Supernatural / Religious

End of the Spear

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Jungle Thriller. A son explores returning to the stone age tribe that killed his missionary father in the 1950s.

This movie is a step in the right direction for Christian stories being told in Hollywood. I think it still has a long way to go. But we are getting there. We are getting better. I believe we need to support these kind of movies by paying to see them so the studios will distribute more of them and then we’ll get better at making them. And so I recommend seeing this, but I still think Christian filmmaking has a lot to learn. So let’s support it with our money so it can get better. This movie is miles ahead of those End Times obsessions that keep being made, and for that, I applaud it and support it.

I liked how they tried to avoid the Christianese of many Christian stories by downplaying the god talk of the missionaries. HOWEVER, this is a story about missionaries, and I never got to know the hearts of these people and what would drive them to risk their lives trying to get to these savages? And also, what would drive the women of the martyred men to go back into the village of the people who killed their husbands and bring their children? These are the most important moments of the story and they are never dealt with. It’s almost like they were so paranoid of sounding like a typical evangelical movie that the result was a lack of clarity of purpose behind characters as well as internal issues and struggles.

I thought it was an interesting idea to show the native’s perspective, but unfortunately, the actual result was a bit boring. I found the missionary stories to be more interesting, but less developed.
The final scene where the son of the matryed pilot confronts his father’s killer was a powerful opportunity, but I have to admit that it didn’t work for me the way it was done. I didn’t believe the kid’s acting or the way the whole thing was set up.

The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

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Mythological fantasy. A phenomenal adaptation of the C.S. Lewis classic. In fact, I would say that this is one of the few movies that are better than the book. I was not impressed with the book, but I teared up throughout the film because of its deep magic, that is, its mythological incarnation. Lucy is adorable. One of my favorite moments is when she smiles at her shocked unbelieving siblings, now in Narnia for the first time and quips satirically, “Don’t worry, it’s just your imagination.” The Ice Queen is wickedly well performed, and Aslan was not safe, but good. What struck me in the film was its positive Medieval culture of chivalry. In this, the filmmakers were true to Lewis’ own English background, as well as his degrees in Medieval Romance. It was so refreshing to see honor, courage, and duty in fighting against evil as the means to freedom and justice. Aslan allowing Peter to kill the evil wolf with his sword is a rite of his manhood and becoming a knight of honor. Boy is that politically incorrect – and truthful. And before this event, earlier in the story, Susan had tried to get Peter NOT to fight the big bad wolves as they surrounded them, but rather to “listen to them,” because, “just because you have a sword, doesn’t make you a hero.” Does that sound like the kind of politics that is going on in this world right now as fools seek to reason with terrorists and understand them and bow to their demands rather than kill them. In one of the beautiful key moments of the film, the White Witch appeals to the Deep Magic that is “more powerful than any of us, that rules over all destinies, yours and mine,” and claims that the law demands blood for true justice. This is certainly abhorred as primitive barbarism by those in our society who would blame victims, (unless it’s racism), seek to understand evildoers (like Islamofascists), rather than render justice, and think that letting criminals go because they “feel” sorry or have been good boys in prison is somehow justice. This movie shows that the Law’s requirements are eye for eye, and eye for eye is NOT unjust or unfair, but truly the ONLY fairness, otherwise evil reigns. It is the rejection of eye for eye which is barbaric and destroys civilization because lex talionis is simply a way of saying as we do that “the punishment should fit the crime.” Lex talionis is NOT a justification of revenge, it was meant to keep sinful people from extracting too much in punishment than what was deserved. Which leads us to the Christian mythology in the film. It was not strangled. Of course, the most primary essence of Christianity is the substitutionary atonement of Christ for his people. We are forgiven not because God just waved a hand and let criminals of the universe go – that would be cruelty to the victims. Rather, Jesus took upon himself the death penalty for all believers. In this and this alone is the philosophical and theological conundrum of love and justice perfectly united. God’s Law of justice requires the penalty is paid (justice), but his love is displayed in suffering that penalty on behalf of his people (Romans 5:6-10). This is called the Law and Gospel that is required for redemption to be sufficiently communicated. Like a mirror, God’s Law shows us we are guilty of sin, criminals of the universe (Romans 3:19-20). But the Gospel is the Good News that Jesus paid that penalty to free us (Romans 6:23). As Aslan explains, “when a willing victim who committed no treachery would take the place of a traitor,” then the “Deep magic” is fulfilled, that is, the Law is fulfilled in the sacrificial atonement of Christ. Some of the most powerful analogies to the Gospel are in this film. Of course, the Stone Table of sacrifice is a pagan symbol of appeasement to the gods, just like the crucifix was a Roman pagan mode of punishment. Aslan says nothing and is shaven before killed, just like Christ said nothing and was beat and bruised before being killed (Isaiah 53:5-7), The White Witch, before killing Aslan, says mockingly, “Behold, the Great Lion,” just like Christ’s persecutors mocked him saying, “Hail, the king of the Jews.” (John 19:3) There is an earthquake when Aslan raises from the dead, just like there was one at Jesus’s tomb when he was resurrected (Matthew 28:2). Oh, and it was two girls there when Aslan raised, just as it was the women who saw Christ raised (Matthew 28:1). When Aslan kills the White Witch, he says, “It is finished,” the final words of Jesus on the cross when salvation was secured and he destroyed the power of death and the devil (John 19:30; Hebrews 2:14). Aslan breathes on the statues to bring them to life, just like Jesus breathed on his disciples to give them the Holy Spirit that raises them spiritually from the dead (John 20:22). They left the phrases, “daughters of Eve,” and “sons of Adam,” which are references to our Genesis and Original Sin (Romans 5), but also the glory of man in the image of God as children of Adam and Eve (Acts 17:26). I loved a little tidbit they put in to mock the modernist demythologizing of religion. In Narnia, the “land of myth,” Lucy looks at some books, and one of them is titled, “The Myth of Man.” What a great jab. Two tiny disappointments: They mangled the classic phrase of Aslan, “Is he safe?” “Oh no, but he is good,” into “He’s not a tame lion, but he is good.” And also they only mentioned the phrase of Narnia, “It’s always winter but never Christmas” only once. Yet it should have been a repeated phrase because of course it is symbolic of how godless man seeks to take God out of society. Anyway, Lewis and Tolkien are two of the most potent forces against modernity in making it safe to “believe” again by showing the mythology of modernity as ultimately evil and destructive. I’ll have a booklet or a book out this year if you want to read more about the idea of using mythology or pagan mythological elements in Christian storytelling. It will be called, “Word Pictures.”

