Michael Mann is one of my favorite directors. The musical score from his The Last of the Mohicans is one of my all-time favorite film scores. Football is my favorite sport. As I was watching a recent NFL game I saw this Nike ad, which combines all three of these things. Needless to say, it very much warmed my heart.

For those of you hoping that Tolkien's The Hobbit will make it to the big screen under the all-seeing eye of Peter Jackson, the project may be inching closer. Entertainment Weekly has a good story on all the controversy and hoopla that have held up the film so far.

Now here is something extremely cool. It's a video archive of 5,000 movie reviews from the TV show formerly known as Siskel & Ebert. I always liked the late Gene Siskel, but I often find Roger Ebert's film sensibilities to be firmly fixed in the realm of the catawampus. See here for an example where he misses the boat by a galactic mile, while his co-host sees the merits of the film with perfect clarity.

[HT: Ain't It Cool News]

The first footage of the Prince Caspian movie can be seen here.

Recently my wife and I watched Superman Returns. We both enjoyed it immensely, but I always know going into these types of movies that my wife may have trouble suspending her disbelief. She often says that movies that feature fantastic themes, for example, like an invincible flying man, are simply unbelievable. "How can you enjoy a movie like that," she will ask, "when Superman could never exist in the real world?" Hence I often view movies like X-Men 3 all by my lonesome.

In one sense I understand her objection perfectly. As I mature in my years I can see the attraction of putting fantastic stories to bed. Isn't there something a little silly about spending (1) two hours of your life and (2) a not insubstantial sum of money to watch movies where explosions happen in the vacuum of space (Star Wars), a woman can control the weather with her mind (X-Men), or the well-being of nations depends on the fate of a little magic ring (Lord of the Rings)? You don't often see seventy-year old men going to a Spider-Man movie, so I take this to be a near universal aspect of individual maturation.

But should it be? I remember reading Roger Ebert saying that he couldn't fathom a college-educated adult paying money to go see a movie like The Mummy Returns. This seems a little rash, if not more than a little uppity, but I confess that I often find a similar desire creeping in on my consciousness to repudiate fantastic stories. When this happens, I am forced to make a decision: determine whether such stories are worth consuming or whether they aren't. On one side of the argument there is this nebulous, unformed idea that somehow a mature person shouldn't waste time watching superhero movies. On the other side there is, among other things, the fact that I actually enjoy these types of movies and stories. And I find that I am like most people in that I enjoy enjoying what I usually enjoy.

So what is the maturing geek to do? There are two options. First, I could show that there is actually a great deal of redeeming value in such tales, that at their core they are mythical stories which use a fantastic husk to press home the kernel of a traditional moral theme. I could point out, for example, that Spider-Man is all about the universal difficulty that young people encounter when faced with new responsibilities in a hostile world, or that X-Men uses superhero trappings as a social commentary on civil strife, or that Star Wars is both a cautionary tale about the seduction of absolute power and a redemptive tale about the power of family relationships.

On all this I call poppycock. That's because I don't need any sort of defense against the charge that it's silly to believe impossibly fantastic stories. The above arguments for the benefits of engaging in fantasy are all perfectly legitimate, but they are also perfectly unnecessary. To see why, take the standard objection, that there is no redeeming value in consuming impossible stories. But are they really impossible? I suppose it depends on which type of impossibility is implied.

Here I apply philosophy in the defense of geeks everywhere. More specifically, I make an admittedly unsophisticated use of modal logic. For the nonphilosophers out there, modal logic is the study of necessity and possibility. In other words, when we do modal logic we attempt to determine how possibility and necessity work, especially when it comes to propositions and states of affairs. One way we do this is by envisioning possible worlds. When we are trying to determine the possibility of proposition p, for example, we determine under what conditions p would be possible, impossible, necessary or not necessary in possible world W.

So how does all this apply to watching Superman Returns? Consider again the traditional objection: an indestructible flying man is impossible, so it's silly to watch a movie about him. But is Superman really impossible? Again, it depends on what kind of possibility is implied. In modal logic we often talk about something that is logically possible or impossible. It is logically possible, for example that my name is Gerald and I live in Poughkeepsie. Neither of these is actually true (philosophers say that neither state of affairs actually obtains), but they are not impossible. In other words, there exists possible world G where my name is Gerald and I live in Poughkeepsie. However, it is not logically possible that 2+2=5 or that a bachelor could be a married man. There is no possible world in which either of these states of affairs obtains.

