Movies

The 15:17 to Paris: How God Prepares the Heroes We Need Right Now

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The true story of how three American friends stopped a terrorist attack on a train to France and saved 500 lives. Directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Dorothy Blyskal from the book.

Clint Eastwood is one of the most courageous and bold filmmakers in Hollywood. He defies the hegemony, goes against the grain, speaks truth to power.

The 15:17 to Paris is no exception. This is a story of American exceptionalism, positive Christianity, pro-military and salvific masculinity.

Like Owen Wilson would say, “Wow.”

It follows the ordinary lives of three boys from grade school up to adulthood and how the simple and sometimes frustrating obstacles of life are providentially used by God to create ordinary heroes. I use that ironic term “ordinary heroes” deliberately because, not only is this a true story, but it is one that shows us being a hero is not something for comic books and movies, but is part and parcel of a life of traditional American Christian values that have been lost in our culture.

The Gimmick

All right, I have to say this right up front, the acting is not Oscar-worthy. It’s mediocre, and a bit of a weakness of the film. But I am totally okay with it because Eastwood cast the actual three men to play themselves in the movie.

It’s a gimmick that works because it carries with it a certain sense of authenticity that A-list actors would not carry. Of course, I love what A-list actors can bring to true stories as well. But in this case, it’s okay that they don’t. And the reason is because the whole point of the story is that ordinary average citizens without privilege can be real heroes.

So, you’ll have to have a little patience with these first time thespians. But trust me, it will be worth it.

Salvific Masculinity in an Emasculated World

Leftists and America-haters will hate this movie with all the hatred in their black little hearts.

Patriots and reasonable Christians will love this movie because it showcases God’s providential control in our lives and defies the political correctness of cultural Marxism that is destroying our society.

Here’s how it does that… Continue reading →

Oscar Win: The Shape of Water Reveals the Soul of Hollywood — Bestiality.

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A sci-fi interspecies romance. A mute female janitor working in a 1960s top-secret government facility falls in love with an amphibious fish-man that looks like a modern Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Okay, so I have to give the Academy kudos for not giving the Oscar to the movie that celebrates adult sexual exploitation of teens. Instead, they opted for the movie that celebrates sex with animals.

That’s like kicking out Harvey Weinstein, but keeping Roman Polanski.

And it is entirely predictable.

A theater full of moral hypocrites, sexual predators and their enablers joke about how depraved they are, and avoid speaking truth to their power, while they award best picture to a Christophobic fantasy about sex with animals.

Please. Stop the madness.

Yes, I know they hinted at “the problem” by virtue signaling, but the Pharisees did not address it explicitly like they do with “other people’s sins.” Now, all of a sudden, they are sensitive and subtle. They were like a government agency that assures us they are investigating their crimes, “So don’t worry, we’ll clean up our mess.”

Yeah, right. While they arbitrarily destroy other men’s lives with mere accusations and think the fascist race for the guillotine is “justice”.

Their moral confusion is apparent in everything they do. It’s time for real change.

Social Justice for Animals

But back to the movie, an abominable SJW hate-fest against another caricature of Christianity, and an elevation of the very paganism that leads to the sexual predation that Hollywood is consumed with, while mocking Christian men, like Mike Pence, for their honorable chivalric actions toward women.

Remember, the director, Guillermo del Toro, made the very pagan Pan’s Labyrinth that was a fantasaical glorification of pagan blood sacrifice.

Well, he does it again in The Shape of Water.

The janitor is a lonely mute woman, Elisa, who works as a janitor at a government facility in the 1960s, a symbolic choice for the Cold War as a metaphor for “American paranoia” that supposedly leads to violent oppression of rights.

This is the stereotypical “Red Scare” narrative that worldwide panic was created by the vast right wing conspiracy about an ideology called Communism that didn’t murder over 100 million people and certainly didn’t threaten us with all those big scary nuclear weapons. And uncle Joe was a great guy too! Because we now know that 100 million weren’t murdered by Communism, but rather the paranoid fear of America!