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

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Highly Recommended. This is a story based on an allegedly true story that occurred in Germany in the 1970s. It’s been updated to today and place in America. It’s the story of a trial of a priest charged with negligent homicide in the death of a young girl, Emily Rose, in the midst of her exorcism. In our modernist world of naturalism that presupposes the negation of the categories of the supernatural, this movie is a welcome counterbalance to Enlightenment pseudoscientific bigotry. I enjoyed the unpredictable mixing of genres, horror and courtroom drama. A legal and logical examination of the issues punctuated with the terrors of supernatural experience. Which makes this movie very postmodern. A story that counters reason with experience, and experience is forced upon the rationalism of modernity as something that CANNOT be ignored any longer. Our precious naturalistic assumptions about reality and proud rationalism are just not adequate to address all of reality. This is of course, the good side of postmodernism in challenging modernity. The dark side of the pomo worldview, well, I’ll talk about that in a moment. I know the director and he has said he is a postmodern Christian. So this is a conscious attempt to break through the ignorance and prejudice of modernity. The heroine, played by Laura Linney, is the attorney who defends the priest and she is an agnostic who decides to use demon possession as a defense in a court of law, not because she believes it to be real, but because her client does, and that this is, in an HONEST court of law, a legitimate consideration, the sincerity of the believers. To assume that the girl’s death (by self-inflicted and other bodily injury) MUST be negligence because “as we all know” demons are simply religious fairy tales, is itself an ignorance of prejudice. And this is exactly what the prosecutor embodies when he claims that a witness’s testimony of demonic possession should be struck down on the basis of “silliness.” And of course, most audience members at that point would agree with the prosecutor. How can we allow this kind of “faith” testimony in to our system that is supposed to be based on fact? And that very assumption is perhaps the most revelatory ignorance of the modernity we are current victims of: The assumption that EVERYTHING has a natural cause in physical chemicals. As the defense lawyer proves, even science itself is based on faith. The very claims of Emily’s demonic symptoms being reducible to psychotic fits of epilepsy are shown to be NOT FACTS, but beliefs or guesses of so-called medical scientists. Because the fact is, science and medicine are not only based on faith commitments, but they are merely observational interactions with symptoms. Much of the time, they have no clue how or why a drug is working, they are merely creating explanations that they BELIEVE is the reason. Thomas Szaz has written extensively on the fraudulance of the medical drug culture as well as psychotherapy in The Myth of Mental Illness and Pharmocracy. So the doctors notice a certain drug results in suppression of symptoms, so they theorize that the problem is therefore reducible to physical origins or causes. But the defense gives an entirely legitimate counterfactual that the drugs suppressed Emily’s mental and physical capacity to withstand the demons, thus contributing to her death. What Derrickson does extremely well here is to fairly portray both sides in the courtroom. In fact, he does this so well, that when each side presents its case, you find yourself changing sides in what you think the answer is. This makes for truly good drama. What I liked about the demon possession was how “realistic” it was. That is, it was not driven by gory special effects but more accurately the kind of effects that have historically been connected with real possessions. And that could be explained through medical physiological explanations as well. Even though there are the usual multiple voices, strange contortions, etc. Scott does the opposite of typical demon possession movies. Rather than the white eyes with a tiny pupil, he has an enlarged pupil which was totally scary in a new way. Surprisingly, there are no foul cuss words that I remember coming from the demons, as is the usual fare with horror movies of demons. Thus proving you can be scary without the foul language. Scott’s scare tactics were all based on simple old techniques of suspense, the shadow we barely see, the noise in the hall, whispering voices. But he does it so well that once again it proves we don’t need more gore and pushing the envelope of impropriety to be scary. The whole moral of this story is simply spoken through the agnostic lawyer’s summary that this is a story about “possibilities.” A story that makes us consider the reality of the supernatural to widen our understanding of reality. It is not the “believers” who are blind to reality, it is the proud anti-supernaturalist, who assumes so much by faith that he doesn’t even realize it. That he doesn’t see the demon right in front of his face. Of course, this isn’t presented with a propaganda approach because in fact, most every demonic encounter is presented in flashback, testimonial form, complete with some variation, thus reminding us that even this is not absolutely certain. Although I would argue that experience gets a stronger edge here. Which is of course the weakness of postmodernism. The strength of the modernist prioritization of rationality does prove the fact that experience can be interpreted differently depending on one’s worldview, AND ALL PRESUPPOSITIONS ARE NOT EQUAL. Some are provably wrong. And that people can be deceived because of their presuppositions. Let’s face it, the history of medicine does show that certain religious beliefs DID blind some people to the truth of infectious diseases etc. So the good that anti-supernaturalism brought was the unveiling of much superstitious ignorance and even charlatanry. But of course, two wrong extremes don’t make a right. The sword cuts both ways in blindness, and Christianity is the only true balance that started modern science and medicine by acknowledging the lawlikeness of God’s ordered universe without ignoring the spiritual side. But I digress. I like the idea of via negativa, “way of the negative,” that is, proving God’s existence by proving the existence of evil supernatural. If there is an antichrist evil spirit, then there is the ultimate Good Spirit of God. One Roman Catholic nun reviewing the movie said that this fear orientation is a medieval means of getting people saved. But of course, this is more autobiographical of that nun and her postmodernity than it is the Bible. So Jesus was medieval when he used fear to scare people into the kingdom? (Matt 