Category Archives: Movie Revies

Movie Review: Thor Ragnarok

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thor

A refreshing, humorous flick to break up a long line of darker films.

As you know, I can never resist a Marvel movie, and I’ve been pretty hyped up for this one for a while now. Loki is pretty much my favorite Marvel character, and I was excited for the film to further explore Asgard and the Nine Realms.

Make no mistake: This film is really good. The humor is on point, the visuals are stunning, and the acting and plot are enough to keep you interested even after you’ve run out of popcorn, but… I’m honestly beginning to question whether or not I’m getting a little… tired of Marvel movies. Even if that’s the case, it doesn’t mean I’ll stop watching them. These films are fantastic entertainment, and many even have hidden depths and messages to ponder and explore. But after 17 films (17 films?? Really? It honestly feels like more…) I’m wondering whether or not all the hype is really worth it. I can’t wait to see Infinity War, but I’ll also be glad when it’s over and all the loose ends are (hopefully) tied up. (Hahahahaha. Of course you know they won’t be. The MCU makes way, way too much money for it to ever really die.)

But enough chit-chat. Let’s talk about the film itself.

The first thing that really jumps out about Thor: Ragnarok is it’s humor. After a long line of serious Marvel films that dealt with some fairly real issues alongside their explosive action (Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: Civil War, etc.), this film feels more like a kind of slapstick, comedic fantasy romp than anything else. Filled with visually stunning landscapes, spaceships, epic battles, and hilarious one-liners, it is a very new, fresh take on Thor that I didn’t really expect. Everything from the colorful, eye-catching poster to the goofy title font to Thor’s new hairstyle bill this film as a completely different, more comedic spin on these normally serious Marvel characters, and I honestly really enjoyed it.

While the film does dole out some important story points and lore for the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe, it is nicely self-contained and adventurous enough to introduce a whole cast of new characters to play off of our old heroes; Thor, Loki, and the Hulk. The pacing is good, and the film doesn’t get bogged down in backstory, even though it introduces a massive new player, the villain Hela (fantastically played by Cate Blanchett), who of course comes with her own tragic past and motivations. Unlike the villain of the previous Thor film (whose name I can’t even remember, he was that forgettable) Hela carries a real threat and her presence had me questioning whether or not all the heroes would actually survive. I love that the writers weren’t afraid to raise the stakes by completely and irreversibly destroying Thor’s hammer, his greatest weapon, putting it out of play in the MCU forever. It felt like a very bold move, and definitely added weight to Hela’s threat against the heroes.

All in all, this film was fun, visually stunning, and a considerably lighter take on Thor and his friends that I really enjoyed. Am I going to watch it again as soon as it comes out? I don’t know. To be honest, probably not. But I can say that I can’t wait until this quest for the Infinity Stones is finally over.

Final Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

“Refreshing. Funny. But it doesn’t change the fact that we’ve sat through 17 movies at this point.”

I hope you enjoyed my review of Thor: Ragnarok! I’ll see you again soon.

🙂

Netflix Review: The Flash (Seasons 1-3)

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the-flash-192898DC triumphs on the small screen.

Believe it or not, I used to hate superheroes. My dad has been a big superhero fan for ages, but whenever he would talk about the latest Captain America movie or Spiderman film, I would always roll my eyes. Finally, however, he managed to get me into Marvel with the Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes animated TV show, and from there I went on to watch the films and become the massive Marvel geek you know today.

I never thought I’d get into DC. Marvel heroes were at least slightly believable, and had developed personalities and quirks and flaws that I found extremely interesting. The DC heroes, on the other hand, looked like mere cardboard cutouts, without any personality at all.

I did watch Batman Begins (and enjoyed it thoroughly), but I thought at the time that that would be the end of my interest in DC. But then, I discovered The Flash. Or, well, my dad discovered it, and watched it, and liked it, and said I should watch it too, so I did…

First things first: his show is a geek’s dream come true! There are tons of nerdy references, a delectable ammount of science (fiction) and Cisco Ramone, who will probably forever be my geek hero.

