http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5lSu6GkC2k
^trailer makes it out to be more of an action movie than it is and gives away the obvious ending to boot.
Even among lovers of bad movies, christian movies aren't very popular. It's not because popular / crappy / taste ruined by basic cable movie fans are particularly liberal either. The perception, accurate, is that they stink, like really stink. Also, they're preachy which goes against the most basic impulse of a viewer to see something escapist and fun, even those who prefer 4 star fare. It's just neither here nor there in many ways in terms of the movie marketplace. Can a great Christian movie be made? I certainly haven't seen one. I do enjoy them on occasion though. In some cases for their innocence (The First Stone ) in other cases for their jaw droppingly bad filmaking (C me Dance) or some combination thereof (Pamela's Prayer).
Fireproof. Make your marriage Fireproof for the lord. or something. Kirk Cameron is very poorly cast as a firefighter. He looks like a butch lesbian, sorry. There's being typecast and then theres just not being appropriate for a role. The other guys were much closer to the mark (fat and shlubby). His marriage is on the rocks. They totally over do this. They don't touch each other once, or sleep in the same room or eat one meal together. The marriage seems more like it's way over than on the rocks. Kirk's Dick Cheney look alike father sees this and gives him a stupid book of little things to do every day to bring their marriage back from the devil.
This is one of the good elements of the movie: the book stuff doesn't mend the marriage right away and there is actually some tension. There is also some decent, if not actually funny, attempts at comedy relief with the rodeo clown ish guy at the firehouse and a motif with the neighbors who always see him freaking out. I also liked some of the stuff with the firefighters doing rescues and stuff. It's a little perilous to be happening all at once in his one horse town but it was good. They should have had the jaws of life though!
You can hear Kirk Cameron kind of saying "hey, we're trying". It's not really good enough though. At nearly two hours its long and while it's moderately entertaining it's an ordeal to get through. As I've mentioned before: with Christian movies, when you get annoyed with them you start saying horrible things and that was in full effect here. like I was hoping his wife would bring her new love interest to the great fire and say "stay in there a***ole," and stuff like that. "Dr. Fat Ass here buys me things, I don't need you DIE".
3/5 approach with caution.
Thanks for a non-moronic review of a Christian movie. Actually, that was a GOOD review. I say it this way because of all the people who give these movies positive reviews entirely because of their Christian themes. The same issue arises with Christian video games, almost all of which are terrible as well and still get high marks from "Christian reviewer" people. I have yet to see a recent "Christian" movie I thought was any good (admittedly, I've never watched an entire film of them except The Omega Code - just seen pretty bad pieces on television while flipping channels).
On the plus side, there is actually a decent Christian video game - Spiritual Warfare, a blatant Zelda ripoff for the NES, is actually decent from what I remember. I'm not aware of any good Christian films though. I will say I think it'd be extremely difficult to make a specifically Christian game good - though there's a TON of unused potential for good Old Testament-derived games.
While they're not exactly Christian movies in the modern sense (where that is the entire point) I think if you looked at some older Hollywood films you could probably find some good ones with strong Christian themes in them. How about Ben-Hur?
thanks. Yeah "The Greatest Story Ever Told" and "King of Kings" and other movies were kind of in there with the Swords and Sandals epics.
I forgot to mention the acting and the writing was mostly terrible, but it's kind of implied in the review.
Am I the ONLY one on here who thought THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
was magnificent?
Quote from: indianasmith on February 18, 2011, 08:24:59 PM
Am I the ONLY one on here who thought THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
was magnificent?
I still have yet to see The Passion, but two of my friends, both of which are atheists, actually really liked it.
I had an opportunity once to watch Fireproof, but opted out because it sounds corny. My wife got an invite on Facebook. I think the convo went like this.
"Hey, [a married couple we're freinds with] is inviting us to watch Fireproof at-"
"Hell no!"
"Is it a really bad movie or something?"
"It's got Kirk Cameron in it."
"Oh, f**k that."
As far as Christian movies go, my absolute favorite is DeMille's The Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments is hard to beat, that's true.
