More Than One Lesson

In this episode, Tyler and Josh discuss Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby.

EPISODE BREAKDOWN
00:00:46- The Dilemma of Christian Film, Woodlawn
00:02:45- Bridge of Spies, The Inhabitants
00:03:20- Battleship Pretension Slasher Commentary
00:13:45- Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski
01:14:30- Episode wrap-up

There’s nothing inherently inferior about choosing to tell a story that everyone’s heard before as long as they love the way you tell it. The same goes with film, where style and craft will always trump a lack of originality. The Inhabitants, a new low-budget indie frightener from the writing and directing team of the Rasmussen brothers, aims for this target specifically. It doesn’t pretend to tell you a story you’ve never heard before, it simply wants to retell a classic scenario as well as it can. The film offers a great deal of promise in its early moments on which it sadly never quite delivers.

A young couple decide to purchase a remote bed and breakfast inn called “The March Carriage”. As they begin to settle in and renovate the building, they encounter a sequence of eerie spectral occurrences which seem to indicate that they are not alone in the house. As I said before, this is nothing new.

[…]

I walked into Andrew and Jon Erwin’s Woodlawn with my usual skepticism. Most Christian films leave a lot to be desired, both artistically and theologically. In an attempt to appeal to a neglected Evangelical audience, these films will oversimplify every element of their stories and themes, creating art meant to inspire its viewers, but that instead panders to them in the worst way. These films often fail at every artistic level, but are forgiven because their hearts are in the right place, as though a filmmaker’s intention is the only thing that matters.

And so when I was told that Woodlawn was the best Christian film in a while, I was understandably hesitant. A film that depicted faith amidst the trappings of a sports movie (a genre that often has pandering problems of its own) didn’t do much to inspire hope for me. But, while Woodlawn is far from perfect, it left me feeling engaged and entertained, which is more than can be said for any other faith-based film. For this reason alone, I consider Woodlawn to be the best Christian film I’ve ever seen.

[…]

I can still remember the most blasphemous thing I ever said as an actor. My character believed in God, but had utterly rejected Jesus Christ. He was full of fury and bitterness and at a key point in the play, I had to look at the iconic image of Jesus, beaten and bloody for the sins of the world, pretending to be this angry man and yell, “If you are the Son of God, come down off of that cross and save yourself!”

[…]

Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies is a very good- sometimes great- movie about the importance of seeing people as they are, rather than what they represent. That this is couched in a Cold War spy story makes this theme all the more resonant. For decades, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were engaged in a non-violent war of ideologies. This war often manifested itself as a constant scramble for information; about weapons, about technology, about pretty much anything. Paranoia was at an all-time high, with special attention paid to those that could be spies for the other side, infiltrating our ranks and selling our secrets.

[…]

In this episode, Tyler, Robert, and Reed discuss Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook.

EPISODE BREAKDOWN
00:00:45- Intro, BP Slasher Commentaries, Reed’s articles
00:07:25- The Babadook
01:41:20- Forbidden Planet
02:11:26- Episode wrap-up

Hello. I’m Tyler Smith, of More Than One Lesson.

[…]

Before we dive into defining movies as “good” or “bad,” it might be valuable to use another more basic term which might be applied to any art in any medium, but which certainly applies to film. Before a film can be considered either good or bad, we first have to figure out whether or not a film “works”.

[…]

My starting point is very simple. Everything that you are – all you say, do, believe, question, and aspire to – begins with your own imagination. This is not to say that you have personally created everything within your own imagination because we’re all at least partially products of our own environments and experiences. But every bit of our own experience passes through the filter of our own imagination and is somehow either rejected or accepted into our beliefs, aspirations, and behaviors. We don’t do anything and we are not anything that was not first planted by us or someone else into our individual hearts and minds.

[…]

In this episode, Tyler and Reed discuss Rodney Ascher’s The Nightmare and Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street.

EPISODE BREAKDOWN
00:00:49- Intro, Rodney Ascher, nightmares, spiders
00:22:20- The Nightmare
01:11:10- A Nightmare on Elm Street
01:26:27- Spiritual warfare, fear and love
02:05:30- Episode wrap-up