Movie News
At the beginning of March, Philip Groning’s film Into Great Silence came into a theatre in New York that specializes in foreign films. It was advertised as having a two-week run. But when each of the three daily showings continued to sell out, the theatre owners put “Held Over” up on the marquis. Now, at month’s end, it’s still playing to full houses. The DVD went on sale in Canada April 3.
Pope remembered on film
By Sara Loftson, The Catholic RegisterJesus tomb discovery ‘nonsense’
By Catholic Register Staff
TORONTO - The claim by a Toronto filmmaker that he had found the true burial site of Jesus of Nazareth — along with Jesus’ wife and child — began to sink under withering criticism almost as soon as he revealed his new film Feb. 26.Movie review: Black Snake Moan
By Michael Swan, The Catholic RegisterBlack Snake Moan takes a great starting point and turns it into a bad movie.
Hope in a child's birth
By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register
Writer-director Alfonso Cuaron uses P.D. James's novel The Children of Men to show us a world worn out, spinning on the empty energy of caffeine, terrorism, anger, paranoia, suicide and the media's technology of mental chaos. He shows us the real culture of death. But then he shows us something more.
Retelling of nativity lags behind Gibson's blockbuster
By Sara Loftson, The Catholic Register
Hollywood movies often generate all sorts of movie paraphernalia, from McDonald's action figure trinkets to coffee mugs and posters, but knock off items for this year's Christmas release The Nativity Story are sparse.
Nativity gets Hollywood treatment
By Sara Loftson, The Catholic RegisterTORONTO - The latest film in Hollywood's fascination with Christ is about to hit the theatres. The Nativity Story will be released in early December just in time for the Christmas season.
Despite poor reviews, Da Vinci phenomenon grows
By Jim Beverly, Catholic Register Special{mosimage}Finally, the buildup to The Da Vinci Code movie release is over and we can now dispense with speculation about its faithfulness to the famous novel by Dan Brown. All in all, the movie follows the novel quite faithfully, with all of its wild and erroneous claims about "real" history. And, the movie has no notice that it is based on a work of fiction. There is no disclaimer about the picture it presents of Opus Dei or of traditional Christian orthodoxy. However, it is quite significant that both Ron Howard and Tom Hanks played up the element of fiction in interviews, rather than bragging about Brown's alleged incredible research. Neither was inclined to give serious attention to the fact that the movie was advertised with the line: "seek the truth."
Critics pan The Da Vinci Code
By John Thavis, Catholic News Service{mosimage}CANNES, France - Toward the end of the movie The Da Vinci Code, the main character, Robert Langdon, tells his sleuthing partner, Sophie Neveu: "You are the last living descendent of Jesus Christ."
DVD seeks answers from the cast of The Passion of the Christ
By Catholic Register Staff{mosimage}It's not going to be the blockbuster that Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ became, but a spin-off documentary DVD is in a quiet way more interesting. The Big Question, released this month in Canada by independent Toronto filmmaker TH!NKFilm, is a gentle movie that asks very important questions.
Terror on terror
By Michael Swan, The Catholic Register{mosimage}It is as unlikely that anyone will be able to parse the meaning of V for Vendetta by reviewing the political history of Guy Fawkes and the gunpowder conspiracy as it is that history will remember all those tortured, turgid, adolescent essays about the philosophy behind The Matrix trilogy. If the Wachowski brothers — the verbose screensmiths behind this movie and that previous black leather opus — have a political philosophy it is well hidden.