10:28; 5:22; 5:29; Luke 12:5) In fact Jesus used fear so much as a motivation in his parables about wailing and gnashing of teeth and eternal darkness etc. that I would wonder if this nun, and those like her, even read their Bibles (assuming she even has one.) And was God himself an irrelevant medieval peasant when he commands us to FEAR him over 200 times in both Old and New Testaments – more than he commands us to love him? Well, I would certainly NOT say that fear is the only draw to salvation, but it is certainly a part of the BIBLICAL GOSPEL, though it is not a part of the modern or postmodern gospel. We SHOULD fear hell and love God. Both fear and love are equally ultimate truths in the Bible (sometimes described in the same paragraph or sentence – Matthew 10:26-31). But at the end of the day, one simple movie CANNOT CONTAIN the entire Bible in it’s theology. There are plenty of movies available that do express love as a motivation to salvation (Bruce Almighty). We need some that deal with fear too. So there. What I didn’t like about the movie: Well, there are some serious theological issues I have with it. I do not argue that these are reasons NOT to see it or reasons to reject the movie, but simply reasons for discernment and disagreement. You don’t have to agree with everything in a movie to see the value of it. And it doesn’t have to be theologically perfect to accept the good that it does bring in context with the culture. First, a very minor thing (not theological) was that I thought the appearance of a cloaked figure in the distance was not at all consistent with the heart of this story. It was out of place and a bit too melodramatic and literal. Secondly, the heroine starts as an agnostic and ends as an agnostic very clearly, which makes this an unsatisfying story in terms of character. It is an elementary necessity of good storytelling to take the hero from one pole to another, the character arc. If a hero starts out an unbeliever, they need to in some way at least, end with a seed of belief. If they start a believer in something, they must end up skeptical of it. If they start selfish, they should end selfless, and on and on. This is the stuff of great storytelling. By the hero’s journey, the truth of the story is incarnated. So the audience can journey with the hero. So to have a hero that does not change is not only anathema in storytelling, it is unsatisfying. But not only that, I would argue it is counterproductive to Derrickson’s own worldview of Christianity. It is fine to have some characters not change, but NOT the hero. They must change or the audience is left hanging. This is perhaps where Scott’s postmodernism gets the best of him. His story INCARNATES the suggestion through the heroine’s lack of change, that religious beliefs are not important, what IS important is her professional ethics. Because this is where she does change, in her ethics. But Agnosticism is not a viable or even good worldview. So if the heroine would have at least made an indication that she saw the world differently now, that would have been enough. I’m not saying she should “accept Jesus as her personal Lord and Savior,” but merely that her life is truly changed because of her journey. But alas, the only thing she changes in is in her professional ethics, and this is no doubt good. Yes, she quits a bad legal firm and shows character, but the real issue of the movie was NOT the politics of the legal system (that was a subplot), but the reality of the supernatural. In simple terms, she starts ignorant and ends ignorant. Not a satisfying story. One theological difference I have is that the very heart of the Roman Rites of exorcism do not have biblical foundations. Now, I’ve talked to Scott about demon possession and he claimed that there is so little in the Bible that we cannot make dogmatic claims either way. While I acknowledge there is certainly freedom in this area to service the story (I do so in my upcoming supernatural thriller), I nonetheless am persuaded that what the Bible DOES say about it, little as it may be, is still truthful and relevant. And in the only place where exorcism occurs in the Bible is Acts 19, where the sons of Sceva were exorcists and they had no power over demons who ended up beating them up. It seems that everywhere in the New Testament, demons are simply cast out in the name of Jesus Christ by faithful believers (sometimes requiring prayer, but not ritual). I suppose you could make the argument that this movie supports that because they never did exorcise her. She died after all! On the other hand, I certainly admit that ritual is more cinematic and dramatic. In fact, one executive reacted to my movie, that has demons cast out of people, by saying that they cast the demons out too easily. Well, that was because we have been so conditioned by the Roman Ritual view that we don’t realize it is more real (Biblical) for believers to simply cast them out! Anyway, I do acknowledge that the priest does eventually call on the name of Jesus Christ in his attempts and am surprised that the studios let Scott do this. Another major concern is with the entire purpose of the demon possession. It is portrayed as God’s intent to show the world the reality of the supernatural through having one of his believers (supposedly) possessed by a demon. But it is one thing to have demons taunting believers, that’s true. It is quite another to completely disregard the reality of the Holy Spirit that is supposed to be within the believer themselves! Believers in Jesus Christ possessed by a demon is simply and seriously unbiblical (1 Cor 6:19). A contradiction in terms and reality (1 John 4:4). As are visions of the Virgin Mary which is supposedly how she received this purpose. Talking to the dead is strictly forbidden by God (Deut 18:11; Isaiah 8:19), so it strikes me as odd that this is portrayed positively in the movie, as if God does communicate through this means. It could be argued that there was no indication that Emily was a true Christian, but this doesn’t square with the context of the movie. It is certainly strongly implied that she is. And another important element is the arbitrariness of the possession. There is no indication of how the demons were able to get into Emily. The history of demon possession indicates that demons do not willy nilly enter people. There has to be some occultic or pagan involvement or opening up to the dark side. The Exorcist did this extremely well by having the child play with a Ouiji Board. But in Emily, they just take her without provocation or invitation. Too arbitrary storywise to be satisfying. You know, it’s interesting, I wouldn’t be as picky if this was fictional, because fiction is intended to be metaphors or parables of something else. The reason I would be so picky is because this is claimed to be based on a true story.