So, the storytellers try to paint a theme about “civil rights” by making the protagonist a marginalized victim, who only has two friends, who just happen to be other marginalized victims in the social justice pantheon: Zelda, a black woman at work and Giles, a gay artist next door.

So, the set-up is to equate her story with one of oppression and forbidden love. You know those evils that only Christian patriarchy create.

Which comes to the villain, another vile caricature of Christianity… Continue reading →

12 Strong: Salvific Masculinity Destroys Islamic Imperialism & the War on Men

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The true story of the first deployment of a special forces team in Afghanistan after 9/11. A mere 12 American soldiers, led by a captain without field experience, join local forces to take down a major Taliban target.

War Movies and the Zeitgeist

I wrote a post on war movies a decade ago, wherein I argued that their themes often reflect current political attitudes of the era — or at least of Hollywood in that era. This isn’t absolute. There is some diversity of views, but there are also clear patterns.

In the 1940s and 50s, war movies tended to support the narrative that war is glory. Killing Nazis after all is a glorious good thing. World War II was indisputably righteous war. There were some “war is hell” themes, but it was a hell worth fighting.

Then in the 60s and 70s the Hollywood slogan became, “war is insanity,” because of the politics of Vietnam. Movies from Dr. Strangelove to Apocalypse Now reinforced that anti-establishment narrative. Sure, there were always some exceptions, but it wasn’t until Saving Private Ryan that war movies could be heroic and patriotic again.

But Ryan started a new kind of diluted patriotism, with a shift away from the higher cause of one’s country to the individualistic commitment to one’s fighting buddies, the man next to you, became your purpose, not the flag. The patriotic value of a higher cause faded into the background of relativistic rejection of transcendent causes. It was a movie version of being against war, but “supporting the soldiers.” Even good war movies like We Were Soldiers and Blackhawk Down suffered from this myopic individualism.

In recent years, Hollywood has tried to cast the American military as a tool of a nationalistic imperialistic military industrial complex of sadistic corrupt leaders and poor sucker soldier pawns destroyed by PTSD. Witness movies like Redacted, Lions for Lambs, War Machine, In the Valley of Elah, all failures because Americans don’t believe the Lie.

Return to a Higher Cause

But recently, with American Sniper, Hacksaw Ridge, Dunkirk, 13 Hours, and now 12 Strong, we have a resurgence of a more nuanced balance of just war theory. These movies deal honestly with the imperfections of humanity, but focus on a return to an understanding of righteous violence and the transcendence of a higher cause of fighting for freedom and one’s country again.

They do not shy from showing the truth that even though we are morally obligated to kill evil men and evil communities bent on destruction and murder, it is not without collateral damage on the human psyche of those involved. But these movies affirm that the noble cause of one’s country, the higher purpose of freedom and justice, is a price worth paying to protect the innocent.

Of course, these were all elementary ideas of yesteryear. But in today’s climate of American self-hating War on Masculinity, and left wing postcolonial Marxist university theories indoctrinating the youth from high school on, those elementary truths are now a sort of profound divine revelation into a world of darkness.

Not to mention how the notion of confronting widespread Islamic imperialism and oppression around the world has become a No-No for Left Wing Hollywood, bent as it is on hating Judeo-Christian western civilization.

Justice is Masculine

But there are exceptions. Thank God. Hollywood may be dominated by Anti-American regressives, but it is not monolithic. There is a resistance within. Truth does get released at times. There are individuals who do not follow the herd off the cliff of left wing delusion.

12 Strong is a rare example of that unleashed truth.

It is a return to masculine righteousness in the face of worldwide Islamic evil.

And boy, do we need this right now. Not just because of the war on masculinity that wants to turn all men into women because of the evil excess of the Harvey Weinsteins of the world, but because of our culture’s cowering to Islamic supremacy. You know, criticism of Islam is “Islamophobia,” and Feminist submission to Islamic oppression of women.

12 Strong is a battle movie, plain and simple. Lots of gun battles, soldiers’ comaraderie, and strategy meetings of generals over maps discussing the odds. And cool action sequences of modern soldiers on horseback in rugged terrain shooting automatic rifles. In other words, a classic war movie about a small unit of American soldiers fighting the real enemy that exists in this world, with grit, honor and duty.

