Free Republic

The genre of faith-based films has grown stronger over the last ten years, but Father Stu pushes the envelope in one significant sense. Will the built-in audience for such films stand for an R-rated biopic? And will the warts-and-all depiction of the late Father Stuart Long bring in the crossover audiences that Mark Wahlberg commands?Hopefully, the answer to both questions will be yes, as Father Stu offers a moving and sometimes challenging look at faith, redemption, and family. No one gets spared from a harsh, critical look at Long’s life — not his family, his friends, his lifestyle, or even...

Strong performances and character development balance out the soapy sex and romance nicely, creating a thoroughly bingeable and enjoyable series.Prepare to swoon over Netflix’s new Regency romance, filled to the brim with dashing rogues, charming innocents, gorgeous costumes, and scandals galore. “Bridgerton” follows a well-tread story, where the naive virgin and the brooding bad boy pretend to be in love in order to achieve their individual goals, only for genuine interest and affection to grow from the ruse. However, with likable characters, gorgeous production design, and a mysterious writer documenting the characters’ every move in deliciously scandalous fashion, the clichéd...

Beautifully shot yet muted as a drama, ‘News of the World’ brings the post-Civil War Southwest to life in the unlikely journey of a lost girl and a jaded veteran who helps her find home. Ten years ago, auteur filmmaker brothers Joel and Ethan Coen brought a surprisingly sincere revisionist Western to the big screen over Christmas weekend. Out last weekend in theaters, “News of the World” offers a similar throwback film without quite the edge or mass appeal. The Coens’ 2010 take on “True Grit,” a remake of the John Wayne classic, followed a grizzled U.S. Marshal (Jeff Bridges)...

If you're not too good to enjoy people falling off cliffs or getting kicked in the face, 'The Wrong Missy' will be worth your time.Frivolity has fallen out of fashion in Hollywood comedies. Laughter is now merely part of a didactic journey to an emotional crescendo. Simple slapstick for the point of slapstick is rare. It’s exhausting to continuously be fed vegetables with our comedy, even if films like “The Big Sick” and “Trainwreck” are more carrot cake than Brussel sprouts. “The Wrong Missy” is just cake. Nothing fancy, maybe a box cake, but cake nonetheless. Netflix’s new Happy Madison-produced...

At the end of the day, 'Hollywood' doesn't care about telling a compelling story about interesting people, but is intent on demonstrating the importance of representation in media. There are two excellent stories at the center of “Hollywood,” Ryan Murphy’s alt-history saga of old Hollywood. An intrepid group of friends attempt to make a big studio romance starring a talented black actress in 1947. An aspiring actor must negotiate his desire for fame with his morals, in the backdrop of a sexually exploitive agent and the omnipresent risk of his homosexuality becoming discovered.Both of these stories are technically covered in...

In the years after World War II, Korea’s economy was in tragic shape. In 1948, the country’s per capita income of $86 put it on par with Sudan. Disastrous policies led to hyperinflation, snail-paced growth forced mothers to make choices about children along the lines of Sophie’s, plus literacy rates in the country were among the lowest in the world. Analyzing the situation, one U.S. official concluded that “Korea can never attain a high standard of living.” The reason, he observed, was that “there are virtually no Koreans with the technical training and experience required to take advantage of Korea’s...

Captain America: Civil War confirms our national dumb-down. While the mainstream media pretzel themselves over the presidential primaries, Marvel Studios has steadily accomplished a rejiggering of the American public’s cultural and political consciousness. Civil War completes this devolution in its story of superhero combat where one faction of pop icons, led by Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), faces off against another faction, headed by billionaire genius Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.). As momentary adversaries, Captain America and Iron Man almost represent the schism that now divides American voters, politicians, and pundits. I say “almost,” because the film’s comic-book...

Most religious movies feel as if they’re made by a church committee, but every now and then a wild-eyed prophet wanders in and rattles the theater with brimstone. Regardless of your feelings about either movie, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” qualifies and so does Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Now director Darren Aronofsky (“Black Swan,” “The Wrestler”) has ascended to the mountaintop and returned with the strangest, most visionary cinematic parable yet. “Noah” is equal parts ridiculous and magnificent, a showman’s folly and a madman’s epic. It elaborates on the Book of Genesis’s slender story of...

