For Aleteia this week, I took the family to see Son of God, the theatrical reworking of scenes from The History Channel’s hit miniseries The Bible. The film’s a mixed bag. While it’s not an artistic triumph like Passion of The Christ nor anywhere near as fun as something like The Ten Commandments, it’s at least respectful of the source material. Plus, as I discuss in my review, it does have a couple of scenes that are surprisingly Catholic for a movie made by protestants.
Still, if you don’t feel like paying box office prices to see some recycled TV footage, The Happy Catholic has a number of suggestions for movies to rent or stream for Lent. Jordan J. Ballor from the Acton Institute, on the other hand, has only one old movie on his mind, but it’s a classic.
Not all classics are created equal, though. That’s why Catholic Skywalker has compiled a list of otherwise great movies he feels are ruined by their third acts. I have to say I agree with him on Exorcist III, but if you know anything at all about that film, you know William Peter Blatty was forced by the studio to film the last 15 or 20 minutes that way. So yeah, the director thought the final act ruined the film as well.
But enough of all this talk about good movies. You don’t come to this blog for that kind of thing. So if you’re hankering for a bad movie fix, why not head over to Crisis Magazine where K. V. Turley takes a look at I, Frankenstein. Along with the expected awfulness, Mr. Turley believes he may just have stumbled upon the Frankenstein monster made for our times.
And finally, I suppose there’s no way to get through this weekend without mentioning the Academy Awards. While I reviewed 12 Years A Slave a while back, Matthew Becklo over at Aleteia has a piece up explaining why the film should, and probably will, earn the Oscar for Best Picture.
See you next time.
4 comments:
Did you see "Winter's Tale"? I've seen it get a lot of negative reviews, but my impression was that a lot of folks just didn't like it. And John C. Wright thinks it's great & gorgeous--and he's not exactly a friendly reviewer most of the time. Did you see it? Or know any reliable Cath reviewers who did?
No, I haven't seen that one yet. Aleteia prefers me to see the big releases each week. Based on how often I seem to disagree with my fellow Catholic reviewers, though, I don't know if I'd tell you to trust me even if I had seen it.
The closest thing I've run across to a nice review is Father Dennis (http://frdennismoviereviews.blogspot.com/2014/02/winters-tale-2014.html) and even he only gave it 2 stars. If you've seen the movies he's given 3 stars before, then you know that's not really that good. Still, it's hard (or at least foolhardy) to disagree with John C. Wright when he sets his mind to something, though I'd still defend Man of Steel against even him. He'd eat me alive, of course, but I'd go down fighting :)
Turley writes, "Looking to the heavens, past the enormous poster of I Frankenstein lit by a gaudy light, I pulled up my collar against the cold..."
Well, I, too, went to see "I, Frankenstein" (I declared that I would on this very site!) and I'll tell you who else had a turned up collar at the end of this movie: Demon Bill Nighy! That's right! When he reveals himself in all his saggy hell skin glory, he is clad in a long blue CORDUROY coat with a big red VELVET turned up collar. I couldn't concentrate on the exploding "pathos" because of that corduroy coat with the ginormous velvet collar!!!!
Well, with that description, I just had to Google Bill Nighy in I, Frankenstein. The pictures I found were too washed out to tell the colors, but it was indeed an impressively huge collar.
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