We see the captain taking the lead in battle, men considering it an honor to do a mission that they will most likely not survive, and all of them doing it for their loved ones and their country. Yeah, that’s right, the country that too much of Hollywood considers a shithole.

Well, not this time. Thanks, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Nicolai Fuglsig, writers Ted Tally, Peter Craig, and the cast for your courage.

The heart and soul of this story is justice, as embodied in the simple talisman of a piece of twisted melted metal from the Twin Towers that a general gives the captain of the unit, played brilliantly by Chris Hemsworth.

At the end of the story, after conquering the enemy, the captain buries that piece of metal into the dirt of Afghanistan as a spiritual homing beacon for justice.

But as one of the soldiers says at the end, “We won the battle. We still gotta win the war.” And that is a near impossible war to win in the Afghan “graveyard of empires.” A land where the Afghan warrior tells them, “There is no right choice. Today, you are my ally, tomorrow, you are my enemy.” It is a complex world that illustrates just how difficult it is to win over entrenched evil. Just how impossible are the odds.

But impossible odds are precisely what are overcome in this true story of 12 Strong men, exemplars of the masculine righteousness that is needed to save the world. The impossible can be done when you fight evil for a just cause.

And yes, the price is worth it.

It’s something left wingers and feminist man-haters completely miss with their propaganda of how “white male privilege” is the root of all evil.  When they try to deconstruct masculinity into toxicity, when they try to argue that it is men who cause the wars and violence in the world, they suppress the truth that it is also men who stop all the wars and violence in the world. Righteous, masculine men of strength.

And that is what we need more of. 12 Strong is an antidote to the toxic anti-masculinity of the left wing social engineering that is seeking to sissify our culture.

Watch it. Be strong.

Only the Brave: Extinguishes the Flames of Toxic Feminization

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True story of the Granite Mountain Hot Shots, an elite group of firefighters facing one of the worst fires in Arizona.

I have big deadlines and don’t have the time to give to this that I wish I could. But I just wanted to say that this film has an essential quality that I have not seen in a loooong time in movies: a real heroic masculinity. I’m not talking about fake karate fights and sci-fi effects and comic book silliness. I mean the kind of heroism that inspires you to be a strong man in the self-loathing, self-destructive society that we live in.

If you are sick of the infantilization of colleges, the sexist attack on masculinity by feminism, the attempt to emasculate all males based on the sexual depravity of some in power, the agenda to destroy God’s image by gender confusion, and the outright cowardice of our politically correct, SJW society, then you must see Only the Brave.

It highlights not merely bold, gritty courage and bravery in men, but it gives honor to their women, and even shows the men’s flaws and how they seek to address them to become better husbands and fathers and role models.

Heroism, courage, love, comradery, maturity, masculinity, it has it all.

And we need it all.

Go see this movie.

 

Blade Runner 2049: Boring Soulless Mediocre Atheist Christ Story

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Decades after the original, a new blade runner is tasked to hunt down a replicant that was “miraculously” born. Such a birth would justify giving replicants “human dignity,” and thereby stop their slavery to humans.

The original cool movie concept of a hunter of A.I. robots becoming the hunted has turned into another sophomoric attempt to philosophize that bleeds contempt for the audience by delivering no real action and long boring 1980s camerawork that lasts a sleep-inducing 2 hours and 44 minutes.

I don’t even want to waste my time blogging on this, but if I do, then you don’t have to waste your time regretting watching it.

I had originally assumed Ridley Scott directed this, but he only exec produced it. So…

My God, when are these Hollywood “artistes” going to stop trying to subvert the Bible with atheist Christ stories and God hatred? I’m praying that Denis Villeneuve, the director, is doing this because he’s being bothered in his conscience as he faces his own mortality. But I fear a more cynical reality that he is just another filmmaker who thinks he’s being “deep” by adding religious themes he doesn’t even believe in to a story he’s trying to make profound.

What is the line between machine and humanity? Do our dreams constitute our reality?

