Movie, book, and TV show reviews with critical thinking for Christians
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Footloose (2011) earns its PG-13 rating. There is violence and sexually suggestive behavior, lots of bare skin, drugs and drinking, and a lot of foul language. The movie also shows rebellious behavior on the part of teens, and teens back talking adults.
Is it about football, Christian charity, booster loyalty, or just plain greed? Is this story a Christian parable, an insult to Christianity, or worse, a tragedy of how a black man was exploited by wealthy white Republicans? Eve Franklin explores prominent spiritual themes in the book The Blind Side (made into a 2009 movie by [...]
Reciting from the book of Job, playing “Oh Happy Day,” and employing double meanings to the word “race,” Secretariat attempts to be much more than a predictable movie about a housewife with guts and a very special racehorse. In some ways it even succeeds. Eve Franklin previewed Secretariat and shares her critical thinking. Read the [...]
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We’ve returned to the studio to record the second part of our discussion on the action-packed, sci fi thriller, I, Robot. (Though actually we never left the studio after recording the first discussion. If you sent us feedback after hearing the first part of this discussion, we’ll be sure to discuss in some future episode, [...]
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It’s been a while since we’ve posted a regular episode, but we hope you’ve enjoyed our long run of Initial Reaction episodes this summer. We bring you a critical-thinking discussion on the action-paced, science fiction thriller, I, Robot. Not based on the critically-acclaimed robot stories by Isaac Asimov (as the title would suggest), I, Robot [...]
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Our roving cohost, Chris Jones, joins Eve Franklin in the studio, without Daniel Lewis, to discuss the highly anticipated (at least by a high percentage of the female population) sequel to Twilight and New Moon: Eclipse.
Perhaps the easiest spiritual analogy to draw from the The Twilight Saga is the concept of eternal love. Throughout the four-book story from Bella’s almost continuous perspective, Bella shows how completely unworthy she feels of Edward’s love.
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The movie edition of Stephenie Meyer’s second book in the Twilight Saga, New Moon, raises issues on growing old, damnation, souls, and trusting people.
There are some brief spiritual gems in Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga that caught my eye. One of them was a quick statement in Breaking Dawn that opened up a spiritual parallel that has a subtle strength throughout the series—that of members making up a body that needs a definite head. There are good examples of spiritual leaders throughout this saga both on the werewolf side of things and on the vampire side.
Another spiritual gem that is quite obvious is the parallel of the vampire with spiritually dead man. Meyer presents vampires as walking, talking corpses, which makes an interesting picture of the spiritual condition of unregenerate man.
There are a couple things that I really appreciate about the underlying worldview that Meyer’s reveals in her storytelling. First off, through her character Edward, she demonstrates marriage as a lasting and true commitment.
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