Tags: Life of Christ & Jesus Movies
B+ |
*** |
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Kids & Up
And yet, compared with most Hollywood biblical epics,
The Greatest Story Ever Told manages to sustain a spirit of genuine reverence and religiosity over showmanship and pageantry. Its deliberate pacing and dreamlike, otherworldly ambiance offer neither the entertainment value of
The Ten Commandments nor the comparative psychological realism of Zeffirelli’s subsequent
Jesus of Nazareth, yet it is arguably more evocative than either of the spirit of biblical literature.
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The original DVD edition of The Passion of the Christ was a “bare bones” edition featuring only the film itself. This week’s two-disc “Definitive Edition” is packed with extras, from
The Passion Recut (which trims about six minutes of some of the most intense violence) to four separate commentaries.
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In blogs, discussion boards, and other fora, a range of criticisms and objections concerning
The Nativity Story have been raised by concerned Catholics. Some of these critiques are thoughtful and worthy of consideration, and raise issues regarding the film that have merit, or are at least defensible. Other complaints are more problematic, resting on misrepresentations of the film or even of Catholic teaching.
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Perhaps
The Nativity Story will take its place as the missing Christmas film — the one that actually is about the
real “real meaning of Christmas.”
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A- |
*** |
+3|
Kids & Up*
From
It’s a Wonderful Life to
A Christmas Carol, from
Miracle on 34th Street to Tim Allen’s
Santa Clause films, there are more Christmas movies than you could watch in all twelve days. Yet even at the height of Hollywood biblical epics, the
real meaning of Christmas was essentially ignored (a few brief scenes in
Ben-Hur notwithstanding).
The Nativity Story goes a long way toward redressing this historic omission.
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Although
The Nativity Story doesn’t portray Joseph as a widower, it also doesn’t depict Joseph and Mary’s relationship as a typical first-century Jewish courtship. While the film doesn’t take a stance one way or the other on the Catholic doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity, it finds drama in the obstacles between Joseph and Mary, rather than turning their story, as some retellings have done, into a Hollywood romance.
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A- |
*** |
+4|
Teens & Up
It is, so to speak, not "based on" St. John’s Gospel at all, so much as it
is St. John’s Gospel — visualized and enacted to be sure, and to that extent interpreted and glossed, but not "adapted" in the usual sense.
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A |
***½ |
+4|
Kids & Up*
Cecil B. DeMille’s biblical silent masterpiece
The King of Kings, until now available in home video only in DeMille’s shortened 112-minute 1928 cut, is now available in a new restored DVD edition from Criterion that includes both the original 155-minute 1927 “roadshow” version and the shorter general release version.
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In its most extreme form, the charge of morbidity has been
laid at the feet of the Christian faith itself. Christianity’s
harshest critics denounce it as "a religion of death." Clearly,
at some point objections of this sort must be regarded as a case
in point of what the scriptures call the "scandal" of the cross.
It is the cross itself, the very suffering and dying of God made
man, and the way Christians respond to this event in their faith
and devotion, that is behind much (though again not all) of the
religious and anti-religious controversy over the brutality of
this particular film.
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A+ |
**** |
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Teens & Up
As I contemplate Mel Gibson’s
The Passion
of the Christ, the sequence I keep coming back to, again and
again, is the scourging at the pillar.
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Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League declared recently that Mel Gibson’s
The Passion of the Christ is
not antisemitic, and that Gibson himself is not an anti-Semite, but a “true believer.”
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A+ |
**** |
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Kids & Up
In the end, perhaps the most enduring achievement of
The Gospel According to Matthew is an ironic one, given Pasolini’s Marxism: No other life-of-Christ film is so contemplative, inviting the viewer simply to meditate on the life and teaching of Jesus.
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A |
***½ |
+3|
Kids & Up
The art of cinema had advanced dramatically in the few years
between the two films, and
From the Manger to the Cross is
far more sophisticated — though I actually find the earlier, more
primitive
Life and Passion more effective. Even so, both
are worthwhile, and they make a good double bill.
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A+ |
**** |
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Kids & Up
The Life and Passion of Jesus Christ is a remarkable relic from the very dawn of cinema.
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A+ |
**** |
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Kids & Up*
In
The Miracle Maker, the film’s makers have a small miracle of their own: a simple, modest retelling of the gospel story of the ministry and passion of Christ that does little more than present the bare events of the gospel narratives, without adornment or invention, without idiosyncratic "explanations" or editorial spin, without elaborations for the sake of amusement or excitement.
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