It seems that this is the era where atheist propaganda movies have achieved the preachy mediocrity of Christian propaganda movies. Now, when they throw out “God’s Not Dead” and “Fireproof,” we can say, “Oh, yeah? What about Alien Covenant and Blade Runner 2049?” And Exodus: God’s and Kings? And Noah?

Give me the hearty paganism of Gladiator any day over this heartless soulless atheism. (It’s paganism is not ultimately satisfying either, but it connects more deeply with our universal hunger for transcendence in a way that BR 2048 cannot.)

Soullessness is Boring

First off, the very premise upon which the entire movie rests is the atheistic evolutionary fairy tale that “souls” or consciousness arises or grows out of material complexity. This is all the rage now in some brain science circles etc. They have no actual explanatory mechanism for this “miracle” of matter sprouting “soul,” they just believe it happens. It “self-organizes.” This is what’s called in science, “just so” stories, or “magical thinking.”

And they laugh at Christians?

Ironically, the movie still operates within a modernist paradigm of Greek dualism that argues that humans are “ghosts in machines.” The Gnostic version says it this way: “the body is a prisonhouse of the soul.” Be that as it may, it’s the same delusion of A.I. movies all over. There is some point at which machines and/or their programming become so complex that they sprout souls.

This is actually a reductionism that reduces spirit to properties of matter. They try to deny that and craft clever ways of “transcending” materiality, but they cannot do so. And we humans know this when we watch these stories. Which means that when such atheist premises are engaged in the course of “love stories” between robots and other such “dignifying” activities, the audience knows as they watch that it’s a contradiction. Even if they don’t know it intellectually, or they can’t put their finger on it, they can sense it as they watch. Robots and programs are not humans, and no amount of verisimilitude can change that. Verisimilitude is a means of deception. And I think the audience can sense that truth.

Now, here’s how the deception tries to mimic truth… Continue reading →

Please Support these Most Courageous Storytellers in Hollywood

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Here is an opportunity to do something active regarding changing our culture for the better.

Phelim McAleer and his wife Ann McElhinney, are the most boldly courageous filmmakers I have met. I am working with Phelim on a project so this is very personal to me. This is not just an idea or a distant and cold cultural observation.

Take a look at their trail of storytelling righteousness…

They spoke truth to the power of Big Green by making the documentary Frack Nation. This doc uncovered the malicious lies of the anti-fracking movement and “documentary” Gasland. They raised their own funds through Kickstarter to make it. It’s now on Netflix and Amazon Video. They showed the truth about fracking, that quite literally has saved our nation.

Phelim and Ann made history by raising their own funds of a couple million dollars to make a feature film (and book) about America’s worst serial killer, Hermit Gosnell. The press and everybody ignored this monster because he was an abortionist who engaged in infanticide. You read that right. Infanticide, not merely abortion. I’ve seen the movie, called, Gosnell. It’s a good movie. And it’s a courtroom drama, not a politicized piece. It has no gruesome pictures. It’s about the humanity of those who uncovered his dark crimes. But no distributor in Hollywood will touch it, because, well, Infanticide is a woman’s right to the Left. So Phelim and Ann are raising their own funds to distribute.

The New York Times suppressed their book about Gosnell from their best-sellers list, because, well, infanticide is a woman’s right to the  NYT.

When Kickstarter found out about the Gosnell project, it banned them from their website, because, well, infanticide is a woman’s right to Kickstarter. So Phelim and Ann went to Indiegogo, a more tolerant and inclusive fundraising website for their next projects… Continue reading →

The Handmaid’s Tale: The Delusionary Hysterical Fear of Christian Theocracy

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Hulu series about a dystopian world where infertility has become widespread, threatening the survival of the human race. A Christian theocracy has taken over and has enslaved the few fertile women as concubines for birthing children to the leaders—and to oppress women everywhere, because, well, that’s what Christianity is all about, don’t you know. Or something.

This won an Emmy for Drama Series. So I tried to watch it. I couldn’t get very far. It was an unending parade of Christophobic stereotypes, cliches and demonizations of Christianity. A litany of the fevered delusions and projections of left wing paranoia. But even worse: It was just bad storytelling.

