How far do the bonds of family extend, and what responsibilities do those bonds entail? When three sisters learn of their father’s death, their answer to those questions is to adopt their half-sister Suzu (Suzu Hirose) whom their father sired after abandoning their family. As Read More …
There were several movies about Jesus in 2016, each of which tapped into a different genre—the detective work of Risen, the family road trip of The Young Messiah, the spiritual drama of Last Days in the Desert, the epic action of the Ben-Hur remake—but the first and arguably most interesting Read More …
Claims that modern-day systems are rigged against the average guy have replaced “the Devil made me do it” as the go-to justification for why someone should not be held responsible for bending or even breaking the rules. Toby and Tanner Howard may not be wrong Read More …
Jeff Nichols’ Loving tells the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, whose story led to the 1967 Supreme Court decision invalidating state laws against interracial marriage. While this story could have been played as a pulse-quickening beat-by-beat historical drama, Nichols decides instead to paint a picture of Read More …
Fourteen-year old Lewis MacDougall gives one of the 2016’s best performances in a film that is compelling and beautiful. A Monster Calls explores faith, letting go, and the search for healing. Based on the award-winning book by Patrick Ness, J.A. Bayona directs a story that takes audiences Read More …
In a year of excellent documentaries—Cameraperson, The Witness, O.J: Made in America—Tower is a film of immense emotional heft. The film serves as a formal exercise in collective memory, a memorial recording both the horrors of human depravity as well as the redemptive courage that can emerge out Read More …
The year of Colin Farrell began with this gentle science-fiction film about a family dealing with the breakdown of its robot, a sort of artificial big brother (the titular Yang, played by Justin H. Min) who was acquired by the parents to give their adopted Read More …
It is safe to say that I never expected to have my soul ministered to by a tiny, one-eyed mollusk wearing orange sneakers, but the Lord works in mysterious ways. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is a stop-motion animated mockumentary that depicts its namesake protagonist’s determined efforts to find his lost family Read More …
Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is one of those films that reminded me that life is messy, that the simplest of answers are sometimes discovered through unusual encounters, and that the multitude of distractions and noise of our existence can sometimes keep us from appreciating Read More …
“God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31 NRSV) The joy of the natural world and creation rings through James Cameron’s sequel to Avatar, the biggest movie of all time. As a science-fiction epic, Avatar: The Way of Water takes a Read More …