More Than One Lesson

Many Christians will not see The Witch. Of the Christians who do see it, I expect that many will not enjoy it. It is an unsettling film. It is an intense film. It is hard to find any sort of redemptive message buried deep within its murky darkness, but I’ve managed to come away with a lesson in faith.

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Tyler and Josh discuss the Best Picture of 1969, Midnight Cowboy.

In this episode, Tyler and Reed discuss Pete Docter’s Inside Out and Alexander Payne’s About Schmidt.

EPISODE BREAKDOWN
00:00:44- Intro, Bone Tomahawk, Wade Williams
00:08:25- Inside Out
01:17:00- About Schmidt
01:48:40- Episode wrap-up

Actor/musician Wade Williams recently survived a brain aneurism. He is recovering, but needs help with his bills (medical and otherwise). I met Wade at the International Christian Film Festival last year and he was incredibly supportive of me and my opinions about film. Please help with whatever you can. Thanks!

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Death in the Desert is an odd little movie. It had all the potential of a genuine cult indie thriller in the overall tone, visual style and musical score. But it is hindered by a multitude of sizable problems.

Supposedly based on the true story of the murder of a tycoon in the outskirts of Las Vegas, the movie tries very hard to establish an ominous quality to its narrative and for the most part, the tone is where it should be. But early promise never quite becomes anything more than that.

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In this episode, Tyler and Josh discuss Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies and Jean Renoir’s Grand Illusion.

EPISODE BREAKDOWN
00:00:44- Intro, Oscars, Bone Tomahawk, International Christian Film Festival
00:07:20- Bridge of Spies
00:58:45- Grand Illusion
01:32:12- Episode wrap-up

In this episode, Tyler and Robert discuss Lenny Abrahamson’s Room and Ted Kotcheff’s First Blood.

EPISODE BREAKDOWN
00:00:44- Intro, International Christian Film Festival, Oscar season
00:07:10- Paddington
00:15:10- Room
01:31:25- First Blood
02:08:00- Episode wrap-up

In this minisode, Tyler and Josh discuss Franklin J. Schaffner’s Patton, winner of Best Picture for 1970.

For several years, I’ve been making a joke about God’s will for my life. Having felt the call to become a film critic in 2008, I have often been frustrated by the lack of paid opportunities there have been for me. As a way of coping with this, I adopted a very caustic attitude and would frequently say, “God called me into film criticism just in time for it start dying.”

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Some stories are as old as storytelling itself. One of them is this: a damsel, pure and fair, has been captured by a dragon. It then falls to a group of upright knights, none of whom are fully sure they’re a match for the beast, to enter its lair and retrieve her.

If you substitute the knights for old west citizens and the dragon for a tribe of cannabilistic savages, you’ve summarized Bone Tomahawk, the directorial debut of S. Craig Zahler starring Kurt Russell. I cannot recall a movie like it in recent memory, yet it feels almost mythologically traditional. It manages to somehow be epic in its scope and simultaneously two-sentence-tiny in its premise. It is relentlessly brutal in its violence, yet restrained in how rarely that violence presents itself. It has a constant tone of dread while somehow managing to maintain an ember of hope glowing at its center.

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