For the sake of clarity, I will do the rest of the review season by season, so that I can say what I liked about each season, and what I didn’t enjoy so much…

Season 1: Great plot, poor acting

The plot of Season 1 is masterfully written, complete with nods to the original comics, an overarching storyline that keeps you watching, and lots of twists and turns and surprises along the way. The acting, however, was not so top notch. Except for the brilliantly acted Harrison Wells (Tom Cavanagh), who really held the show together, the acting in the first few episodes was fairly cringe-worthy at times, and a bit stiff at others. Even the show’s star, Grant Gustin, didn’t quite seem to be in his element. The acting improved drastically as the season went on, however, and this season is definitely worth watching, if only for the amazing and exciting plot.

Season 2: Great acting, iffy plot

Season 2 seemed to have the opposite problem: The acting was very good, and I felt like all the actors had begun to really know and understand and play off each other very well, but the plot was significantly weaker, nowhere near as compelling as the first season. The introduction of more time travel and parallel universes was very interesting, but the use of another speedster as the main villain felt a bit like recycling the original plot. That said, this season was still really enjoyable (i.e. don’t skip it!) and I really liked all the stuff with parallel universes.

Season 3: Great acting, great plot, great show!

In Season 3, it really felt as if The Flash has finally found it’s feet: a tense, compelling plot, great acting and character development, the introduction of some awesome new characters… it was amazing! Even though the main villain was, once again, a speedster, I felt like the way he was portrayed was fresh and different enough for the Season to hold its own. However, I’m really hoping that they find a completely different type of villain for Season 4. The cliffhanger at the end of this season is also extremely unfair and I was almost crying; that’s how good it is!

Final rating: 4 out of 5 stars

“Took them a while to really find their feet, but, then again, it’s not a BBC show, so we’ll cut them some slack.”

Content note: The show is rated as TV-PG, and it was fairly clean (not a lot of swearing or immoral references), but I would still advise some caution. At one point, a character does get very drunk, and there are also characters who are dating that living together throughout the story. It really annoys me when it is assumed that as soon as people start dating they are supposed to move in together. However, there was very little else of concern. I would say probably ages 14 and up.

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed my review. Have you seen The Flash? Whose your favorite character? (Mine are Cisco and Harrison Wells). Do you like DC or Marvel, or both??? Let me know in the comments!

🙂

Movie Review: Cars 3

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Cars 3Sweet, but lacking the heart of its predecessor.

I never actually meant to see this movie. I expected it to be rather awful, considering the bizarre mess that was Cars 2. (Interestingly enough, I originally enjoyed Cars 2 back when I first saw it, but I was a small, deluded child at the time, so… never mind.) But then Cars 3 turned out to be playing in our local theater, and my dad decided to take me and my brothers on a Saturday afternoon.

I had actually seen several of my Twitter friends saying that this movie was (surprisingly) good, so I was pleasantly surprised and pleased to find out that they were right! Unfortunately, while being enjoyable and sweet, the plot of Cars 3 is a little predictable, and I just found it lacking in the emotional connection of the first Cars film. I really feel that if Pixar had just concentrated their energies on making this movie instead of the crazy second Cars, it might have turned out even better. As it stands, this movie is fun, but rather forgettable in the end, and, ultimately, just one more sequel in a long line of sequels that don’t quite live up to the original.

Final rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

“I think it’s sequel fatigue, unfortunately. Nice, but forgettable.”

Thank you for reading my little review. See you next time!

🙂

Netflix Review: BBC’s Sherlock (Seasons 1-4)

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250px-Sherlock_titlecardThis review is really, really late. It was pretty difficult formulating all my thoughts and feelings about this show into a single post, but I’ve done my best, and I hope you enjoy this review! WARNING: There may be a couple of spoilers in the review below, so please proceed with caution!

You’ve probably heard of Sherlock, even if you’ve never seen it. It’s one of the ‘big three’ fandoms: Supernatural, Doctor Who, and, of course, Sherlock. The series has its ups and downs throughout the seasons, despite having only three episodes per season and only four seasons to speak of, but I’ll do my review season by season in order to capture my feelings about this show as accurately as I can.

Season 1: The Brilliant Beginning

Sherlock begins, first and foremost, as a retelling of Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes stories, set in modern London. The very first episode captures an updated version of the story that started it all, A Study in Scarlet, deftly introducing us to John Watson (played by Martin Freeman, of Hobbit infamy), a retired army doctor with a limp and a taste for danger, and the brilliant, quirky Sherlock Holmes (Benedict Cumberbatch of Tumblr fame). I love how John and Sherlock play off each other; practical, unassuming John and wild, unpredictable Sherlock, thrust together as flatmates on the hunt for a murderer. It is, in all honesty, their friendship that really makes the show.

