In case you’ve been living under a rock, the first installment of The Lord of the Rings hits the big screen next week. A friend of mine saw an early screening, and he described it as one of the top five movie experiences of his life. Wow. I’m eager to see it, not quite Star Wars excited, but still pretty pumped. I think I’m just excited because it’s a really good story, and it sounds like they’ve made a really good movie. That translates to a fun movie-watching experience.

Now for my plug: passageway.org published a story on the whole Lord of the Rings thing today. Check it out.

Does it give away my age or my social standing that these thoughts are always based on something that’s so last week? You only see me talk about movies after they’re on video or have hit the cheap theaters. Maybe I’ll start a trend of people not recognizing pop culture until it’s old hat.

Tonight I watched Josie and the Pussycats. It’s a great movie. It’s got an addictive soundtrack featuring Kay Hanley, former member of Letters to Cleo. The whole movie is a spoof on pop culture and the movie industry. It’s great until you realize that Universal Pictures probably got paid for every single goof ball product placement in the movie. That’s the ultimate joke. Salon.com had a great review, so I won’t waste my breath. But despite the mixed messages of global domination, it’s a fun movie.

Remember all those hokey e-mail forwards promising that random company X would donate Y dollars per e-mails forwarded to random charity Z? Many of them touted some fancy new e-mail tracking system that Bill Gates was testing, an idea that made real techies laugh and newbies ponder the quick buck they could earn. We all laugh now and think it’s an e-mail gimmick of the past that will no doubt crop up again and again.

Well guess what? It’s back. And it’s for real. Univeral Pictures is donating $1 to Partnership for a Drug Free America for every e-mail you send advertising the movie Traffic‘s debut on Pay-Per View–up to $50,000. And from everything I can tell, it’s legit.

You send the e-mail from a form on their site, so they can track everything. And they put a cap on it, so it doesn’t get out of hand. To top it off, they’re promoting a really good movie (admittedly, they’re hyping a really lame promotion–how many people actually watch movies on Pay-Per View?). So why not send an e-mail to a friend? Go for it.

Want a summer movie that doesn’t suck? Shrek. The computer animated flick with Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy. It’s a fairy tale of sorts that doesn’t quite seem like a children’s movie. They always say the best kids movies have stuff the parents can laugh at, too. Shrek seemed to be written more with the parents in mind than the kids. Not that it was lewd, although there were a few off-color jokes, but just seemed like a movie adults would like more than children. So there’s your summer movie pick.

It amazes me what passes off for entertainment for children. Tonight I watched (don’t ask why) Transformers the Movie, which was the equivalent of The Pokemon Movie in 1986. Do you have any idea how stupid the movie was? I can’t believe I thought it was cool. I was such a dork. The best part was the synthesized soundtrack, featuring Weird Al’s “Dare to be Stupid.” It doesn’t get any better than that.

I watched Traffic tonight at the cheap theater. It’s not a feel-good movie. It’s not a family movie. It’s not an entertaining movie. When you slap your money down on the counter to see this movie, you’re not paying for a good time. You’re paying to have you eyes opened. You’re paying to get slapped around. You’re paying for the truth.

Or at least what I can only guess is the truth from Hollywood. Traffic is what appears to be an honest portrayal of the drug trafficking industry–from the Mexican police to the U.S. “legitimate” businessmen to the street dealers to the suburban white girl who lies to her parents and does drugs in the bathroom.

The scariest thing about this movie is that I went to high school with that suburban white girl. I sat behind her in class, listening to her stories of getting high and how she’s been clean for a month, for two months, for a whopping three months. What amazes me is how I was not there. I was hanging out in church with the youth group, learning how to read my Bible. Perhaps that’s the way things are, and that’s the way things need to be. I doubt that my Jesus-boy high school self could have been any help to a drugged up sophomore girl. I probably couldn’t have handled myself in that situation then, and I only think I can now.

But it still amazes me where the church is. The church is not on the streets, keeping kids of drugs, shutting down the dealers, saving families and showing love to the least of these. The church is hoarding a few safe white kids in their youth groups and trying to show ’em a good time and maybe teach them a thing or two about God. Yet the girl who sat in front of me in American Literature seems to have slipped through the cracks, and I wonder how many others are just like her.

What really sickens me is that it takes a movie to make me realize this.

I watched Cider House Rules tonight and it’s raised a lot of interesting questions. Like how did this movie win an academy award? And that question has nothing to do with the politics of the movie. It was simply not a high quality film. The plot line was predictable and shied away from the really difficult questions. Dig into the movie’s political agenda (abortion), and you have all kind of difficulties. It certainly raises some valid points and makes you think, but couldn’t they have done it in a better way? They made no attempt to hide their bias, no attempt to fairly address the issue, no attempt to do anything more than push their pro-choice agenda. I realize that every movie and every piece of writing has it’s bias. They all have their own agenda. But there are ways to be more subtle about it. There are ways to be more effective. Don’t manipulate me for the sake of your political agenda. If you have a story to tell, then tell it. If you have an agenda to cram down my throat, go find some other sap.

The sad thing is that this criticism desperately needs to be heard by Christians. We’re often guilty of putting our agenda before anything else. And most Christians won’t see anything wrong with that. Jesus himself gave us this agenda, therefore it’s okay. That may be true, but then don’t expect anything you do in the name of Christ’s agenda to go beyond a Christian subcategory. If you put your propaganda first, it’s bound to ruin the medium–be it film, music, or writing. This is why Christian novels sell poorly. This is why Christian music is relegated to Christian radio stations. This is why Christian movies don’t make it to the box office.

Instead try telling a story, writing a song, or making a movie in a way that lets your Christianity shine through without overriding the genre. Don’t sit down to make something Christian. Sit down to make something. Christ will find a way to shine through. Just ask U2 or Toni Morrison or Flannery O’Connor.

Where has all the creativity gone? Who sucked the originality from Hollywood? I watched a movie today. I usually don’t go to the theater to see movies–I’m cheap. Today I coughed up the money and sat through a movie I was told was good. And for the most part it was a pretty good movie. I didn’t mind paying $3.50 (ah, bless those matinees) to see it. It was The Patriot with Mel Gibson. If you’re thinking about seeing it, here’s the run down: no sex, no foul language, lots of bloody war violence. The battle scenes are similar to Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan, although a bit milder.

Continue reading The Patriot with Mel Gibson →

Today in my film class after watching three months worth of Hollywood films we turned to a film put out by a Christian movie company. To say the least, it perfectly fit the stereotype of the substandard Christian version of whatever is popular in mainstream culture. The acting was weak, the dialogue was laughable, and the plot was mediocre at best. For what it was the actual filming and editing was decent. It had the look of a made-for-TV movie.

Continue reading Christian Movies →