Eddie Murphy's new film A Thousand Words has been slated in America with headlines speculating whether it is 'the worst film of all time'. Comedian Murphy, who turned 50 last April, made his name with films such as Beverly Hills Cop and voiced Donkey in the hugely popular Shrek films but his latest movie, filmed in 2008, is attracting damning verdicts. On Rotten Tomatoes - the American review aggregator website - A Thousand Words has earned a 0 per cent rating (the percentage of critics who have given the film a positive review), based on 41 reviews. Few films have...

EXCERPT: The movie explicitly establishes Skeeter as the protagonist, the person who we are supposed to be rooting for. However, she does things that I find to be unconscionable. First she gets a maid (Abilene) to write her column for her. First, she just asks for assistance, but we see later in the film that while Skeeter is working on the book, Abilene is writing her column. Am I supposed to be ok with that? Secondly, Skeeter is the only person who gets anything good out of her relationship with these maids. Skeeter gets what she wanted at the beginning...

After a couple of weeks of unsubstantiated rumors, it has been confirmed that the forthcoming film The Invention of Lying is indeed intended to satirize religion and religious believers. New York Post critic Kyle Smith has seen the film and describes it as “a full-on attack on religion in general and Christianity in particular. It might be the most blatantly, one-sidedly atheist movie ever released by a major studio, in this case Warner Bros.”

What hath Shariah wrought? by: Brittany Fortier, August 11, 2009 Some movies engage the mind or lift the spirit, but The Stoning Of Soraya M. touches the soul. The film tells the story of an Iranian village’s persecution of a woman named Soraya, who is falsely accused of adultery by her husband. Through the corruption of local village leaders, the husband is able to conspire against his wife by taking advantage of a system that is already rigged against her. When a journalist named Freidoune Sahebjam (Jim Cavesiel, The Passion of the Christ) comes to the village, an opportunity is...

Dramatic Debt by: Irene Warren, September 04, 2008 The film I.O.U.S.A. premiered in home-town theatres across America in August, but is now available online for viewing, makes no bones about it: America is in financial crisis. Director Patrick Creadon and Former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker and others make it perfectly clear: If we don’t do something soon, America could find itself shipwrecked and drowning in an ocean of debt. Creadon and Walker take you on a rollercoaster ride across the country, while explaining America’s fiscal policies and financial debt and how it could impact our personal pocketbooks right here,...

A VERY powerful review of United 93 from an unexpected source... Art can amuse or entertain or distract or educate or agitate or ennoble or debase. It can create fantasy worlds that seem as credible as the newspaper you're holding in your hands, or it can dig into the human unconscious and reveal the deepest, most unknowable of truths. It can do almost anything, art can, including -- for fleeting moments -- bringing the dead back to life. "United 93" is a film that attempts to fulfill that last and most miraculous of art's potentials. .... The result is by...

Review of A Distant Thunder Film takes a provocative look at the moral implications of partial-birth abortion December 14, 2005 RenewAmerica staff Disney producer Jonathan Flora's new film, A Distant Thunder, is a must-see for anyone interested in the subject of partial-birth abortion. Reminiscent of supernatural thrillers by M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Signs, The Village) and reflecting the best in cinematic courtroom and horror dramas, A Distant Thunder takes viewers through a maze of disturbing hints, twists, symbols, and flashbacks until at the end they are stunned and surprised at what they've been watching. With first-rate acting by...

Septem8er Tapes could best be described as Blair Witch in Afghanistan. Instead of hunting a mysterious evil spirit/cult in the woods, a small documentary film crew brave the dangers of Afghanistan in search of Osama Bin Laden. Much like The Blair Witch Project, the idea behind this film is that eight tapes were found in a cavern in the Afghanistan mountains and they were put together to create this fictional documentary. In the opening segments, or Tape 1, you are introduced to a man who lost too much on September 11th, so he decided to sell all his possessions and...