After enjoying Hot Fuzz for a Friday morning matinee, my wife and I ran to the store to pick up some Danish for a party the next day. We managed to get from the multiplex to the store and back again before seeing our next movie, conveniently titled Next. As the movie started, with Nicolas Cage looking two minutes into his future, I began looking two hours ahead into mine. After all, Disturbia had been getting rave reviews, and I still hadn’t been able to see it…

What was I doing? A double-feature might not be a bad thing on occasion, but how was I going to keep up with all these freakin’ movies? Only a few Fridays before, the wide releases totalled six in one week! As a teacher of Film and Theology and contributor to several websites, everyone expects (sometimes they demand!) that I see EVERY movie that comes out. People loan me DVDs (I currently have a few indpendent films, Punch Drunk Love and The Big Lebowski sitting on my XBox - yes, I will repent for not yet seeing The Dude - and I managed to watch 20 minutes of Howl’s Moving Castle at breakfast).

Instead of enjoying myself, I discover myself in an odd place of finding cinema a burden. In Next, the clairvoyant Cage finds himself strapped in a chair like Malcom McDowall in A Clockwork Orange, his eyes forced open to watch the big screen in front of him; I found myself sympathizing with his plight.

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CRACKING THE SECRET OF MOVIES AND NARRATIVE

There’s something that makes me laugh harder than watching Will Ferrell and Jon Heder ice skate, a ridiculous line that I hope isn’t spoken while I’m drinking, lest the tasty beverage finds its way out my nostrils. The hilarious comment is often spoken by jaded movie critics or entertainment-saturated audiences:

“Hollywood is out of ideas”.

That probably didn’t make you guffaw, but truth be told it’s one of the funniest lines ever spoken. Let’s get one thing straight; Hollywood never had any ideas. One need look no further than some of the earliest films, with a vamping Bela Lugosi and Clark Gable being frank with Scarlett. Hollywood began by pillaging classic literature, and just because they’re now pillaging “classic” comic books from the 60s and 70s doesn’t somehow indicate a sudden lack of originality. An even closer look at many “original” screenplays can usually reveal an amalgamation of concepts from several stories, reconstituted and repainted with a fresh coat in the form of locale or period.

It’s not strange that Hollywood has become a narrative cannibal. In it’s first half-century, it adapted or borrowed from other storytelling forms; now, there is so much television and film in the can it’s literally impossible not to borrow, so it’s actually more honest when they admit it’s a remake. It’s a sad truth that watching the Bogart classic Casablanca and Pamela Anderson “classic” Barb Wire back-to-back will reveal they are virtually the same narrative - just add breast implants and subtract acting ability. Certainly the quality of a movie can be questioned, but damning Hollywood for recycling seems harsh, considering the same accusation is easily leveled at William Shakespeare. How many times do the same plot points and themes pop up in his various comedies and tragedies?

Methinks we doth protest too much.

In fact, scripture itself testifies to this apparent redundancy not only as it impacts our storytelling, but life itself:

All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after. - Ecclesiastes 1

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“I wanted to believe, more than most I wanted to be like a child again.”

Cleveland Heep discovers that beyond the veil of his mundane and humdrum life is a world of myth and fantasy, a true myth that overlies his own, a spiritual world with great consequence to our lives, to our future.

Overlooked in the theatres as many folks decided M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs, Unbreakable) had nothing left to offer, Lady in the Water was actually an enjoyable film; though not M. Night’s best work, the direction is solid and the story is especially intriguing for conversation. While it won’t make a top ten list, it’s still light years ahead of a lot of the dreck out there the last few years. Paul Giamatti’s performance truly floats this simple, child-like story that poses the very questions Film and Theology and Cinemagogue wrestle with. I was privileged to host a session of “Film and Theology” in West Seattle and speak about the film and its implications on metanarrative and spirituality.

“I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” - Matthew 18:3

You can click to listen to the audio review in your browser or right-click to download the file, using the link below.

Click here to go for a swim… (MP3 12.6meg - 27:35min)

My wife loves lists.

Not just any lists, mind you, but particularly ones that boast the “Top” something or other; the “Top 10 Deadliest Animals” on Animal Planet, the “Top 25 videos that defined the 80s” on VH1, or the “Top 10 Worst films of 2004″ (remember Catwoman? Halle Berry wishes you didn’t). It hardly matters what it is. if my wife sees the word “Top” followed by a number, she finds it difficult to resist. The countdown to number 1 is addictive. Hence, when Entertainment Weekly detailed the “Top 25 Most Controversial Movies of All Time”, she devoured it voraciously. and promptly showed it to me.

According to Entertainment Weekly (EW) writer Jeff Jensen, movies “are a social experience” and possess “the power to shake, rattle, and roil the world”. I completely agree. He describes these controversial films collectively as “Outrageous. Deplorable. Challenging. And even deeply rewarding.” There were a lot of recognizable and controversial films on the list, after all. but what could possibly have trumped the Triumph of the Will, shot down Natural Born Killers, overcame our Basic Instinct, leeched color from A Clockwork Orange, broke The DaVinci Code, and resisted The Last Temptation of Christ? What else could pummel all of these Hollywood milestones to be King of the hill and stir the pop cultural pot of controversy?

What else. save Jesus dying for our sins? The Passion of the Christ, marked by a bloody and battered image of a cross-carrying savior surrounded by angry Roman soldiers, nabbed a full page of the weekly magazine to be described as the most controversial film “of all time”. Not that “controversy” is the film’s only claim to fame. According to the Internet Movie Database:

• This film had more pre-ticket sales than any other film in history.
• This is the highest-grossing rated R film in US box office history earning $370 million.
• This is the highest grossing foreign language film and/or subtitled film in US box office history.
• It is also the highest grossing religious film in worldwide box office of all time.
• Because of their experiences during film production, many of the cast and filming crew converted to Catholicism after the completion of the film. Among those who converted was an atheist who played Judas Iscariot.

According to EW, Mel Gibson’s “unflinching depiction of Christ’s suffering” created a “culture-war firestorm unrivaled in Hollywood history.” While it’s true that a number of social and political factors contributed to the hullabaloo, I believe there is something much deeper at work here. (more…)