Baran is the latest in a long line of Iranian films that have graced North American screens in recent years, and although director Majid Majidi’s tale of unrequited love may lack the artistic boldness and political daring of Kiarostami and Makhmalbaf, it does embody many of the virtues associated with Iranian cinema, including a fairly […]
Baran
Bless the Child is just plain bad
In the Bible, the devil waited until Jesus was in his thirties before tempting him and trying to lure him away from his divine mission in life. But these are more impatient times, so in Bless the Child, when it looks as if a six-year-old girl with special powers may be the Second Coming her […]
After Life
Bringing the past back to life Despite its title, After Life is ultimately not about heaven or hell or any of the usual life-after-death matters. Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu’s film is really about the essence of memory. The film is set in a drab office building which serves as a way station between this life […]
Chicken Run: Claymation chickens rule the roost
Chicken Run, the first feature-length film from the claymation wizards who brought us the Wallace and Gromit films, is quite simply the most delightful film released so far this year. It is also one of the cleverest. Inspired by classic prisoner-of-war movies such as The Great Escape and The Bridge on the River Kwai, the […]
Gay book debate before courts
Religious values do have a place in the public school system, a lawyer for the embattled Surrey school board argued last month before the B.C. Court of Appeal. John Dives presented his arguments at a three-day hearing June 21 – 23. The school board is appealing a 1998 decision by B.C. Supreme Court Justice Mary […]
The Big Kahuna: closing deals for Christ?
Ten years ago, I was a university student spending my summers working in the marketing department of a downtown engineering company. I had attended Christian schools all my life and I was not used to being in such a thoroughly secular environment. But I got along with my co-workers, including one woman who gave me […]
Gladiator
For all their piety, the Bible epics of the past are best remembered for their violent set-pieces. God smote evildoers with earthquakes and lightning, armies clashed on land and at sea, and villainous charioteers were trampled to death by their opponents’ horses. Death and destruction were what kept the crowds coming; but audiences wanted more […]
General Lew Wallace, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
Focus on the Family / Tyndale, 1880/1997. Gladiator is a razzle-dazzle action-packed film, but for true spectacle, the classics can’t be beat. In the old days, you didn’t create stadiums on computers; you spent months building them, then staging elaborate chariot races before real-life crowds. Sometimes a race was all a movie needed; the first […]
The New World a feast for the senses and spirit alike
Los Angeles — Terrence Malick movies take a long time to gestate. Malick typically shoots hours and hours of footage, much of it improvised, and he then spends months editing it together. And in a career that goes back 33 years, he has directed only four films: Badlands, Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line […]
The Messenger: Irresponsible
THERE’S a fine line between bravery and recklessness, and this point is made in more ways than one by The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc. On the one hand, the Joan of this film is portrayed, by Milla Jovovich, as an impatient, emotionally overwrought girl who gets people to do what she wants […]
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