At this point we ask: is there anything logically impossible about an alien from planet Krypton who draws power from our sun, giving him indestructibility and the powers of flight, laser vision, etc? Certainly not, and this is how you appreciate watching Superman or reading fantasy: you simply point out to the naysayers that there is nothing logically impossible about the events portrayed therein. Certainly it is highly improbable that a man like Superman could exist in our own world, but there is certainly a possible world out there (we can unsurprisingly call it S) where the last son of Krypton could exist. Now, if he were called "Logical Contradiction Man" and went around squaring circles and making 1 and 1 equal pi, then the objection would stand, but a man like that wouldn't be much of a superhero.

The trick to making this scenario work is ignoring that, on the normal laws of nature, a being like Superman originating like he does would be highly improbable, or at least physically or biologically impossible. But why would you waste your moviegoing experience thinking about dry philosophical concepts like these? Just make a quick determination that he's logically possible and enjoy the ride.

Gene Edward Veith says that a new movie coming out is based on a science fiction novel that is a "pro-life classic":

P. D. James is a British mystery writer with the skills of a serious novelist. She is also a Christian. In addition to her mysteries, she has written a science fiction dystopia entitled "The Children of Men." In it, the human race becomes infertile. No more children can be conceived or born. The world is just waiting to die out. The novel, which also takes on euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, is a pro-life classic. And now it is being made into a movie, by a top-flight director and with a top-flight cast, to be released September 29.

I'm a huge fan of science fiction novels, but I had never heard of James or her work until I saw the film's trailer. Veith seems confident that the film will merit the term "pro-life" in the end, but I have my doubts. I could be wrong, however; I thought I detected some subtle pro-life themes in last year's The Island, so it is certainly possible that a small sector of Hollywood is undergoing an unexpected flourishing of moral sensibility.

[Cross-posted at RedBlueChristian]

[HT: Justin Taylor]

Like the phoenix rising from the ashes, my childhood is being reborn:

• Transformers trailer
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trailer

Now all that's left is G. I. Joe, GoBots, He-Man, M.A.S.K., Voltron, Thundercats, and that guy who could turn into a red sports car.

I've never read anything by Jane Austen, and I suspect I never will. Thus I have no idea whether Joe Wright's version of Pride and Prejudice is an accurate translation of the novel to film. But I do know that it's one of the best films my wife and I have watched together in a long time. The film was like a breath of fresh air to me; I found something almost shocking about the culture of love and marriage the film depicts. As I watched the movie, I couldn't refrain from contrasting the drama of Victorian courtship with the oversexed, hypersensual culture of "courtship" (so-called) that characterizes today's young people.

As for the merits of the film itself, Wright does a fantastic job of whittling down Austen's apparently complicated plot into a coherent narrative. The cinematography is striking as well. When the movie opened up with a slow, Malick-esque reveal of a sunrise over a stand of trees, I immediately knew there was something special going on. There is one shot at a ball where the camera goes from room to room, picking up conversations and characters as they move about, backtracking and picking them up again as they socialize and dramatize. I didn't count, but I think the shot was at least six to eight minutes long. This is a very difficult shot to accomplish, as multiple actors have to hit their lines and their positions in a very crowded area right on time, and if someone flubs their part, that's an eight-minute take that just went down the drain. This kind of shot is the mark of a patient and creative filmmaker.

The largely British cast is also phenomenal. I usually consider Keira Knightley to be the queen of overacting, but here her personality is perfect for Lizzie Bennett. I've never heard of the actor playing Mr. Darcy, but I instantly knew I wanted to see him in other films. He has a weighty screen presence about him that's a joy to watch. My wife immediately declared Pride and Prejudice to be one of her favorite movies of all time, and as for love stories, I'd have to agree. It's not only good entertainment, it showcases a picture of love and romance that all young people would benefit from seeing, especially girls. We'll be showing it to our daughter when she enters the dating world as a counterbalance to the false messages about love and romance the world gives her.

I once heard a historian of the Roman Empire say that the best way to get a feel for ancient Rome was through those Hollywood movies that accurately portray the period. While it's no substitute for reading good books, there are things you can learn from good historical movies that you just can't get from the written word. My favorite period of history is World War II, so on this Memorial Day I thought I'd share a few thoughts on some recent WWII movies (and a game) that I think do justice to the heroes of the greatest generation:

• Saving Private Ryan: Denny Burk points out the absurdity of Shakespeare in Love winning over SPR for Best Picture in 1998, and I'd definitely agree. More than anything else, this movie was responsible for the renewed appreciation of what the fighting men of WWII accomplished for the world. I consider it one of Spielberg's greatest films, especially considering the average stuff he's been making lately. SPR is essentially one long rumination on the nature of self-sacrifice, but everyone has already seen this movie anyway, so I don't have to go on about its merits.