The Brothers Grimm

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Partially recommended. This Terry Gilliam creation has a fictional version of the brothers who created the famous somewhat gruesome fairytales, as charlatans who exploit the superstitions of medieval peasants to make money. So, they manufacture a fake witch with middle ages technology and then vanquish her, knowing that since witches don’t really exist, there won’t be any real trouble and it will appear that they stopped it all. UNTIL THEY MEET REAL SUPERNATURAL magic and witchcraft and haunted woods. One brother is a “true believer” whose belief in magic beans ruined his destitute family’s life, and the other brother is the consummate materialist who quotes the infamous Hobbesian dictum, “life is short, brutish struggle and then you die.” He is certain “there is a rational explanation for everything.” This is a great set up for the materialist brother by the end to humble his pride and acknowledge not merely the existence of the supernatural, but also the reality of the things that go with it, like love and honor and courage. And he learns it from his naïve brother who keeps seeking the magic and its origins. So their redemption lies in being forced to save a small community haunted by monsters. Their charlatanism is cured and they find true love as well as save a group of about 12 children. They have some great subtle lines that recall famous fairy tales but worked within the story, like “Who’s the fairest of them all” and “huff and puff”. The whole point of this story is the Romantic notion that the onset of rationalism and science stole the mystery out of life, and that has blinded the eyes of the modernist who cannot see the evan vitale, the magic, the supernatural of life. A rather noble sentiment, coming as it does, from one of the atheist Monty Python gang. But then again, his view is more likely to be that of Bruno Bettleheim and the Jungian belief in the archetypes of the collective unconscious. And fairy tales tap into that collective unconscious and unite us in humanity rather than in God and his image. But alas, I do not think that Jungian analysis is the last word in the interpretation of fairy tales. In the tale, the witch must have the blood of others to maintain her eternal life or she returns to her corpse self. Well, that is clearly a substitutionary atonement theme that also reinforces the belief that evil people will consume or kill others in order to benefit their own future and hopes. Kinda sounds like abortion, euthanasia, and stem cell research doesn’t it? Consume and kill the young, the old, the less fit and helpless in order to advance your own interests and survival. So the story, like a dark version of Shrek, begins as a deconstruction of fairy tales, but ends up a rather traditional fairy tale.

Skeleton Key

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Not Recommended. The story of a Northerner do-gooder nurse (Kate Hudson) who is hired to do some at-home hospice in New Orleans for an elderly stroke victim (John Hurt). When she discovers there are some dark dealings surrounding the “magic” oriented Hoodoo (As opposed to Voodoo) and a dark spiritual past for the house itself, she runs into water way over her head. This is a very well done supernatural type thriller. Very good suspense and surprises. Excellent acting by John Hurt as the elderly man stricken by magic, not a stroke, and by Gena Rowlands as the creepy old wife. And as supernatural thrillers go, it’s all there. My problem with it is that it is a negative ending that has evil win through revenge, which spoils the heart and soul of it. Let me explain, and thereby ruin the movie for you. It turns out that two Hoodoo black servants in the deep past of the house, were lynched for their magical Hoodoo ways by the white people who owned the house. But somehow, they managed to work their Hoodoo (I just can’t keep from smiling at how goofy the word sounds), and engage in a ritual where they can conjure up the ability to have their spirits move into another’s body and take over, so they can have another life. Well, after all the surprise twists, it turns out that this Hoodoo couple is continuing to snatch people’s bodies, and the latest is our young Kate. There is just nothing very redeeming about the story and evil wins in a way that does not seem instructive or tragic. Just because a movie is done well doesn’t make it worthy of viewing if it’s content is without redemption or truth.

Saints and Soldiers

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Recommended. A great little story about a small group of Allied soldiers behind enemy lines in WWII. It is a very realistic exploration of a character who is a Christian of some kind, who struggles with having unintentionally killed 2 women and 4 children in a military raid. He is haunted by his guilt as his small company of men try to make it through enemy lines to deliver important intell to the Allied side. It was a refreshingly honest spiritual rip-off of Saving Private Ryan, even sporting Ryan rip-off music. But I loved it. I heard that it was made by Mormons, but I did not notice anything in the movie that indicated this kid was a Mormon, at least not to us normal people who do know any code words of Mormonism. The kid is called “Deacon” but that is biblical, and I have heard it used of Christians. Also, he was a “missionary” in Berlin. I’ve heard Mormons have to go on missions, but hey, that is a Christian concept FIRST, so it is not distinctly Mormon. So I don’t think Mormonism really holds sway if it is in there. One of the things about the authenticity of this film is that is was not black and white in it’s theme. On the one hand, it seemed to indicate that a religious conscience cannot work in war because there are too many accidents and innocents killed, but on the other hand, the kid is like the sharpshooter in Ryan (another rip-off, but I didn’t care), in that he is a good shot and kills enemy soldiers efficiently. AND YET, he has the ability to love and connect with an enemy soldier, he just happened to have befriended in Berlin before the War. So the sticky issue of spiritual brothers on opposing sides and how their allegiance to God’s Kingdom is higher than to man’s kingdoms was a very unique and welcomed challenge to this viewer. I am reminded of another great WWII movie that does this, but I don’t want to toot my own horn ☺ Anyway, I thought this film was thoughtful and had real heart. Awesome job for a low budget film. See it. Support meaningful thoughtful spiritual movies.

Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist

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Not Recommended. I wanted to see this movie because of the fact that it was shelved and redone by Renny Harlin. Well, I wanted to see why they studio felt they would lose so much money that they would need to remake it. And now I see why. Boy, Studios are not always stupid. This is a version done by Paul Shrader, who may never direct again. And he has a Christian past, which would make you think he would deal with spiritual things well, but think again. This is supposed to be the story of Father Merrin BEFORE the Exorcist movie, that is, his past. This movie was really bad. Bad acting by the melodramatic young priest, and female lead. Bad writing, bad directing. First mistake was the first scene, which was supposed to be Merrin’s past of having to chose which Jews to kill by the Nazis, which is what causes him to lose his faith but remain an archeologist. Well, the lead Nazi starts with a slight German accent and then loses it entirely. This was terrible. And the scene was boringly edited and acted. This was a sign of the rest of the movie. A couple good things about the movie: One theme of evil, “No one wanted to believe the atrocities of Hitler were going on. It’s easier to believe evil is random rather than the fact that it is in everyone and everyone is capable of it.” Another thoughtful idea spoken by a priest, “Faith’s ultimate strength lies in its ability to strengthen men, not conquer evil.” That’s cool. Many times, the faithful are martyred or do not in fact experience worldy victory, because God has something else he is teaching them. Winning in losing. Some ridiculous elements. Okay, sometimes you can make something eerie and evil by doing the opposite, by showing something that is normally mundane as an expression of evil. Irony helps surprise the audience and see things a new way. However, in this movie, it is done in such a poor way that it is really quite laughable. One of the “evil ironies” is that they have some cattle kill a herd of hyenas. Of course, we don’t see it, we just see the after effects of a few cows in a field around a bunch of dead hyena bodies. And then they show a bad CG shot of a cattle chewing on hyena remains. It was something out of Attack of the Killer Tomatos. Of course, there are the cliché characters, like the stupid priest who thinks the spirit of our Savior is in a demon possessed kid. The big showdown between the faithless priest and the demon possessed child was almost purely metaphysical and not even interesting. The big Showdown was the priest quoting Roman rites of exorcism as the demon possessed man cowered with each phrase. But it lacked entirely any real drama to it. No stakes. Okay a couple cool things: The demon possessed man came to look very much like an Eastern Buddha or avatar figure, which I like. Also, a couple of great lines from the demon that show us the truth in its opposite form, “ You hate God and why not? He gives you guilt.” The big temptation was telling the priest that he could “cease to care” which would protect himself. And when the priest finally faces this demon, he gets on his knees at home and asks God to forgive him for his unbelief. Very cool repentance. But silly special effects, like stuff out of the 70s or 80s. Overall, this film is a waste of time, but on the other hand, it’s good to see movies illustrating that there is real personal evil in the world, and you can’t brush that away with your pomo relativism. But alas, a failed poor quality attempt to do so.