Season 1 really got me hooked on Sherlock, especially with it’s diabolical cliffhanger ending, wonderful acting and production, and quintessential British flare that takes you direct to the heart of London. In retrospect, this season is so much lighter and funnier than many of the later ones, even though there is the dark undercurrent of Moriarty’s schemes to contend with. But it feels like just a fun show about two unlikely flatmates, one of whom happens to be a detective. Not so with Season 2.

Season 2: The Famous Fall

First of all, let’s get one thing out of the way: I only watched two episodes of this season. While I did watch the beginning minutes of the first episode in order to find out how our heroes extricated themselves from the Season 1 cliffhanger, I never watched the rest. This episode, “A Scandal in Belgravia”, while a fan favorite, contains a fair amount of nudity, and that was not something I was very interested in watching. The other two episodes, however, more than made up for this. Episode 2 is a modern adaptation of the famous Hound of the Baskervilles story. I read the original at a young age, dispute my mother’s warnings that it was super creepy, and thoroughly enjoyed it, and I liked this episode as well.

But it is the third episode,”The Reichenbach Fall”, which really takes the cake. To me, it is the height of this show’s brilliance, the best episode of the whole lot. Tense, exciting, with high emotional stakes and an all-to-literal cliffhanger ending that nearly had me in tears, this was the point where the show peaked. It would have been extraordinarily hard to match this grand display of writing, acting, and production skills (the editing is flawless, as always), and, in my opinion, the rest of the show was unable to surpass this episode.

Season 3: The Mediocre Middle

A lot of people love Season 3, and I can understand why. But the fact remains that I simply did not enjoy it nearly as much as I did the previous seasons. It is at this point, to me, that the series begins to go off the rails; what began as a modern adaptation suddenly became more of it’s own entity, it’s own interpretation laced with vastly different story lines and characters. Many fans have remarked that it feels a little bit like fanfiction, and I agree, but I don’t think that this is a good thing. There are some pieces of fanfiction that are so good they come up to the level of, or surpass, the original source material (*cough, cough* Blue Sky *cough, cough*). But that’s just what they are: fanfiction. When the creators of the show start writing their own show like fanfiction, catering a little too much to the fans and making things a little bit too silly or unbelievable, that’s where things go wrong.

Season 3 of Sherlock simply felt like a different show, and not the show I’d signed up to watch. There were moments of it that I did enjoy, of course, but the entire thing seemed a little off. I didn’t like the direction that they took it, but of course this is just my own gut reaction. It was well produced, well acted, and the plot was certainly well written. It just didn’t sit quite right with me.

Season 4: The Fiendish Finale?

No matter my thoughts about Season 3, I was extraordinarily excited when I heard that Season 4 of Sherlock would soon be coming to Netflix. I actually invited my best friend (another Sherlock fan)  over and we ate snacks and watched all 4.5 hours of Season 4 all the way through in one spectacular evening. (Small note: I actually ended up doing a bit of live tweeting during this event. You can find my hilarious commentary collected here.)

Again, Season 4 felt like a much different show from the first two seasons. It was a lot darker, and there was a ton of people hallucinating, to the point that sometimes I wasn’t sure what exactly was going on in the real world, and what was just hallucinations. But it was epic in a way that the first two seasons couldn’t really match, not even “The Reichenbach Fall”. It was also extremely brutal, as relationships and characters I’d come to know and love were picked apart by the writers.

Fans will probably hate me for saying this, and it is a bit of a spoiler, but I feel like the ending was really the ending. The story seems to have been sufficiently wrapped up, and I think to do any more seasons would be forced. It was a long journey, and sometimes a hard one, because the writers insist on doing every awful thing they can thick of to your favorite characters, but in the end I think I enjoyed it very much. I might have to go back at some point and watch it all again.

Final Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

“Top notch! A first rate show. But you do realize that you’re actually the writers, not the fans, right?”

Content note: This show is definitely not for children. Besides a bit of violence and language, there is a fair amount of innuendo (not to mention that whole “Scandal in Belgravia” bit), including tons of people who mistake Sherlock and John for a gay couple, and stuff like that. It’s not rated TV-14 for no reason!