• The Thin Red Line: (Warning: there's a major plot spoiler ahead) Also nominated for Best Picture in 1998, this movie was woefully underappreciated by the general public. Part of the problem is that it was released shortly after SPR, and much of the advertising billed it as a sort of "Saving Private Ryan of the Pacific theater," which it most definitely was not. I once recommended it to a friend who liked war movies. His only comment was, "That movie ain't about war." He was right. Movies by Terrence Malick are an acquired taste, but I think he's one of the best directors working today. TTRL is a philosophical tale about the conflicted nature of the human condition, and the battle of Guadalcanal is a mere backdrop to that theme. The original novel by James Jones is a harrowing account of the battle written by a Guadalcanal vet, but Malick barely utilizes the novel's themes at all. He has the same characters and a few similar lines of dialogue, but there the similarity ends. Malick focuses on Private Witt (played by Jim Caviezel of "Passion of the Christ" fame), a character who is more interested in philosophizing about eternity than he is with actually being a soldier. In my humble opinion, Witt's unnecessary self-sacrifice at the end of the film is one of the most shocking and moving scenes in the history of war movies. I often watch it over and over again trying to determine why he did it. I think it has something to do with being absorbed back into the great eternal human soul, or some such example of bad theology, but I'm not sure.



• Band of Brothers: It's a shame that it took me over two years to watch all ten episodes of this mini-series, as it turned out to be one of the best things made for TV in a long time. I got this DVD set for Christmas in 2002 after having read Stephen Ambrose's book of the same name. The book and the mini-series chronicle the story of one of the most decorated and battle-hardened infantry companies of World War 2 as they participate in the European campaign. The book is brilliant as a work of historical scholarship that tells an important story, and the mini-series is brilliant because it's a fantastic work of film that tells that same important story. Highlights are the episode directed by Tom Hanks and one of the final episodes that recounts Easy Company's first discovery of a concentration camp. There has been a recent resurgence in the public's awareness of the achievements of the fighting men of the greatest generation, and for these men it couldn't have come any sooner. The mini-series doesn't try to over-lionize them, but instead paints them as normal people caught up in extraordinary events, exhibiting all their various virtues and vices. Neither does it paint them with the brush of later days, but shows them as they were: flawed heroes that accomplished something truly great for humanity.



• Call of Duty 2 (Xbox 360): Changing gears a bit, the renewed cultural interest in WWII over the last few years has also affected the video game industry. I played through Call of Duty 2 for the Xbox 360 last week, and just like its predecessor, it's one of the most intense recreations of WWII ground combat that you can have without actually having been there. Far from being a simple shoot-'em-up, the COD series provides a decent history lesson as well. While there is one sense in which the combat is certainly unrealistic, the game also takes significant pains to accurately portray WWII weapons, uniforms, vehicles, and even a few basic infantry combat tactics. My ability to distinguish between a M1 Garand, Springfield rifle, Browning Automatic Rifle, Thompson machinegun, Kar98k, and a Gewehr 43 comes directly from the COD series. As an infantry grunt, you get to perform a variety of tasks other than just gunning down Germans, such as calling in artillery strikes, driving a British Crusader tank, and sniping pesky German mortar teams. The missions are also intercut with brief historical documentary clips from the Military Channel. A highlight for me was hearing a singificant portion of Ronald Reagan's famous D-Day speech after I completed the Pointe du Hoc mission set during the Allied invasion of France on June 6, 1944. I don't know if WWII vets approve of games that recreate those terrible battles, but I think there's something to be said for approaching history through this medium. COD2 is not only an interesting (albeit cursory) history lesson, it's also one of the best games for Xbox 360.

Here is the average of all the major film critics' scores for The Da Vinci Code. Apparently the DVC movie - like the DVC theology, history, and storytelling - stinks.

Check out the trailer for World Trade Center, Hollywood's next 9/11 drama. Oliver Stone directs.

I do not know how many people will have the sort of reaction that my wife and I had after watching United 93, the new film about the "fight that fought back" on September 11, but I suspect there will be many. I've been mulling over how I ought to approach this review, as there are actually two main avenues I could take. I could focus either on the film as a film: the acting, the directing, the score, the quality of the overall storytelling, or I could focus on my own emotional reaction: the actual phenomenology, we might say, of watching the movie. I have decided to focus on both routes.

