Celebrating criminals as heroes has been a longstanding Hollywood tradition, from 1931’s “The Public Enemy,” in which James Cagney played a Prohibition-era bootlegger, to the recent “Public Enemies,” starring Johnny Depp as famed bank robber John Dillinger.
What struck me as I watched this play out yet again is that it’s a narrative tradition the Bible [...]

“Madea Goes to Jail,” producer-writer-director-star Tyler Perry’s sixth feature film, came out on DVD this week, adding to one of the more remarkable and idiosyncratic careers in Hollywood.
Without the support of a major studio or the talent of big-time stars – and in the face of routinely negative reviews – Perry’s movies have been reliably, [...]

Are Christians any better off now that Hollywood is paying attention to us?
Since 2004’s surprisingly, wildly profitable “The Passion of the Christ,” major studios have been trying to court religious audiences – sometimes successfully (“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”), sometimes not (“The Nativity Story”).
Into this post-“Passion” landscape comes “Angels [...]

An interesting discussion emerged a few weeks ago on ThinkChristian regarding the value of redemptive characters in movies. (It was tied to the Seth Rogen raunch fest “Observe and Report.”)
Those of us who debated the worth of the movie were left wondering: If a despicable character fails to achieve redemption by a film’s end – [...]

I’ve found myself in the uncomfortable position of defending a movie littered with F-grade vulgarity, brutal “comic” violence and a climactic chase scene built around full frontal male nudity.
Many of you probably already know I’m referring to “Observe and Report,” a crass comedy about a deluded shopping mall security guard (Seth Rogen) on a deranged [...]

I sometimes find it amusing, and at other times rather irksome, the speed at which many Christians are able to pass negative judgment on secular art and culture; especially when these judgments are blatantly based more on a personal distaste than anything religious.  Often, I end up running into passionate by-the book-when-convenient Christians, who are [...]

I’ve been making my way through the “Star Trek” films in preparation for an upcoming reboot of the franchise (an eleventh movie comes out May 8). I was about to give up hope on the series – it’s been an exceedingly dull journey – until I came to “Star Trek V: The Final Frontier” and [...]

Christians like to think that our children learn what is right and wrong from Sunday school, church youth groups and other Biblically based activities, but could it be that secular movies are equally instructive for little minds?
I ask because Walt Disney’s “Pinocchio,” one of cinema’s classic, childhood morality plays, was recently reissued on DVD.
Released in [...]

“Watchmen” makes you wonder if no superhero movie is fit for Christian consumption.
It’s not because the movie itself is hopelessly immoral (though it does have its fair share of graphic violence and sexuality). Rather, “Watchmen” exposes the idolatry that one could argue is inherent in most superhero myths. These are movies, after all, in which [...]

What if the tempter in the Garden of Eden looked not like a serpent, but like your mom?
That’s essentially the dilemma facing the young title heroine of “Coraline,” a wonderfully inventive, stop-motion animated film based on a novella by Neil Gaiman. At heart this is a tale of temptation and deception, and while it may [...]