The Kingdom of Heaven

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Not really recommended. Ridley Scott is one of the finest filmmakers in Hollywood. He is really quite brilliant with the look of all his films from Alien on up to Gladiator. But this movie turns out to be another Troy, a humanistic dismissal of religion. It deals with the Crusade of 1184 and focuses on a young Blacksmith, Balian, who becomes a knight and make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in order to insure his dead wife’s forgiveness for committing suicide, a decidedly non-Christian motive. His estranged father, encourages him to go to Jerusalem because all can be forgiven there in the Holy City, “a better world, a kingdom of conscience,” now presided over by a good Christian king who allows Christians, Jews and Muslims to live together in peace. Balian’s theme is pretty much spelled out in the plaque he has over his blacksmith shop: “What man is a man who does not make the world better.” (by the end of this movie, this saying ends up meaning, “be good without God, cause being good matters more than religion”) Okay, there are some good qualities in this movie that I have to give credit to: It does show good knights and bad knights. At least they are not all marauding pillagers of infidels, which is the typical mischaracterization. Yes, there was much that was wrong in the Crusades. The Roman Catholic Church here was diabolical in its treatments at times of non-christians. But not all of it was evil. There were a lot of stories from the Crusades, and the one that is picked by the storytellers is the one that reflects their particular viewpoint. For instance, they did not show the Muslims raping and pillaging the Holy Land and stealing Jerusalem in the first place that started the whole mess. No, that would be politically incorrect. So, this is not the first Crusade. Along the lines of this, it is important to note the things that are chosen to be shown and those that are chosen to be left out. For instance, there is a strange lack of the word and concept of jihad in this movie, yet plenty of “crusade” language – Hmmmm. It is interesting that they show some kooky Catholic Priests or Christian “fanatics” preaching on street corners, “To kill an infidel is not murder, it is the path to heaven,” But they do not show the fact that MOST ALL Muslims believed and preached this very “kill the infidel” idea at the time. They show a city controlled by Christians who allow Muslims to pray to Allah if they pay a tax. Yet, they do not show the fact that it is Islam that is famous for this very notion of dhimmitude, that is, of allowing Christians to live if they pay a tax. Bat Ye’Or has written extensively on the slavery of Christians under dhimmitude in books like “The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam” and “Islam and Dhimmitude.” In these books she catalogs the cruelty experienced by Jews and Christians under Islamic rule. But the movie also shows a good side to both the Christian king Baldwin, and the Muslim leader Saladin, by showing Baldwin hanging Templar knights for murdering Muslims and showing Saladin put a fallen crucifix back up in its place after it had fallen in battle. Even though this movie is balanced in showing good and bad knights, good kings and bad kings, it is not so balanced when it comes to Islam. There are no real fanatics shown on the Islamic side, something that is painfully foolishly fallacious. This is especially grievous in the light of modern day fanaticism that is almost exclusively engaged in by Muslims. Saladin was famous for his evenhandedness in dealing with his enemies sometimes, but come on, there were just as many fanatical Muslims to match the ridiculous warmongering of Catholic Guy de Lusignan and his General, Reynald portrayed in the picture as cartoon villains who loved to kill. But no, the Muslims are portrayed as mere enemies, not as the fanatics that they were, even under Saladin. I guess Ridley Scott just doesn’t want to have a fatwah on his head, (that is, to be killed by Muslim fanatics) so he plays it safe by avoiding the full truth and makes the Muslims look less fanatical. One good side is that the filmmakers DO show both sides claiming that “God wills it” of their actions. That is, both sides claim God’s favor or direction. So who is right? In this story, it is neither, it is Humanistic peace and brotherhood that is preached. A perspective that completely misses the truth. This is basically the story of a humanist, Balian, who experiences the ravages of religion, and decides it is all destructive. Here is how it is done. Every religious claim, is countered by our hero with an individualistic self-righteous appeal to “goodness” without God as the source of that goodness. A chess game illustrates that “none of us choose our ends,” to which our hero replies, “the king may move a man, but the soul of a man belongs to the man.” Balian demands that the kingdom of heaven is a “kingdom of conscience or nothing.” That is, the individual and his own conscience against the mean cruel “institutionalized religion.” The ultimacy of the individual as opposed to the collective in this movie is pure humanism. As if evil comes from the collective, but not the individual. And whay, pray tell is the collective, save a group of individuals who agree on their individual consciences? Humanism leads the terror of collective oppression, but it does so under the guise of no absolutes. At least religions can be wrong in their understanding of absolutes and CHANGE. But with humanism, there is no absolute, just the Will to Power in the name of some undefinable unjustifiable “good” (a “good” they have already denied by denying absolutes). There is a great saying by one of the heroic knights. He spurns “religion,” “Religion is full of fanatics. Holiness is right action. Goodness is what God desires in the mind and in the heart.” There is a sense in which this is true, but in the context of the film it basically means, “All that matters is being good, which of course, can be done individually without God.” (The storytellers seem to have missed Jesus’ enforcement of the Old Testament Law, that the most important commands are TO LOVE GOD with all your heart and mind and love your neighbor. So loving God rightly IS THE FIRST AND MOST IMPORTANT THING TO GOD, loving people according to HIS dictates is second, but an important second – Matthew 22:35-40.) Balian, the man without God, who claims throughout the film that God is not with him, cause he cannot feel him and cannot feel forgiveness even on the place of Christ’s crucifixion, this humanistic man is portrayed as having the highest ethic of all those religious believers around him. “God’s will” is always used as an obvious rationalization for personal gain throughout the movie. Balian is told that Jerusalem is great because once you are there, people “are not what they were born into, but what they have inside themselves to be.” This of course, is the humanistic FALSE supposition that all these religious believers are only their religion because