Anyone who knows me is aware that I am a guy with a (fairly) even keel. I can count on one hand the movies that have actually made me shed a tear. And even then, it is usually one tear, perhaps two. But last night during the finale of United 93, my face was wet, and it took a tremendous effort of will not to lose my composure completely. This result was the culmination of experiencing a film that literally had a physical effect on me. I know no other way to describe it. There were moments in the movie when my body physically shook and my stomach rolled itself into knots. At the halfway point I got a painful headache in the front of my head. I'm not sure if it was due to the incredible and harrowing sense of tension the first half of the movie builds, but I would say it's possible. Walking out of the theater afterwards I was speechless. I felt as if I was in a state of mild shock. I felt physically exhausted, and I had trouble keeping my mind on the road as we drove home.

Now if you think this sort of reaction is silly or overemotional, you could certainly be right. But my point is that I am rarely moved in this way, especially by a Hollywood film. I love movies, but I am also aware that 99% of the sewage that Hollywood spews out is worthless. So you could say I'm a bit jaded about the movie industry. The fact, however, is that United 93 is a masterstroke of cinema, a film of coarse emotional power and authentic human drama. It is, at its heart, a tragic story, not in the sense of a classical tragedy, of course, but in the sense of being deep down a very sad story, a story of ordinary people forced against their wills into kill-or-be-killed survival mode.

As for the quality of the movie itself, I only have a few things to say. First, the director Paul Greengrass has established himself here as one of the truly great directors working today. His refusal to dramatize, fictionalize, or otherwise romanticize the events of that infamous day does not detract from the emotional potency of the film but intensifies it. He breaks a thousand and one rules of drama and yet it is precisely this rule-breaking that works. For example, a general rule of drama is that the audience must come to care about the characters, and the only way to achieve that is that they must come to know the characters. We should know their name, their background, the events in their past that have shaped them to be the people they are today, etc. Greengrass will have none of that. In fact the characters are almost anonymous; we hardly ever hear their names, and they do not address one another by name because they do not know what those names are. I had to go to IMDB to find out who each character was. The only person recognizable by his actions is Todd Beamer, who utters the infamous "Let's roll" line. And yet it works. Perhaps it is because these events are still so close to our minds, but I think it is also because Greengrass goes for such a real world feel. If you saw a man on the street fighting for his life and bleeding to death, would you be less affected because you did not know his family history? It is the same here. These are real people, not superheroes or kung fu masters. They are fathers in golf shirts who are pressed into an unfathomably tragic situation.

Second, in portraying the circumstances of the hijacking and the violent rejoinder by the passengers, Greengrass uses the same technique that James Cameron did in Titanic: he portrays it all in real time. Thus from the moment the passengers board to the ill-fated finale, the audience experiences the events just as the passengers did. There are no quick cuts to represent the passage of time. The other planes hit their targets on the same schedule that they did on September 11. Just as it was in Titanic, this real-time drama is especially effective, and I have no idea why. It also gives Greengrass the chance to focus on the strategic decisions made by the warring parties on the planes. Had the terrorists made their move a few minutes earlier, the plane would have had a shorter trip to its target destination, the other planes would have hit their respective targets farther along in the timeline of the United 93 hijacking, the passengers would not have found out about the World Trade Center and the Pentagon from their relatives, and the plane would have hit its intended target in Washington. In its own way the story provides excellent examples, both good and bad, of leadership and strategic decision making.

Third, Greengrass' use of largely unknown actors is an excellent move, and the performances by the actors themselves are remarkable. Consider their task: they must portray grown men and women who are in one moment concerned with their stocks and their jobs, and in the next must choose between shedding the blood of other men or dying themselves in the process. In their faces there is above all one emotion: fear. Even as they prepare for their attack with whatever makeshift weapons they can find, there are tears in their eyes. And when they attack there is an animal fervor to their actions; it is violence which is bred from the innate will to survive. The hijackers are perhaps the most convincing of all. Other reviews have said that Greengrass makes them "human," but I do not see how. They are human in that they walk upright and wear clothes, but when they begin cutting the throats of their fellow passengers I saw them as nothing but man-devils driven by a wicked and lying ideology.

The final moments of the film are unforgettable. Much has been said about the way in which Greengrass fills in the blanks of the largely unknown events, but the finale is so frenzied and chaotic it is hard to tell what is happening anyway. And yet we know exactly what is happening: men are fighting and dying as they have done for untold thousands of years, leaving behind loved ones and children and a shaken citizenry.