It’s clear why this series is getting critical accolades. Not because it’s good. It’s terrible. But because it reflects the collective intolerance and bigotry of the Hollywood elite.

The storytelling here was more preachy, more juvenile in it’s exaggeration, more ridiculously melodramatic than any Christian movie I have ever seen. And if you know me, you know I do not like preachy Christian movies.

It was like watching a sincere yet laughable horror movie from the 1950s with every shot a “scary” melodramatic exaggeration of ugly lighting, ominous music, dour acting and extreme dialogue. And more ominously ominous music. Dr. Evil has nothing on this.

The Christian leaders in this story are of course fascists with Nazi-like traits, rituals and decorations. Their barren wives are begrudging enablers of the evil patriarchy who abuse the handmaidens out of their resentment, thus damning Christian women as traitors to their gender.

The heroine is a newly enslaved handmaiden who is taught that pollution caused the worldwide infertility, which is God’s punishment. In the first episode we see that the Christians execute Catholic priests, abortionists and gays. So, it is Evangelical Christianity who is the real villain here.

Or at least Atwood’s bizarre twisted misinterpretation of what Evangelical Christianity is. Continue reading →

The Red Pill: Feminist Discovers Men Are Not Demons

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Now available for free on Amazon Prime.

Cassie Jaye is a feminist filmmaker who takes a look at Men’s Rights Groups and their issues through a fair and objective lens. What she finds is shocking.

I don’t care for many documentaries because most of them are “docuganda,” that is, agenda-driven propaganda in the guise of impartial “journalism.” Heck, most of them don’t even bother to pretend being impartial anymore. And it’s no surprise most of them are left wing agitprop, because, well, conservatives still don’t believe in the power of culture and media, so they’re still cursing the darkness without lighting a candle.

But The Red Pill is different. The Red Pill is fascinating. It’s riveting.  It’s the anatomy of a conversion taking place right before your eyes. All right, I’m going to give a big fat spoiler, but in this case, I think it’s actually the selling point of the film… Continue reading →

The Movie IT: Christians Who Condemn All Horror Need to Grow Up

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I was interviewed by John Piper’s website in response to their questions about horror movies. Understandably, and respectfully, they do not share my appreciation of horror. But they were very open-minded and open-hearted to listen to me and give me a voice.

I really think Christians need to realize the tremendous moral power of the horror genre. It’s not for everyone, but God loves the horror genre, so Christians should at least respect it.

The movie IT, is a classic coming of age horror story of a group of young misfit outcasts who must not only face the returning supernatural evil in their small town, but face the fears and evils in their own lives in order to grow up. It’s not for the feint of heart, and it’s not perfect, but I think it exemplifies moral lessons in line with the Christian worldview.

Read on for the interview…

Continue reading →

Because of Gracia: Standing up for Your Faith Against Anti-Christian Bigots

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Timid undercover Christian, Chase Morgan, hides his faith at his high school, you know, like it’s supposed to be in our brave new world of secular regressive politics. When beautiful and bold Christian, Grace Davis, arrives as a new student, Chase becomes close friends and falls for her. But their experience of faith being suppressed by a double standard at their school, finds Grace standing up for God in her debate class, which challenges Chase to stand up, speak out and find his voice.

Okay, I have a love/hate relationship with the Christian movie genre. I don’t really care for them. But unlike cynical Hollywood “Christians” who condemn all Christian movies because of their own self-loathing “faith,” I actually see a place for the genre.

But to be honest, it takes a lot to get me to watch one. Because, usually they’re just so poorly written, poorly directed, and poorly acted, that I can’t get through the first ten minutes. My bias is that I was raised on Hollywood quality production values. So yes, the first hurdle you must overcome before you can be considered respect-worthy is the basics of good filmmaking.

But this I will say. Christian movies are getting better. And Because of Gracia is one of the best I’ve seen. This is not saying much, I will admit. Yes, there still needs to be work on the writing, directing and acting. But this movie was very watchable, and emotionally connective in a way others I have seen have not been.

Because of Gracia rang true to the human experience, especially for Christians.

Here’s how it does… Continue reading →