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Film critic Peter T.
Chattaway offers a preview of early 2008 DVD
releases. (Note: dates are subject to change.) For more reviews, go
to the ‘Film’ section online at CanadianChristianity.com.
September Dawn (January
1). The Mountain Meadows Massacre – in which over 100 men, women and
children, passing through Utah in a wagon train, were slaughtered on
September 11, 1857 by Mormons and their Indian allies – is framed as
a tale of forbidden love between a young Mormon man and a young Christian
woman, with dubious results. The love story is so-so, but for historical
value, you’d be much better off watching a documentary like Burying the Past instead.
3:10 to Yuma (January
8). Russell Crowe is the outlaw caught by the authorities, and Christian
Bale is the down-on-his-luck rancher who agrees to take him to the train
station from which he will then be taken to prison. James Mangold’s
remake of the 1957 Western has some good performances and intense action
sequences, but suffers from a lack of moral clarity and a bleak view of
humanity in general.
Sunshine (January 8). The
sun is dying, and a team of scientists are charged with restarting its
nuclear core. The latest film from Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Millions)
conveys the vast emptiness and isolation of space, as well as a sense of
apocalyptic foreboding; it even suggests the need we feel deep down to
connect with something so awesome and glorious – even transcendent
– that merely being exposed to it could destroy us. However, the
characters are irritating, as is a late subplot involving a weird,
monstrous religious psycho who terrorizes the ship.
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Mr. Woodcock (January
15). A motivational speaker who is promoting a book that tells people
“how to get past your past” discovers that his mother is dating
the gym teacher who traumatized him as a child. Billy Bob Thornton, as the
coach, and Seann William Scott, as the self-help author, have played these
characters before, and the film tends to raise comic and romantic
expectations that it never meets. But a few worthy themes – the need
to apologize, the Golden Rule – do come through.
In the Shadow of the Moon (February
12). Only a handful of men – no women, alas – have ever stood
on a world other than Earth, and several of them tell their stories in this
fascinating documentary. Presented by Apollo 13 director Ron Howard, the
film makes excellent use of archival footage and puts the lunar space
program into its original historical context (one of the astronauts,
trained by the military, recalls feeling guilty that he got to visit outer
space while his friends were dodging anti-aircraft fire in Vietnam). The
film also notes how being on the Moon’s surface affected the
astronauts on a spiritual, philosophical and even religious level.
For the Bible Tells Me So (February
19). This documentary – about five Christian families that have had
to deal with homosexuality – definitely has an agenda, and it
isn’t on the side of traditional, orthodox interpretations of the
Bible. Still, you would have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by
some of the testimonies.
Options Winter 2008
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