One final note. It occurred to me while watching the film how the person who hates religion must feel. If you are raised in a secular home with little or no religion and you view the religion-fueled actions of these young men and other terrorists like them, it must seem that religion itself is an inherently dangerous thing. But of course there is another side to the story. For if God exists, then certainly not everything done in His name is done in His will. For whatever evils are done in His name, there must also be a reckoning for those evils by God Himself, at the very least for the sin of denigrating His name and His glory. The cruelty with which religious men conduct themselves does not prove that all religion is bad, but that only some manifestations of religion is. Without the rest, there could be no proper judgment of the former.

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe.

           Paradise Lost, Book i, Line 1

Apparently John Milton's classic poem Paradise Lost is being translated into a big-budget feature film by Legendary Pictures, the studio that made the excellent Batman Begins and this summer's Superman film. Is this just the latest attempt by Hollywood to cash in on the evangelical cash cow that made The Passion of the Christ and Narnia so successful? I sure hope so. The more Christian-themed films the better, I say. Let's just hope they keep Milton's aim of "justifying the ways of God to men" in place.

Here is a glowing review for United 93, a film about the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on 9/11. The author compares the experience to seeing to Star Wars and Jaws for the first time. Those are bold words. Now I am awaiting this film even more eagerly. Watch for some off-color language at the site hosting the review, especially in the comments section.

Check out the trailer for United 93.

Okay, now this is something you have to see to believe. With my philosophy-lovin', sci-fi-readin' tendencies, I consider myself a low level geek. But I don't hold a candle to the bright star of geekdom that these guys represent.

Here are a few quotes from Newsweek's review of the anarchist film, V for Vendetta:

The film may spark interesting debates—about the nature of terrorism and governments, about the inalienable right of artists to shock and provoke—but what we're dealing with is a lackluster comic-book movie that thinks terrorist is a synonym for revolutionary ...

... the movie plays like a clumsy assault on post-9/11 paranoia ...

... uses imagery direct from Abu Ghraib and contains dialogue likely to offend anyone who's not, say, a suicide bomber ...

... the screenplay is full of clichéd caricatures of power-hungry Christians and government-controlled TV anchors.

Is it any surprise that such political philosophy comes from a screenwriter who exhibits this kind of behavior?

Pardon me for descending into the trivial for a moment, but he gets the black suit!

I have to confess to being a Michael Bay fan. I make a big show about preferring movies for the thinking man, but that doesn't mean I don't like a good action movie every now and then, and Bay is one of the best directors of the genre. The Rock is one of the best action movies of all time, and Pearl Harbor was one of the better historical epics of the last few years. Bay gets knocked as being a director whose only talent is shooting cars flipping end over end down the interstate, but I don't think that's fair at all. He's actually very good at portraying strong characters and interesting dramatic plotlines as well.

But with The Island Bay takes a shot at a science fiction movie for the thinking man, combined with (of course) the obligatory cars somersaulting down the interstate and slo-motion shots of sunglass-wearing beefcakes getting out of high-priced sports cars. The result is one of the most underrated big-budget films of last year. The Island is a classic science fiction tale. By that I mean that it serves what I call the "prophetic function" of sci-fi by issuing a strong warning about the dangers of divorcing advanced technology from traditional moral foundations. In the simplest terms, the film portrays consumerism and the modern obsession with maintaining youth and beauty as paving the way for human genocide. The main characters are actually clones harvested by a genetic engineering company. Rich people pay up to $5 million to grow a clone as a repository for spare body parts or even to bear the burden of carrying a child. Once the clone has served his purpose, he is exterminated. They are not seen as people but as "products."

The film uses various methods to display this extermination that are meant as clear parallels to the history of genocide in the real world. When a batch of "defective products" is herded into a gas chamber to be "recalled," the allusion to Nazi Germany is clear, if not downright heavy-handed. Likewise, when other defective products are cut from the artificial growth sacks in which they are being harvested, I couldn't help but see a parallel with abortion, even though I highly doubt the writers meant it that way. In a world where clones are a possibility, where human DNA is mixed with animal DNA (for research purposes only, of course) and where the desire for designer babies has reduced the birth-rate of Down's Syndrome infants to near zero, the message of The Island is one that modern humanity needs a good solid dose of: all human life is sacred. Period. That kind of prophetic warning is a mark of good science fiction, and The Island is a good science fiction film. The fact that stuff blows up real good doesn't hurt either.

It looks like Andrew Adamson will return to direct the big-screen adaptation of "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian." This is good news for those of us who thought he did a great job with "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe."

Spoiler warning: If you don't want to know the ending of Collateral, don't read this post.

