.