Thank you so much for reading my review! Have you seen Sherlock? Do you have a favorite season or episode? Do you have a least favorite? Chat with me in the comments below!

🙂

Movie Review: The Lego Batman Movie

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Batman!Every hero needs a good old-fashioned villain…

I have to admit that I was less than thrilled when I heard that this movie was in the works. I am not a big fan of The Lego Movie, definitely not after my brothers watched it eight million times and sang the song (The Song That Must Not Be Named For the Sake of Our Sanity) at every opportunity. So when I was asked if I wanted to go to the theater to see The Lego Batman Movie, I politely gave it a pass and then regretted that action later.

My brothers came home giggling and quoting the movie (“No spoilers!” I snapped, because I am a person of principal). Apparently it was pretty good. I’m not really a DC person, but I saw people online really loving on this film, and I’ve seen Batman Begins, and (more recently) have been binge-watching The Flash on Netflix, so I thought, “Why not. I’ll give it a shot when it comes out on DVD, or whatever the cool kids are watching new movies on these days (Amazon Instant Video? Hulu? What?)”

Which, as you can see, is just what ended up happening.

The Lego Batman Movie is not mindblowingly amazing. It’s cute. It’s funny. It’s a kid’s movie with (surprisingly enough) a lot of heart, and a lot of laughs, and a lot of in-jokes to longtime Batman fans, most of which I’m sure I did not catch or fully appreciate. It’s the story of Batman, a hero with no family who only works alone, and his unlikely adoption of a young boy sidekick called Robin, and how they save the world. Pretty straightforward, but there’s also this extraordinarily (to my mind) hilarious side story with the Joker, who only want’s Batman to acknowledge him as his ‘very worst enemy’. Joker goes to all the trouble to try and destroy Gotham (*GASP* huge spoiler, I know) in order to get Batman to admit his true feelings say “I hate you” to him. It’s wonderfully funny, but you’ll have to watch the movie yourself to appreciate this story arc fully.

In the end, I think I’ll give Lego a thumbs up on this one. No aggravatingly catchy and annoying songs, and a heartfelt story about letting friends and family into your life? Count me in!

Final rating: 4 out of 5 stars

“I’M BATMAN!!!!”

Content note: This is a kids movie, which means (at least in this crazy world of ours) that there is bound to be at least a little crude (bathroom) humor in the film. Crude humor like this really ticks me off, and although there was certainly far less in this film than in other ‘kids’ movies I’ve seen, I just thought I should let you know that it is there.

Thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed my review. Have you seen The Lego Batman Movie? What did you think? Did you enjoy it, or did you like the original Lego Movie better? Let me know in the comments!

🙂

Movie Review: Beauty and the Beast (2017)

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Beauty and the BeastControversy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be…

When I heard that Disney was going to be doing a live action Beauty and the Beast film, I was, of course, extraordinarily excited. Although I’ve only seen the animated film once, and I’m not a huge fan of Disney Princess movies anyway, I loved the 2015 Cinderella film, which was absolutely brilliant. So, of course, I was on the edge of my seat to see if Disney could pull it off again.

And then I heard about the controversy. I’d been planning to spend some time with a couple of my friends from church and go to see the movie together, but what I heard made me hesitate. Beauty and the Beast, according to its director, contains Disney’s first gay character. Of course, controversy immediately exploded. Many Christian families decided to boycott the movie. Disney had betrayed them, they said. They were politicizing a supposedly family film, they said, making it into just another part of the normalization agenda. In part, having seen the film with my eyes open for said agenda, I have to agree.

Partially, at least.

But, here’s the thing: If nobody had said anything, I think all the ‘exclusive gay moment’ and LGBT innuendo stuff, if that’s what its intended to be, would have been, for the most part, lost on the majority of the audience. Even the ‘cross-dressing joke’ comes off as more silly and goofy than as a real statement. The only real thing I had any problems with was the final grand ballroom dance scene, which closes the film, where Le Fou, the supposedly gay character, is shown dancing with a male partner, while everyone else is paired off male-and-female. The thing is, the shot is literally about two seconds long, and if this one two second shot was removed, and if nobody had made a big deal about this, I feel like the rest of the stuff would have come off as more of the silliness of a couple of bumbling characters.

