[NSFW – graphic imagery warning] Movie Review: The Passion of the Christ

Despite the poster and the film, Easter is a joyous occasion. Jesus is risen indeed.

I really don’t know how much I actually need to say. Mel Gibson’s blockbuster arrived to mixed reviews, made a boatload of cash on a small budget, and laughed at the face of any sort of “bad publicity” it may have gotten, earning a few well deserved Academy Award nominations for the effort. The story, though still slightly embellished, is a simple retelling of the final hours of Jesus Christ’s life and is relatively predictable compared to Scorsese’s own rendering of the event.

The Passion is not primarily about narrative, which for some viewers may serve to be its undoing, along with the sheer amount of blood and gore that literally fills most of the movie’s running time. Is it necessary to watch this, as an adult or particularly as a teenager, to comprehend and appreciate what Jesus went through? That’s not an easy question for me to answer, but the film has a macabre talent, and it shows it off all too well.

Movie Review: The Last Temptation of Christ (marked spoilers)

We are not off to a happy start.

“Is there a story,” I once asked myself, “where instead of an ordinary person being propped up on a pedestal and touted as a Christ figure, the reverse happens?” I’d long imagined Jesus and Mary Magdalene enjoying an evening in a corner diner, savoring life at its most mundane as any of us might do.

Director Martin Scorsese, who himself loves The Robe and introduces the fiftieth-anniversary edition, places on the screen a book adaptation that I must first describe as “riveting.” For better or worse, the story openly acknowledges and embraces its scriptural divergences, which it uses to create an original if sometimes reckless narrative that mostly remains powerful all the way through.

Movie Review: The Help

When a recently hired columnist begins to speak out against the cultural and economic injustices endured by her city’s maids of African descent (“the help”), she establishes herself not as a white messiah but as an amplifier for the opinions and ideas these disenfranchised yet intelligent women hold. The Help smartly rises above its own civil-rights trappings, becoming a memorable and exceptionally well written character drama.

Movie Review: Silver Linings Playbook

It doesn’t take much to make a story feel fresh. Take the concept of a time-honored romantic tale, then start it in a mental hospital, focusing on a penitent hero with a difficult past, some major mistakes, and scars to show for both. He’s not perfect, but it makes no difference–he’s already got our attention, and he’s desperate to win his wife back.

For our heroine, consider a young woman who grieves over her husband’s untimely death and lives as though she’s still married. She makes some counterproductive decisions, but her own needs are all too clear to see. Maybe she’ll find love again someday.

While some of Silver Linings Playbook’s character and narrative decisions seem unwise or downright neglectful, the story arguably has its heart in the right places, even if it’s taking those intentions and giving them meaning that often proves the toughest. In the end, sometimes a man just wants to see his beloved again. Sometimes that causes its own problems.