Tag: christian movies

The Extraordinary, Amazing, Miraculous Story of Christian Hollywood

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Amy Levin: It’s only the end of January and many of us are already in winter break withdrawal – missing those precious days when you can sit back, relax with your nieces and nephews and watch those fun, PG-rated, faithy, family films about saving cute animals and. . . yourself? Yes, the days when Disney got away with feeding kids spoonfuls of gendered and racially flavored sugar are perhaps behind us (no they’re not), but we’re certainly far from beyond consuming tales infused with religious ingredients, that is, Dolphin Tale (watch the trailer here, if it doesn’t make you tear up, I don’t know what will).

Dolphin Tale is the “amazing true story” of the friendship between a boy and a bottlenose dolphin named Winter, who he helps rescue when Winter is caught in a crab trap off the cost of Florida. Continue Reading →

Christian Movies and Representational Politics

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From Andrew O’Hehir’s review at Salon of “Soul Surfer”:

If evangelical Christians want to see their life and faith and values reflected on-screen, I guess that’s understandable. But movies are not mirrors, and the mass audiences that went to see “The King’s Speech” or “Black Swan” or “The Social Network” didn’t necessarily identify with the characters or their lifestyles. Although the prehistory of Christian cinema goes back several decades — the Campus Crusade for Christ film “Jesus” played mainstream theaters in 1979 — with the solitary exception of Gibson’s gruesome and visionary “Passion of the Christ” the genre hasn’t evolved past the most tedious stage of message-delivery and representational politics. (Insert joke here about Christians and evolution.)

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