Anyway, that’s my say on the controversy. What did I think of the actual film?

Well, to be honest, on the surface this is an amazing movie. Spectacular CGI, costumes, choreography, and singing make Beauty and the Beast a feast for the eyes and ears. But… I felt it lacked the strong storytelling of Cinderella. Don’t get me wrong, I got a bit choked up when Belle rode off from the Beast’s castle to rescue her father, and maybe at a few other points as well, but it was almost as if most of what we knew about these characters had just been told to us, instead of shown. The Beast’s flip from angry captor to smitten suitor seemed to happen far too quickly. In the end, the film just didn’t resonate with me like Cinderella did, even though I probably have much more in common with Belle than with Cinderella herself. A+ for effort Disney, but, unfortunately, you just didn’t quite hit the mark.

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

“Are modern takes on tales as old as time ever quite as good as the old versions?”

Thanks for reading! See you again soon for Wednesday with Words.

🙂

 

Netflix Review: A Series of Unfortunate Events (Season 1)

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Come on, Netflix, let this get another season! Or two…

I loved watching the 2004 Jim Carrey Series of Unfortunate Events film almost as much as I enjoyed reading the books, so when I heard that Netflix was doing a remake (of sorts) you can imagine my trepidation. Would they get it right, the tone, the humor, the casting, the sets? Would it be as good as the movie? Would they do (gasp!) the rest of the story?

And now, the verdict is in: The tone is good, the humor is good (some parts had me laughing out loud, and I was watching this late in the evening when other people were asleep…), the casting is good, the sets are spectacular. But there are two things I had trouble with: It’s not steampunk, and it’s not British.

<Cue ridiculous rant that has very little to do with my final thoughts about the show>

The first six episode of the eight episode season are, basically, a restatement of the Jim Carrey film. This is to be expected, of course, as the show is an entirely new undertaking, and does not pick up where the film left off, at the end of the third book in the series. Although there was plenty of extra details and scenes from the books which had not been included in the 2004 film, I was rather amused when some of the shots used in the episodes were composed in exactly the same way as shots from the film. This was probably a nice homage to the Jim Carrey film, but still a little bit odd and jarring, at least to someone who notices such things, like me. Other, normal people probably won’t care at all.

In fact, I’m sure they won’t.

#filmstudentproblems

Another thing that struck me was the casting. The acting is brilliant and well done, even the children and extras (and don’t get me started on the fact that the new Violet Baudelaire looks a lot like actress Emily Browning from the film). But nobody, I repeat, nobody had a British accent, not even Lemony Snicket who, while played  in a wonderfully deadpan manner by Patrick Warburton (who I am sure I must have seen in some other movie), began to annoy me with his non-British-ness. In the original film, Lemony had been portrayed as a mysterious British guy, always shown in silhouette, which was exactly right, and I had enjoyed his narration of parts of the movie. While Patrick Warburton’s narration was humorous and reminiscent of passages from the book, I found it to be slightly overused. And, for one thing, he’s definitely American. For another, I felt a bit cheated that he was just shown to us right away, without the mystery of the original film. Yes, there is mystery in the show (I, for one, am wondering what exactly they plan to do with the VFD) but in the film there had always been a sense of ‘Who is this mysterious narrator? Why doesn’t he show his face? Who is he hiding from?’ Patrick Warburton’s Snicket does not appear to be hiding from anyone.

And, about the steampunk…

The books had always struck me as being very British, as had the film, which also exuded an air of delightfully witty and whimsical steampunk. The show is not steampunk. It has been called steampunk, but probably by rather misinformed people. It is not steampunk. It is trying very, very hard to be steampunk, but it’s just not.

<End ridiculous rant>

By now, you probably think that I hate the show, and are wondering why I said I hope that it gets a second or third season. But I don’t hate the show. Netflix took a chance and revived an old story that, as far as I know, has kind become a little bit of a cult classic. And the result is very good. The casting, despite not being British in any way, shape or form, is amazing. I think I might even like Neil Patrick Harris’s performance as Count Olaf a bit more than Jim Carrey’s! It’s not steampunk. It’s definitely not. But it brings the world of the Baudelaires to life in a very new way. I think newcomers to the story, and old fans alike, will very much enjoy Netflix’s version

As I said, there are eight episodes in this season. And while the first six cover fairly old ground in a sort of remake of the Jim Carrey film, in the last two we get to see book four, The Miserable Mill, brought to the screen for the first time ever! Let me tell you, I was very excited for this. Yes, we’ve seen the first three books before, but the show and the film do a fairly equal job with them, so you can take your pick. But they did the fourth book. And then they left it on a cliffhanger! And, maybe, we’ll be getting a few more seasons!

