Posts Tagged ‘Christianity’

Short Take: A return to form for director Spike Lee

Director: Spike Lee

Screenwriters: Spike Lee, James McBride

Cast: Jules Brown, Clarke Peters, Toni Lysaith, Heather Simms, Thomas Jefferson Byrd, Nate Parker, Stephen Henderson, De’Adre Aziza, Spike Lee, Colman Domingo, Isiah Whitlock, Jr.

Length: 2h 1m

Synopsis: The young, tech-obsessed Flik Royale (Jules Brown) travels to Brooklyn to spend the summer with his preacher grandfather, Enoch (Clarke Peters), in the neighborhood of Red Hook. Over the coming months he meets many different personalities that teach him about community, forgiveness, and faith, and how those things can change people for better and for worse.

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Short Take: More finely crafted than one would expect, but still largely unoriginal

Director: Ole Bornedal

Screenwriters: Juliet Snowden, Stiles White

Cast: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Natasha Calis, Kyra Sedgwick, Madison Davenport, Matisyahu

Length: 1h 32m

Synopsis: Clyde (Morgan) is a divorced father of two girls, Emily (Calis) and Hannah (Davenport), who shuffle back and forth between his new house and their mother’s (Sedgwick). One day while Clyde and the girls are perusing a nearby yard sale, Emily stumbles upon an antique wooden box with mysterious markings on it. Bought for cheap and taken back home the box slowly takes up more and more of Emily’s attention, but when she’s finally able to get it open she finds herself absolutely obsessed. Her unwillingness to part with it is accompanied with sharp personality changes, such as an uncharacteristic tendency towards violence. She is not herself. In an effort to help his daughter Clyde has the box examined by a professor he knows, who tells him it was designed to imprison a Jewish demon called a “dibbuk” whose preference is to feed on the souls of children. Before the dibbuk is able to fully possess Emily, Clyde pleads for help from the Hasidic community to perform an exorcism. Weighing the dangers involved with such an endeavor, Clyde is left to hope that Emily won’t be beyond saving once help finally arrives.

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Short Take: Has everything an exploitation movie requires, including controversiality

Directors: Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror, Sin City), Ethan Maniquis

Screenwriters: Robert Rodriguez (Planet Terror), Ãlvaro Rodri­guez (From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman’s Daughter)

Cast: Danny Trejo (Spy Kids, Heat), Jessica Alba (Good Luck Chuck), Robert De Niro (The Good Shepherd), Jeff Fahey (Grindhouse, The Lawnmower Man), Michelle Rodriguez (TV’s Lost, Avatar), Steven Seagal, Cheech Marin, Don Johnson, Lindsay Lohan

Length: 1h 45m

Synopsis: A widowed ex-Federale who relegates himself to being a day laborer on the border between Texas and Mexico gets offered an opportunity to earn $150,000 if he assassinates a senator hell bent on closing the border between the two nations. Double-crossed after taking the job, the man, known only as Machete (Trejo), must do what he can to stay alive and avoid capture. He receives help from an understanding Customs officer named Sartana (Alba) and an underground pro-immigration network headed by Luz (Rodriguez), a food truck worker. Together they will try to clear Machete’s name and uncover a conspiracy that aims to make voters sympathetic to the bigoted senator’s platform. It would appear that the bad guys just f****** with the wrong Mexican. Read the rest of this entry »

Short Take: The writing is vague and unpolished, but the ambition is evident

Director: Scott Stewart (feature debut)

Screenwriters: Peter Schink (Gotham Café) and Scott Stewart

Cast: Paul Bettany (The Da Vinci Code), Adrianne Palicki, Lucas Black (Jarhead), Charles S. Dutton (Rudy), Kate Walsh (TV’s Private Practice), Dennis Quaid (The Alamo), Tyrese Gibson (Transformers 2), Willa Holland, Kevin Durand (3:10 to Yuma)

Length: 1h 40m

Synopsis: After many years of violence, tyranny, apathy, and greed, God has decided to exterminate the human race for a second time. But instead of a flood, this time he sends his army of angels to possess the weak-willed and kill the would-be savior of men – an unborn child. The archangel Michael, though, refuses to give up on mankind and refuses to carry out his orders to destroy it. Instead, he takes it upon himself to be the protector of the unborn savior, in the process accepting the help of a handful of strong-willed, albeit unprepared, individuals.

Warning: This review contains material that might be considered “spoiling.” Read the rest of this entry »

Short Take: A film of conviction and faith whose statements about religion are rife with controversy

Directors: Albert and Allen Hughes (From Hell, Dead Presidents)

Screenwriter: Gary Whitta (Debut)

Cast: Denzel Washington (Training Day), Gary Oldman (The Dark Knight), Mila Kunis (Extract)

Length: 1h 58m

Synopsis: In post-apocalyptic America, decades after a natural disaster involving the sun and a subsequent war destroyed almost all life on earth, a man treks west in search of a civilization that will put what he has to good use in order to save mankind. What he has there is only one of anymore, and that is a copy of the King James Holy Bible. On his way west he finds a town that’s run by a very dangerous man who seeks to find his own copy of the bible and use it to control the minds of the ignorant and desperate. When the two men meet it ignites a struggle between good and evil that could alter the face of human civilization forever. Read the rest of this entry »