that is what they were born into. Humanism presents itself as the great individualizer that allows people to be what THEY want to be. Of course, being born into religions or atheism or humanism IS OFTEN influential on a person’s beliefs, but the problem is that the world is full of hundreds of millions of converts that became NOT what they were raised to be. So it is simply a fallacy to suggest that we only believe what we were taught to believe. The question is NOT why we believe something, the question is whether what we believe is TRUE OR NOT. Truth is not determined by genetic origin within our psychologies, another humanistic ignorance. When Balian must gather his forces in Jerusalem to fight Saladin in an impossible battle, he says to them, “Your Muslim places of worship lie over Christian places of worship that lie over Jewish places of worship that were taken over by the Romans. Which is more holy? Who has claim? No one has claim. All have claim. We will defend Jerusalem for the people within its walls.” This typical contradictory proposition that all have claim and none have claim may sound wise in a pithy way, but it actually means nothing. If no one has claim, then “all” cannot have claim. What it really means is that the storytellers are telling us, your religious beliefs are irrelevant, my humanism is superior because I care about the people, not some religious claims, which are unprovable. This is the arrogance of humanism. It considers itself so superior to religions that it is above it all and better – as if it is its own god. But there is a problem here. Without the living transcendent God, people have no value, only the arbitrary value that those in power give them. So, ironically, if you take away Christianity, YOU DO NOT HAVE the love of people, you have the tyranny and manipulation of people. The fact of the matter is that the Roman Catholic Crusaders WERE NOT ACTING IN ACCORD WITH THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS. They were wrong NOT because they were religious, but because they did not follow their religion consistently or biblically. But the French Revolution and Communist Russia, now that is what you get of so-called, “liberty, equality, fraternity” the brotherhood of man without God. Humanists just want to get rid of religion and keep the ethics of religion, but the problem is that when they get rid of Christianity, they get rid of the ONLY THING that can give true and absolute value to the dignity and life of human beings. And they get rid of the absolutes that are the only foundation of ethics. They want to have Christian ethics without Christianity. This is patently absurd. Without an absolute Christian foundation of ethics, you are left with arbitrary rule of power. This will always end in tyranny and despotism, whether of the majority, the elite or of a dictator. May I remind the reader once again that yes, several million were killed in the name of religion over the 20 centuries, but HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS were murdered in but ONE CENTURY, the century of modernism without God. So, misguided religion is bad, but consistent humanism is one hundred times worse. The 20th century proved that modernism/humanism is more evil than all the worst of religions added together. So stop your belly aching. When Balian must burn the dead soldiers in the walls to keep from spreading disease, he is chastised by a priest for desecration, to which he replies, “God will understand. And if he does not, then he is not God, and it doesn’t matter.” Another pithy line that shows the arrogance of humanistic (and I might add, Thomistic Classical apologetics) that if God does not meet MY understanding of logic, then he is just not God. In other words, if God bows down and fits into MY (faulty) logical understanding, then I will allow him to be God, Which obviously means he wouldn’t be God if he had to do that. The real problem here was not that Christianity was absurd, but that the priests were prohibiting something (desecration) THAT WAS NOT PROHIBITED BY GOD (Matthew 15:2-9). Big difference, folks. Too much of Romanism was simply NOT BIBLICAL. So it is not Christianity that is absurd, it is Romanism, with it’s humanistic traditions that violated Scripture. At the end, Balian looks upon Jerusalem and says, “If this is the Kingdom of Heaven, let God do with it what he wills.” In other words, Balian is done with religion. He goes back to his home town to be a blacksmith again and have a wife. And when King Richard the Lionheart comes to town looking for Balian, the hero, Balian denies he is the man, and simply says he is a blacksmith. In other words, “I have had enough of religion and Christianity, I believe in just living my good life as a husband and worker, rather than the useless squabbles of religion.” So in this film, religion is tried and found wanting in favor of humanism. Unfortunately, it is humanism that ACTUALLY takes away the value and dignity of life, so the filmmakers are engaging in the classical Van Tillian parable of sitting on their Father’s knees in order to be able to slap the Father that gave them life. They deny the only warranted foundation of ethics, Christianity, and then try to have Christian morality without Christianity. But if there is no foundation of the Triune God, then THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS “GOOD” OR “FAIR” OR EVEN “EVIL.” There is simply opposing wills in conflict, without moral value attached to any act whatsoever.. How dare any humanist claim THEY know what is right or good, when there are millions who disagree with them. These humanists would impose their religion (and that is what it ultimately is, is religion) upon the rest of the world, all in the name of their definition of the “absolute good,” as they see it, a good, that they have already denied exists. And if there is no absolute good as defined by God, then who are they to impose their version of right or good on everybody else? There is no higher transcendence in this movie, just the disparagement of transcendence, which makes this movie an unsatisfying weak story without soul.

Chocolat

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Not Recommended. My brother-in-law recently did a detailed analysis of this movie to point up how it is an anti-christian movie. I thought it was very helpful, so here it is:

I guess my main concern was with the underlying message of the film. Yes, you are correct that it was a good portrayal of being bound by legalistic ways, but unfortunately the answer to the problem was not freedom through Christ (or anything to do with His attributes or character). Freedom was found through self expression. Or as the director stated in the bonus materials, “This is a story about temptation and not denying yourself the good things in life.” In other words, the age-old, “If it feels good, do it.” What could have been a good morality tale ended up being yet another manifesto of existentialism and humanism. (BTW, the director—Lasse Hahlstrom—also directed “Cider House Rules” which was more of the same.)