I would love to see the rest of the story told on screen. It had always annoyed me that there was only ever one Jim Carrey film… Come on, Netflix, make it happen!

Final Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

“Good, well made, funny, but not enough British-ness or steampunkary!”

(Can you tell I have a problem???)

Heeey, did you know you can grab a free ebook copy of my historical fiction short story ‘Miss’ on instafreebie.com? Click here to check it out.

Movie Review: The River Thief

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I love everything N. D. Wilson. I’ve read all of his fiction books. So when I heard he was making a movie, I was (of course) super excited. THE RIVER THIEF does not disappoint. With beautiful, sweeping cinematography, well crafted and acted characters, and a story that packs a powerful punch, there’s nothing more I could ask from N. D. Wilson’s screen debut.

THE RIVER THIEF follows the story of Diz, a homeless, parent-less kid who takes what he likes when he wants it. He’s following a river through the countryside to find the town where his father is supposed to be. He doesn’t know whether he wants to meet his father or kill him, but when he crosses paths with a girl named Selah and her grandfather, his entire life changes.

I love how beautifully this film is shot. The sweeping landscape shots take my breath away, and the action is tight and controlled. No excessive shaky cam here! The acting is also very good. The film is actually a bit more mature than I expected. There is a fair amount of violence and some cussing, as well as some slight innuendo (a rather crazy, protective woman accuses a man of ‘touching her son inappropriately’. The man does nothing more than grab the boy by the collar, mistaking him for someone else. Also a girl says that she ‘can’t be bought and she isn’t a whore’ after a boy gives her a bunch of gifts trying to get her attention.) I’d give it a PG-13 rating.

The story is very powerful and emotional, and I caught myself getting a bit choked up at the end! Overall, I am blown away. This is unlike any Christian film I have ever seen. A wonderful movie for teens and adults alike. Five Stars!

Magic. Mysticism. Message? Exposing the Christian Imagery of Doctor Strange

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I’ll make no secret of it: I am a die-hard Marvel Cinematic Universe fan. So when Movieguide gave Marvel’s latest flick, Doctor Strange, a negative four in their review (which, in Movieguide-speak equals irredeemably bad/un-Christian) I had to raise an eyebrow. Movieguide is an amazing service, rating movies based not only on their quality but their morality. When you’re trying to be a discerning Christian moviegoer, this is super helpful. But sometimes, especially when looking at worldview, they can go a bit too far. This happened to me once before with a film called Tomorrow Land, which I ended up loving for precisely the reasons that Movieguide condemned it (I know that sounds strange, but it’s true. Read more about that in part of this post here). So my dad and I went to see the Doctor anyway, deciding to take it with a grain of salt.

I was completely shocked by this film, and for all the right reasons. Stunning visuals, a strong story, powerful acting, and, surprisingly enough, wonderful Christian imagery that Movieguide seems to have missed entirely. It’s time to look beneath the magic and discover some of the real messages of Doctor Strange. WARNING: Lots and lots of spoilers ahead. If you haven’t watched the movie, I recommend you go do that before continuing. It’ll be worth it. Hopefully. If I do my job right.

Doctor Steven Strange is an arrogant, wealthy neurosurgeon with more fancy watches than are really necessary and a penthouse apartment that Tony Stark would be proud of. When his hands are rendered almost useless by a horrible car accident, he loses the center of his life and everything he does: his career. He tries everything possible to get the use of his hands back, but every one of his seven procedures fail. He is left completely hopeless, until he discovers a man who was permanently paralyzed, and then suddenly was able to walk again. Steven follows the man’s clues to a strange building in Nepal, where he meets the Ancient One, a woman who has the power to bend time and space, and stay young for thousands of years. Steven must humble himself and learn these powers to ultimately confront Dormammu, a Satan-like being who seeks to conquer the multiverse and torture its inhabitants forever.