I also liked the animated movie PRINCE OF EGYPT - it had some excellent music, especially the duet number "Is This What You Wanted?" between Moses and Pharaoah.
I guess I should have been more specific but I meant Christian movies as the equivalent to Christian rock. Born Again Christian movies. Stuff like Huston's "The Bible" or Passion of the Christ can't fairly be put in that category.
Hey now . . . as a lifelong Petra fan, I must say - DON'T TRASH CHRISTIAN ROCK!!! :teddyr:
A Christian themed movie that has always stayed with me is the film Joni about the life of the lady I like to call "God's Wheelchair Warrior", Joni Eareckson-Tada. Good film about a very sobering subject: paralysis at a young age ~ she broke her neck in a diving accident ~ and her struggle to come to terms with the fact that she will never walk again.
Even to an old cynic like me, Ms Tada is an inspirational person, an artist, an actor, a singer, a minister, an activist: wow. :cheers:
Quote from: Joe the Destroyer on February 18, 2011, 11:38:59 PM
Quote from: indianasmith on February 18, 2011, 08:24:59 PM
Am I the ONLY one on here who thought THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
was magnificent?
think the convo went like this.
"Hey, [a married couple we're freinds with] is inviting us to watch Fireproof at-"
"Hell no!"
"Is it a really bad movie or something?"
"It's got Kirk Cameron in it."
"Oh, f**k that."
:teddyr: :teddyr: :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle:
What disturbs me a little about
The Passion Of The Christ is the fact that Satan was played by a woman. What was the story with that? :question:
Quote from: Trevor on February 22, 2011, 05:10:30 AM
Quote from: Joe the Destroyer on February 18, 2011, 11:38:59 PM
Quote from: indianasmith on February 18, 2011, 08:24:59 PM
Am I the ONLY one on here who thought THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
was magnificent?
think the convo went like this.
"Hey, [a married couple we're freinds with] is inviting us to watch Fireproof at-"
"Hell no!"
"Is it a really bad movie or something?"
"It's got Kirk Cameron in it."
"Oh, f**k that."
:teddyr: :teddyr: :bouncegiggle: :bouncegiggle:
What disturbs me a little about The Passion Of The Christ is the fact that Satan was played by a woman. What was the story with that? :question:
Well, it was directed by Mel Gibson. I'm sure being as he's not a woman he's probably got a beef with them.
I think that Satan was deliberately played as a very androgynous being to point out that the tempter can take many, many forms.
The charge of anti-Semitism in the movie has always puzzled me a bit. Gibson followed the text of the Gospels pretty much to the letters. All the Gospels, except Luke, were written by First Century Jews. And all of them say that it was the Jewish religious leaders who plotted to kill Jesus, and a Jewish mob that jeered at him during his trial and execution. Josephus, a Jewish historian, confirmed this in his own history of the time.
So why take the man to task for following the earliest, best testimony as to what really happened?
Quote from: indianasmith on February 23, 2011, 12:00:07 AM
I think that Satan was deliberately played as a very androgynous being to point out that the tempter can take many, many forms.
Thanks for that. :thumbup:
There is one scene in this film that made me go Oops ~ where Jesus' mother calls "Yeshua! Yeshua!" and the first words out of my mouth were "Who the hell is she speaking to?" and then I realized "Ooops......she's speaking to Him."
What makes me most sad is that born agains are happy to spunk thousands of dollars into making truly awful films when there are plenty of decent film makers out there dying on getting a chance to make something decent. Moreover, there are plenty of awful film makers looking for a few cents to make their epic which will turn out to be the next bad movie favourite.
The humanity.
Fireproof was saccharine and horrid, horrid, horrid. My wife and I (we are Christian) both thought it was horrid.
I didn't like the movie for much the reason I don't like most of the 80's Christian music my friends listened to -- poorly executed, cheesy, bad, ham-handed.
The message was good. The delivery was bad.
I have a copy of Passion but haven't watched it yet; I haven't quite worked up to it. But good friends have told me it is very well done.