Every drama has a hero or messianic figure, and Vianne (Juliet Binoche) was the “savior” of this movie. She is presented as sweet and kind and all-embracing, but has obvious disdain for anything to do with the church or the people’s chosen attempts to be more godly (lent, fasting, etc.). Anything coming close to self-denial or self-discipline is represented as bondage. Vianne is the standard “against-the-rules” type along with Armaund (Judi Dench), the other character who is presented in a positive light. Between the two of them, their godless ways are flaunted instead of being presented as shameful, sinful or unwise. Worse, they teach their rebellious ways to others. Consider…

• Armaund shares a story with Vianne about sneaking out at night as a youth and swimming naked with her boyfriend. They both laugh with glee that she didn’t get caught by her mother.

• Armaund slams her daughter Caroline for not allowing her to see her grandson Luc because Caroline feels Armaund is a bad influence. Armaund frequently denigrates Caroline’s choices and modes of parenting, while Vianne empathizes with Armaund instead of supporting Caroline’s wishes and parental authority with the child. Worse, Vianne goes on to lure Luc into visiting (even after he tells her his mother has forbidden it) by asking him to draw a portrait of Armaund. He does this deceptively behind his mother’s back while she is at the hair salon.

• During one of Luc’s visits to the chocolate shop, he is offered some cake. “I’m not supposed to,” he says (because of lent). Armaund replies, “Don’t worry so much about ‘not supposed to’.” The boy eats it. Armaund says, “Live a little.”

• When the inevitable confrontation happens with Caroline finding out what’s been going on, Armaund sarcastically tells her, “Blame me for corrupting him with cocoa.” Caroline replies, “How dare you, Mother?” Armaund says, “Look at him, he’s fine.” Caroline turns to Luc and says, “Come with me.” Luc says, “I don’t want to.” Another character chimes in and says, “He’s happy here. It’s good for him.” Thankfully, Caroline responds, “I will decide what is good for my son.” Yet the whole scene paints Caroline as cruel and stifling, as if Luc is in some kind of abusive situation.

• The boy continues his deceptive ways by sneaking out for his grandmother’s birthday party. No consequence is portrayed for any of his deliberate disobedience.

• Armaund states proudly, “I swear. I read dirty books. And I won’t go to church.” She gives Luc a poetry book with poems that read, “Dead bodies, skin rotting, worms in my armpits and in my hair.” Yet she doesn’t seem to think she is a bad influence on her grandson. She dies after what she terms “a perfectly decadent evening” but is another “positive” character in the film.

• When Anouk (Vianne’s daughter) is teased at school for not having a father, she responds, “I have a father. We just don’t know who he is.” As if this is something the child, or anyone else, should consider normal.

• Vianne visits a woman who says, “He thinks you’re a bad influence.” The woman is speaking of Reynaud (Alfred Molina), but Vianne thinks she is talking about her husband and says, “You don’t have to listen to a word your husband has to say.” The woman also asks Vianne, “Does my husband know you’re here?” Vianne replies, “Does it matter?”

Another major concern I had was the way the church was portrayed. I know that Reynaud was the villain, but since the church was in his back pocket, it was also vilified. And we’re not talking about a “cultic” church like LDS or something else like Islam. This was Catholicism, basically the only other major faith in the world that adheres to the main tenets of Christianity. Anything to do with the church was usually presented irreverently or as something stifling. Consider…

• During the sex scene between Vianne’s parents, the voiceover said, “Now George had been raised a good Catholic. But in his romance with Cheetza (sp?), he was willing to slightly bend the rules of Christian courtship.”

• An abusive husband says, “We are still married in the eyes of God.” His wife replies, “Then He must be blind.”

• After an attempt at rehabilitation, the abusive husband said, “God has made me a new man.” But the man hadn’t really changed, so does that mean God is powerless? Although change can indeed occur through accountability at a Christ-centered church, the church was portrayed as weak and having no influence.

• Anouk asks her mother, “Why can’t we go to church.” Vianne replies, “You can if you want. But it won’t make things easier.” Once again, ‘do whatever is right for you’ followed by another slam against the church.
• When Reynaud finally appeals to God for help, he seemingly appears very contrite, crying out, “Tell me what to do.” But then he immediately looks up at Jesus on the cross and then down at the letter opener in his hand, then heads off to the chocolate shop with a somewhat manic look upon his face. So what was that supposed to mean? God told him to kill? He violently stabs at the chocolate, but then submits to its pleasure, gobbling it like an animal, eventually literally writhing around in it. He tries to “kill” his enemy, as represented by the pleasures of chocolate, but gives in to its allure. Again, this would seem to represent that following God is useless because one will always be powerless to innate sinful urges.

• Probably the most disturbing moment was the sermon on Easter Sunday, which followed the movie’s climax and summed up the whole film. The priest said, “Do I want to speak of the miracle of our Lord’s divine transformation? Not really, no. I don’t want to talk about his divinity. I’d rather talk about his humanity—how He lived His life here on earth, His kindness, His tolerance. I think we can’t go around measuring our goodness by what we don’t do, by what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think we’ve got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create, and who we include.” The blatant humanism here is appalling. To downplay Christ’s divinity in light of His humanity is chilling. And the irony of it all is that it was Christ’s divinity that allowed Him to be all-embracing and loving and all these other things the movie is saying we’re supposed to enact through our humanity. Furthermore, goodness is not measured by our actions or deeds; it is measured solely by the Word of God. Even if we were able to achieve all this “goodness” in our own strength and flesh, it would still be as filthy rags apart from the righteousness of Jesus.

• Immediately following the sermon, the final voiceover says, “It was certainly not the most fiery or eloquent sermon. But the parishoners felt a new sensation that day—a lightening of the spirit, a freedom from the old tradition.” A sermon that told them not to focus on the divinity of Jesus Christ is what lightened their spirits and brought freedom. Go figure.