There is a strand of humility running through this entire movie, and it’s something I picked up on right away. While Movieguide touched on it very briefly, I see this idea as a very central one to the story, and to the message. Steven Strange starts off as an extraordinarily self-centered man. His greatest pride is his perfect track record. He won’t take a case if its ‘not treatable’, or the procedure will certainly fail. He would never do anything to ruin his reputation. He is the opposite of humble. But the injury of his hands pulls him down from his high tower. Suddenly, he can do nothing. He has lost his career, which meant everything to him. He has become obsolete. At first he tries every procedure he can, grasping for anything which might return him to his previous life. But nothing can help him.

That is, until he meets the Ancient One. Life has tried to bring him low, but he is still holding on to his pride. It is all he has. The Ancient One sees this, and knows he must become humbler still before she can help him.

Humility is despised in our culture. It is often connected with a Uriah Heap-like attitude, where we are ‘umble, sir, so very ‘umble, and pretend that we are worthless and grovel and scrape before everyone else in a way which only brings more attention to us. This kind of humility is a breed of egotism: we are worse than everyone else, and therefore better for admitting it, and we are the center of attention with all our bowing and scraping and ‘umbleness. The Christian kind of humility is a recognition that we are not in control, that we are not little gods. Steven Strange has an unconscious idea that he is the little god of his world, that he could, if he tried, really do anything. But he is pulled out of that fanciful throne by real life, and the brought lower still, until he is willing to sacrifice himself for the good of the world because he knows that he is not, and never was, the real Number One.

It is this sacrifice which reveals itself to me as true Christian imagery, as Steven confronts Dormammu, really something like the Devil, and just as terrifying and ruthless, and offers himself over and over to keep this monster from destroying the world. He wins in the end, of course, but he has undergone a great journey to come to the point where he ever could win. The Steven Strange at the beginning of the movie could not have defeated this Devil, not even with all the relics and magic in the world. He needed to be humble, and to be willing to sacrifice himself, to beat the bad guy.

Jesus was the most humble of all. He was God, but sank to the level of man and sacrificed himself to defeat the Devil. Yes, there is the magic and the mystical and the fantastical, but there is a parallel between Jesus’ story and that of Steven Strange, if I may say so without offending anyone’s sensibilities. And not only that, but Steven Strange also reflects the Christian life: we must be brought low and made humble in order to accept Jesus’ great gift to us. When we think we are on top of the world, we are sure that we need nothing but ourselves. But something, anything, may bring us to the realization that we are in need of something else.

I think that sometimes we do not look at the subtext. Doctor Strange is not a perfect film. There is not and never will be a ‘perfect’ film. It’s fun, fascinating, hilarious, magical. It’s got all the fantasy trimmings and beautiful images and tense plot that make a film fun to watch. It is not a precise, perfect allegory for the entire story of Jesus, or the entire Christian life. But last time I checked, no one said it had to be.

Movie Review: Finding Dory

Posted on by under Movie Revies

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…

Why is it a thing that whenever Pixar makes a new movie, the trailer is always really stupid and the movie is (usually) pretty good? When I first saw the trailer for Pixar’s latest film, Finding Dory, all I could think was, ‘Ugh. That looks so dumb.’ I mean, Pixar seems to have decided to make a whole bunch of sequels to films that were made a really long time ago. I mean, its been almost fourteen years since Finding Nemo came out. Fourteen years? Wow, that makes me feel old…

I was perfectly fine to ignore this movie and not go, but Movieguide.org came out with a review, praising it as “the best family film in several years”, and my dad was already taking my siblings to see it, so I decided to tag along and find out if Finding Dory really warranted this lofty praise. I must say that Pixar certainly hasn’t gotten any worse at telling a good story and although there was some questions about the film featuring a lesbian couple (due to a shot in the trailer which seemed to connect two women with one baby carriage) the moment in the film is so insignificant that I’m not even sure how people could have made anything out of it. Finding Dory is certainly family friendly, unlike some other ‘kids’ movies released recently (cough, cough, the Angry Birds Movie, cough, cough), but I don’t really think it quite lives up to its predecessor. The story just isn’t as powerful as Finding Nemo. However, there are interesting new characters and laughter galore, and I’m happy to say that, although its something I’d probably only watch once, it is a fun, wonderful film fit for the entire family.