Last year on my personal site I wrote this review of the 2004 movie Collateral:

I have a very general system of rating movies in my head. These are great, extremely good, very good, and good. I try not to watch movies that would fall into any lower categories. Collateral pushes the "great" category. At any rate it is "extremely good," and one of the best movies I saw in 2004. I have not seen all of Michael Mann's movies (like Ali), but his Last of the Mohicans is one of my all-time favorites. Mann is a true professional filmmaker; he makes most directors in Hollywood look like amateurs. Here is an intelligent action-drama with even more intelligent dialogue. Add in characters that are well-developed by the actors playing them being shot by a man who knows what actually comprises a good movie and you have, for lack of a less-cliched term a "cinematic tour de force." The philosopher in me was intrigued by the level of cosmic soul-searching in the movie by Cruise's character, a hit-man who is also a nihilist. Thus he justifies his killing because he sees all people - including himself - as being ultimately insignificant and meaningless. In true modern fashion, there is no antidote to this terrible diagnosis of meaninglessness, no breaking-in of some revelation wherein the assassin suddenly realizes that he has been wrong all along about his own nature and that of humanity. Strangely, Mann presents this pessimistic outlook without depressing the audience. At least I was not depressed, but that is perhaps because this kind of movie can actually encourage me by contrasting its implications with those of my own worldview. The Christian has hope that ultimately all his life and his acts will be eternally significant and that one day he will pass into the next world. It also reminds me that one's worldview must ultimately determine his or her actions. Since Cruise's character does not see humans as meaningful he sees no reason not to kill them for money. But, as Maximus tells us in Gladiator, "What we do in life echoes in eternity."

I was reminded of this movie today as I read this story about a man who died on a New York subway and wasn't discovered for six hours. The two main characters in Collateral, a nihilist hit-man and his taxi driver hostage, have a conversation about this very scenario. Vincent (the assassin played by Tom Cruise) tells Jamie Foxx's character about a man who died on the L. A. subway. No one even paid enough attention to the man long enough to to realize he was dead. I thought this story was only a fiction made up for the movie, but the above news story proves that such a thing can happen.

The interesting thing is the context in which Vincent tells this story. Vincent is a nihilist. He sees humans as simply insignificant material specks, with no inherent dignity or worth to be respected. Thus he justifies his occupation. Here's one of his quotes to this end:

Vincent: Get with it [Max]. Millions of galaxies of hundreds of millions of stars, in a speck on one in a blink. That's us, lost in space. The cop, you, me... Who notices?

His use of the story about the man on the train comes in a moment of philosophical reflection. His point is that we as a race are all insignificant, and we don't make matters any better by how alienated we are from one another. We're so alienated that we don't even notice when one of our human compatriots dies right in front of us.

The director, Michael Mann, is one of my favorite working directors, but I have to disagree with the statement he's making in this movie. The statement is this: even though we may not be meaningful beings, we can make life better by valuing our relationships, by pursuing our dreams, etc. The point is pressed home by the film's ending. Foxx's cab driver character is convinced by his ordeal that he should work harder at starting his own business. He also gains confidence in pursuing the woman of his dreams, and the final shot is of the couple walking into the dawn together. Contrast this with Cruise's assassin. He is killed by Foxx on a subway. He slumps onto the subway bench and dies, and the empty train moves on with the solitary corpse inside. The message is clear: Vincent's life is meaningless because he embraced it as such. But Foxx's character at least has some hope because he's trying to make his life meaningful. But this is no more than a Hollywood version of existentialism. And in the end, existentialism still leaves man as a hopeless, absurd being, because all it says is, "Well, we may not have any inherent value, but we can at least pretend that we do."

But I don't buy it, and such a worldview makes life unlivable, even if it makes for good filmmaking. I understand my own worth as being grounded in a living, infinite Creator-God. In Him I "live and move and have my being."

Since I'm such a huge C. S. Lewis fan, I'm a little ashamed that I waited over a month out from Narnia's release date to see it. Why did I do that? There are numerous reasons. One is that I have a new baby, so it's a bit hard to get out of the house, but that didn't stop me and my wife from making it out to the theater for the first week of King Kong's release. No, I think the real reason is because I was afraid that Narnia would be mediocre, and much of what I had heard from the Christian community backed that up, despite strong reviews from critics. The criticisms were numerous, but I'll list a few:

• The movie is only "Lord of the Rings Junior"
• It underrepresents or underexplains the character of Aslan
• It waters down the book's religious allegory
• The children are bad actors
• The movie is a cheap attempt at cashing in on the success of The Passion of the Christ, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter by throwing all those films into a blender
• And ad infinitum ...