Constantine

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Recommended with qualifications. Constantine is a mixed bag of good and bad theology with high production values, proving once again that secular movie makers make movies about Christian concepts better than Christians do. But everyone suffers because of it. This is basically a secular interpretation of spiritual warfare that a movie of Frank Peretti’s novel, This Present Darkness should have been. But this is a topic I am sore about, because it seems that the world does better movies about Christian themes than Christians do. Okay, The Omen or Left Behind? Which is better, Hmmmm? I wonder. By the way, The Omen still stands strong as a movie 30 years later. Scary as hell. I don’t even agree with its theology but I still think it’s the best Antichrist movie ever. (That is, until they make Hank Hannegraaf’s book The Last Disciple into an epic). The Exorcist or Raging Angels? Heck, even the Seventh Sign was better than the slew of Christian end times movies, and that was a pretty bad movie. I wrote a review of Constantine for Christian Research Journal, so I have to write something different here. Okay, so Constantine is an exorcist who has a special talent of seeing the spiritual world. He committed suicide in the past, but came back to life, so he is condemned to hell by Roman Catholic theology for a mortal sin. Therefore he seeks to work his way back to heaven by casting demons out of people and sending them to hell, thinking that his good deeds will outweigh his bad. Okay, here are the good things I liked about the movie: 1) you have to realize that in our postmodern society that denies evil as a cultural construct, a movie about good angels and evil demons battling over souls of men, with a REAL hell where people suffer for their sins, is A GOOD BEGINNING. No, an excellent beginning. After all, in our world, there is a growing number of people who actually believe that one God’s “terrorist” is another Satan’s “freedom fighter,” as if Satan has a legitimate perspective. As if evil is relative. Well, this movie dispels that ignorance pretty well and I like it for that. 2) It shows angels, not just demons, 3) it communicates a rudimentary notion of salvation through faith when Gabriel tells Constantine that he can’t earn his way to heaven because of the sin he’s committed. That’s a powerful truth that is certainly politically incorrect to communicate. Constantine begins the story with a grudge against God, and he thinks God is a “kid who’s not planning anything,” but ends up asking God for a little help at the climax and concludes that God does have “a plan for all of us.” Before I talk about what I didn’t like, I want to establish that a movie DOES NOT HAVE TO be theologically correct to be a legitimate story. Much like Jesus’ parables, the important point is the overall worldview or overall theme of the movie. I have a movie coming out about demon possession (The Visitation) that takes creative liberties with the concept of demon possession and healing. But the whole point of the story is how people can be religious and miss the truth if they don’t have it right to begin with. But having said that, I still must give my complaints of elements that bugged me about Constantine: 1) The entire scenario of the movie is based on a Dualistic worldview where God and the devil make a bet to win the souls of men, but only through influence, not direct contact. It makes them look more like equal powers fighting “to see who would win.” Constantine is an Arminian Free Will nightmare of dualism where God and the devil are near equal beings of power…” Think about it, If our salvation is all up to our will and God can’t change our hearts he can only persuade us—as the Arminian believes—then God really is no stronger than Satan in the battle for men. Satan really does have a chance to win if he can convince more men to his side. In this view, God is thought of as the most powerful being in the universe, but not truly all-powerful. And technically, he isn’t even the most powerful. Man’s will is the most powerful being in the universe and gosh, I sure hope God is good enough to convince man. You get the point. This is on the level of the light and dark sides of the Force baloney. Some may point to Job as an example of the wager, but that is a specific instance of one man’s life and God is always in control the entire time, which he makes very clear in the final chapters: “Job 42:2 “I know that You can do all things, And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.” In Constantine, it is the ultimate picture of the universe, a worldview. But if one looks at the Bible, there may be a bet in Job, but the whole story has already been written from beginning to end, or Genesis to Revelation, and God’s battles with Satan are predestined to failure for Satan. So, yes, there is struggle in Biblical spiritual warfare, but from God’s perspective, he is still in control of every thing that happens and has it all planned out. 2) Another thing is that they set up the “Spear of Destiny” that pierced Christ’s side as the McGuffin that the demons are trying to get a hold of. They say that Christ didn’t die on the cross, the spear killed him, so whoever has the spear will rule the world. Well, GOD SAYS that Jesus gave up his spirit and the spear merely proved he was already dead by illustrating the division of his blood and water flowing from his side. This is a typical occult Gnostic view that uses talismans as objects of power in the spirit world. I’m not against using these as cinematic symbols of spiritual powers all together, but it’s just the whole context makes it seem that even GOD can’t stop them. I am reminded of the famous line in Raiders of the Lost Ark where they say that whoever has the ark is unstoppable, as if God can’t even do so. But when they open the Ark, God does kill them cause they did not anticipate God’s power. 3) Another thing, Even though hell is real in this story, the depiction of demons ruling over hell is more like a Roman Catholic medieval picture out of Dante than the Bible. The Bible says that the devil and his angels will THEMSELVES be tormented forever in the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10). So, hell is not a party or realm of power for demons, it is a place of punishment for them as well as humans. 4) Also, the goal of the demons is to bring forth the “Son of the devil” by human birth, in the same was as Jesus was the “Son of God.” Well, this is a common movie convention, but it is terribly unbiblical. There is not a single Scripture that indicates Satan can have the same kind of incarnation that God had. Here is another of my censored sentences from the Journal article: “This may fit the fanciful theology of Left-Behinders whose blessed hope is the coming of an incarnate “Antichrist,” but it has no place in a biblical theology of incarnation.” 5) There is a voodoo witchdoctor who is portrayed as “neutral” in this battle between God and Satan. Which is a joke, because God says that witchcraft is detestable in his sight and that there is no neutrality, you are either for Him or against Him (Deut. 18:9-14, Matt 12:30). Neutrality is, as they say, a lie of the devil. Ain’t no purgatory, folks. And there ain’t no sin, like Constantine’s suicide for instance, that cannot be forgiven. 6) An interesting thing that they had in the movie was that they used the term, “half-breeds” of angels or demons who were suspended between heaven and hell or something like that. Well, that seemed to me to be a pretty racist language in today’s politically correct fascist fashion. But all in all, considering our anti-supernatural Darwinian society, I consider the spiritual breakthrough of Constantine more good than bad, and quite frankly, I’m glad Christians didn’t make it cause they probably would have screwed up even worse. (Unless it were me, of course ☺)