At last, a horror film for disaffected Catholic traditionalists embittered against the Church for post-Vatican II changes; who see the Church itself, not just the larger culture, as compromised by modernism, and impeding orthodox clerics from carrying out true spiritual work.
Read more >
B |
**½ |
+2|
Teens & Up*
In some ways, Mikael Håfström’s new film reminds me less of recent exorcism films than of the sort of movie that Terence Fisher made for Hammer Films in the late 1950s and 1960s, movies like
The Devil Rides Out and the 1958
Dracula. If Father Lucas, an unconventional veteran exorcist working in Rome, had been played by Hammer icon Christopher Lee instead of Anthony Hopkins, he would have been right at home.
Read more >
C+ |
***½ |
+2-3|
Adults*
“You just take your pills and you’ll be fine, really,” Chris (Ellen Burstyn) promises her daughter Regan (Linda Blair), but part of the film’s brief is that pills aren’t the answer to everything, and faith and religion may have answers science doesn’t.
Read more >
There are no scenes of spinning heads, projectile pea-soup vomiting, or levitating beds in
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (opening September 9), starring Laura Linney, Tom Wilkinson, Jennifer Carpenter, and Campbell Scott.
Read more >
B |
*** |
+2-2|
Adults
A line in the trailer for
The Exorcism of Emily Rose, felicitously cut from the final film, observes that “There’s no pill for the devil.” More to the point, there’s no diagnostic test or scan for him, either.
Read more >
C |
** |
+1-2|
Adults*
The comic-book Constantine is a blond Brit based in Liverpool
(think Sting by way of Christopher Lee in Terence Fisher’s
The
Devil Rides Out). For the film, the casting of Keanu led to a
change of setting to California and LA. Similarly, the casting of
Shia LaBeouf (
Holes) as
Constantine’s ally Chandler turned the character from a seasoned
comrade in arms into a Jimmy Olsen-like junior sidekick.
(Whatever happened to casting actors who fit the part?)
Read more >