When my wife and I sat down in the theater on Sunday night, I was expecting no more than a mediocre film that reflected all of these criticisms or worse, another cheap translation of a classic work of literature, a rushed hack-job of a movie that exists for the sole reason of making money.

I was way wrong. From the opening scene of the bombing of London to the final, "Try me," from the professor, I was entranced. And "entranced" is not a word I use lightly. For a grown man who is a bit jaded at the current vapid Hollywood culture to be so mesmerized by a kids' movie with fauns, talking beavers, and Santa Claus is, to me, an astonishing thing.

No one, least of all me, expected Narnia to be such a work of unusual dramatic power. I know there are many others who didn't see it that way, but considering the box office numbers, I think this movie resonated with many people. In fact, not only are Narnia's box office numbers good, it looks like it is actually going to beat King Kong as the holiday box office champ. No one saw that coming. Neither did anyone expect it to be third most profitable movie of the year, behind only the behemoths of Star Wars and Harry Potter, the latter of which may still be surpassed.

My wife had the same reaction as I did. She even went so far as to say that the scene of Aslan's death is more powerful than the crucifixion of Jesus scene in The Passion of the Christ. I am tempted to agree. There is a moment when we see Aslan, alone, shoulders slumped as he walks to his doom under the moonlit trees. Something about this scene poignantly portrays the eternal loneliness that Christ must have felt as he pondered what it must be like to be abandoned by God the Father on the cross. When he asks the Pevensie girls to hold on to his mane as he walks because he "could use the company," I was almost - pardon the cliche - moved to tears.

I suppose that many of the criticisms came from the same sort of literary purists that went into a hysteria over every instance in the Lord of the Rings movies that weren't exactly the same as in the books. But this sort of thinking comes from a misunderstanding of the difficulty of translating from the literary medium to the film medium. Like any task of translation, it may be necessary to depart from a strict reading of the original material in order to keep the spirit of the material in the new medium.

For example, take one of the primary criticisms from a recent review of the movie at The Decent Films Guide. The author, Steven Greydanus, seems to understand the difficulty in making the translation, and then second guesses the filmmakers on one minor change after another. For example, he takes issue with the fact that the film version of Peter is more of a reluctant hero than the book version:

Take the depiction of Peter Pevensie, the eldest sibling, whom Lewis depicts as a natural leader who intuitively grasps the obligations the siblings have to Tumnus and to Narnia. In the film, Peter becomes a reluctant participant who is always trying to back out of Narnian affairs and get his siblings safely back to England. It’s the Aragorn Complex; the only good leader, Hollywood is sure, is a reluctant leader.

He goes on to say that this change, "makes no sense, dramatically or thematically." Well, why not? By making Peter a more reluctant hero, the screenwriter actually incorporated one of those bedrocks of good drama - internal conflict - into the characterization of Peter. This sort of change only helps to enhance the story in its translation into a two and a half hour movie. I wouldn't be so hard on Mr. Greydanus if this was his only gripe, but he goes on to produce a copious list of complaints about less-than-literal departures from the original text.

This makes no sense to me. To be fair, some of the criticisms listed above do have some merit. I would liked to have heard some reference to Aslan's Father, the Emperor Across the Sea, and to the fact that it was He who wrote the laws of deep magic. Neither is there any reference to the "deeper magic" that overturns the deep magic, but Aslan does explain it in a way, although he doesn't use the term "deeper magic." But these beefs are fleas of insignifance on the back of a majestic lion. I would just as soon complain that someone freely gave me a million dollars in a paper sack when I preferred plastic. It's also true that Narnia is no Lord of the Rings. But Fruity Pebbles are also a very different animal than Peanut Butter Crunch, but I love them both. It looks like Prince Caspian is up next, so all those who appreciated this entry into the series only have good things to look forward to.

I love movies so much that I watch very few of them. The endless stream of worthless trash Hollywood spews out is a disgrace to the power and beauty of the medium, and by "worthless trash" I am referring both to the quality of current films and their objectionable content. In my opinion the fact that box office receipts are slowly sinking is testimony to this.

Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy is a bright spot in the recent history of cinema. Both a commercial and critical uber-success, Rings brought one of my favorite books of all time to life in a way that I could never have predicted. Jackson follows Rings with King Kong, and while watching this remake of the 1933 original I was reminded of two things, (1) why I like watching movies in the first place and (2) why so many other filmmakers are contributing to the silver screen's current malady.

