I agree, and I’m Christian. Also, a lot of the “entertainment” made by “Christians” is deliberately bland, so as not to offend anyone.
This “Christian” movie is one of the all-time IMDB bombs.
Seconded. Pretty decent soundtrack, too. I’ll take weird, cerebral movies that don’t quite achieve greatness over movies that are boring and unambitious any day (and FTW, I liked Upstream Color as well). No, it’s not a 2001 or a Solaris. But it was a legitimate attempt.
John Jerimiah Sullivan wrote a hilarious and insightful essay on why Christian Rock is so mediocre called Upon This Rock that I love on this topic.
Excellent article, made me pull out some old vinyl from before the Corporatization of “Christian Rock” (read up on Myrrh Records… phew!).
So, to perhaps close out this tangent, here’s John Michael Talbot and brother Terry. You can listen to the album (they start out with a great Little Feat cover), but this is cued up to their reminder of how we treated the natives here, on the “Trail of Tears”… (with, yep, David Lindley on 'Hawaiian Guitar").
As far as I know, the reason all Christian movies suck is because if you set out to make one, and it turned out, you know, good, you would release it not as a Christian movie but as a movie.
“Can’t you see you’re not making Christianity better? You’re just making rock-and-roll worse.”
One thing I find fascinating about the Christian movie industry and its various facets (inspirational sports stories, “we’re being persecuted!” hysterical screeds, vaguely anti-semitic apocalypse SF, African American gospel choir competitions…) is when folks you wouldn’t necessarily expect show up in them. I know Ray Wise from Twin Peaks, Robocop, and I know he played the Devil in a show called Reaper. Then I saw he was in the first God’s Not Dead sequel and I was wondering…does he ascribe to that filmmaker’s philosophy? Kevin Sorbo, sure, he’s a right-wing dumbass troll in real life and exclusively makes those kinds of movies now, but Leland Palmer? I always wonder how much a paycheck player actor just shrugs and says “a gig’s a gig.”
I feel the same way about the various well-known folks who acted in the Atlas Shrugged trilogy. They can’t all be Objectivists, can they?
Sometimes, as in the case of Jamie Kennedy, in Roe v Wade from 2012, they don’t know until it’s underway.
“He said that many crew members walked off the production once they became aware of the movie’s true intentions. “People would walk mid-fuckin’-stream and say, ‘I didn’t know it was going to be this,’ and that’s not good,” he said.”
For an obvious example, take Ben-Hur (the 1959 version). It was a success, commercially, critically and at the Academy Awards. It’s explicitly a Christian story.
I can’t remember the specific names, but I heard once of an up-and-coming hot new actor asking some revered elder how to avoid getting typecast, and the answer the old actor gave was to accept every role you’re ever offered, no matter what it is.
Sir John Gielgud appeared in Caligula. Nuff Said.
The late Mrs. CaptMurdock and I rented the 2002 remake of Rollerball. Didn’t even finish it. And considering how she money-conscious she was (rest her soul) and she loathed not fully watching any movie we shelled out bucks to rent from Blockbuster…
Silence from Martin Scorsese is basically a Christian movie and would never have been made by the Christian movie industry. I think it is the best movie about faith I’ve ever seen. Also his best movie.
I’d like to see a Christian movie industry movie with a scene like this:
The Last Temptation of Christ also comes from a place of deep faith (maybe Kazantzakis’ more than Scorsese’s, but still) and split religious groups in terms of their reaction to it.
Jesus of Montreal is a brilliant movie about religion and faith, one of my absolute favorite films and I say that as an atheist. I’d be really curious to see what the audiences that flock to modern Christian movies would make of it.
For a minute I read that as “Skipping Christmas” (aka Christmas with the Kranks) and I agreed, Then I looked it up. Jesus! I agree even more.
I roll my eyes in their general direction! They were upset that the titular temptation was for Jesus to run off and get married. And have sex!
But seriously, people! What do you temp the son of god with? It isn’t like he wants a better TV, more money, power. What can you get for the guy that has literally everything? No, what you temp him with is the chance to escape his destiny. Now that’s temptation!
Many years ago i started a thread about the post-Revelations horror movies our church made us watch, and no one seemed to know what I was talking about. Is that what y’all mean by Christian movies?
Oh and Battleship Earth is entertaining as hell.
And Dogville worked.
Are you talking about those movies, like “A Thief In The Night”, that were made in the mid 1970s? I grew up in Des Moines, where the filmmakers were headquartered, and they were mostly shot in and around that area. There was a low-power station in my old town that sometimes showed them, and other similar movies.
My other favorite band in the early 1990s was the prog/metal band King’s X, who were not a Christian band but rather a band made up of Christians. At some point, the quality of their music declined drastically and I stopped following them, but their early material is terrific. This was their first video that I know of.
This is probably the closest thing they had to a hit single; when my sister first saw the video, she asked me if they were a Christian band; my response was “I think so, but they don’t really advertise it” and she replied, “I had wondered - three men standing together on a mountaintop.”
To be fair, the Caligula that was released was not the Caligula that Gielgud (and Mirren, and McDowell, and O’Toole) thought they were filming.
Also, Gielgud was hardly a prude. He did Prospero’s Books as well.
The others I’ll give you, but McDowell? Considering some of the stuff you see him do, I think he knew exactly what sort of film he was in.
While this link plays it straight for most of it, it does end with the words “April Foolish” so all a joke…