I'll try to explain what I mean. While watching Kong - I don't know if it was during the dinosaur stampede or the T-rex fight - I was reminded that one reason I love movies is their ability to transport you into a thrilling new experience that's impossible to have in the routine of daily life. This seems like common sense, but the reason that this thought hit me with such force during these scenes was because I realized how few times that sort of thing had happened to me recently while watching movies. It takes a certain sort of filmmaker to dream up and then implement the kind of viscerally beautiful action scenes that Jackson puts into his movies. Think also of the giant oliphaunts knocking the horsemen of Rohan around like toys during the Battle of Pelennor Fields in Return of the King.

Even Revenge of the Sith, with all its technical prowess, didn't have a scene that thrilled like the scene where Kong fights three T-rexes simultaneously (in my humble opinion the greatest fantasy action scene of all time). Other directors just can't do it like Jackson can. I don't know if it's that other directors simply don't have the technical ability to implement such a scene or if it's simply that they don't have the creative vision to dream it up. In one review I read that the character of King Kong is the single greatest visual effect of all time, and after seeing that scene I would concur.

That's not to say that Kong is without problems. The New York sequence seemed a bit rushed, and whenever a studio writes a blank check to a director, as Universal did with Jackson, the director's ego is bound to get in the way. Jackson could have cut 30, maybe even 45 minutes out of this one and no one would have missed them. The sub-plot between Jimmy and Hayes seemed to be a waste of time with no real resolution, and the spider-pit sequence seemed a bit unnecessary as well.

But those foibles I will gladly forgive if the rest of the movie delivers on my overpriced movie ticket. Kong does that, and then some. Jackson is truly one of the great imagineers of cinema, and Kong reminds me why I go to the movies in the first place.

I was pleasantly surprised the other night while watching the Discovery Channel to see an ad for End of the Spear, a film about the life and death of missionary Jim Eliot. Whether the film will be good or not I have no idea, but it represents a step in the right direction.

I have long banged the drum of Christian penetration of popular culture. 20th century fundamentalism sounded the horn for a retreat from culture, and thus Christians largely ignored the "evils" of cinema. But in doing so, especially in the latter half of the century, they abandoned the medium to Marxists, humanists, and progressive liberals who had no qualms about advancing their ideals through the medium of film.

But through the influence of books like Chuck Colson's How Now Shall We Live?, classical Christians are getting the message. Our bands are played more often on secular radio, and the commercial success of films like The Passion of the Christ and The Chronicles of Narnia has shown the world that there most certainly is a market for popular media that comes from a Christian perspective.

The key, for Christians, is exactly how that's done. For every Passion of the Christ, there could be ten Omega Codes. I came across an article today with some Christian Hollywood insiders that explains how it ought to be done a little better than I could. Here's a quote:

Often, Christian filmmakers ignore this reality, and the storytelling and production aspects are subordinated to the message. "The films are merely bait to lure viewers to a homily or altar call, and this only ensures their failure," notes Parham.

"Show, don't tell, is the rule of the cinema," he explains, and it is important not to confuse art with propaganda. This is well understood by non-Christian producers, who instead of an overt message often rely on symbol and metaphor. In this, explained Parham, they are following the example of Jesus, who often taught in parables instead of responding directly to questions.

Christians would also do well to remember the dimension of mystery inherent in the Christian message, and leave space for the imagination of their audience. Another failure of Christian producers is to ignore life's complexities, instead of seeing the world the way it is, with its contradictions and failures.

This is sage advice. Evangelicals are often under the impression that every single chance they get to deliver a message, it must include the four spiritual laws. This is not the case. Some of my favorite films of all time are not Christian films, and they weren't made by Christian filmmakers. But they press home some point - a moral or spiritual truth, we'll say, often in the form of a symbol - that has greatly edified me and, dare I say, enriched my relationship with the triune God.

I'll give a quick illustration and then I'm done. It is one thing, for example, to believe in the Christian moral ideal as quoted by Jesus in John 15: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." But it is quite another to experience an extended illustration of that one truth in Saving Private Ryan.

To be fair, the evangelical movie industry is still in its infancy. We should expect a steady stream of lame ducks for a while, while the professionals make the Passions and the Narnias. I hope, however, that as the years pass evangelicals will hone their craft, making works of art that both glorify God and attract folks from all walks of life to the theaters.

After 9/11 I began to wonder how long it would be before America would be reliving those tragic events on the silver screen. I personally hoped we would get 9/11 films sooner, but it looks like Hollywood thinks five years is a sufficient temporal buffer zone. We're getting two 9/11 movies in 2006, one from Oliver Stone and another, "Flight 93," about the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania. Apple just added a teaser trailer for the latter.

Check out Jonah Goldberg's piece on Steven Spielberg's Munich.