Thursday, November 30, 2006

The Nativity

Aint it Cool News posted their review of The Nativity. The movie was panned, commenting that most Christian movies are generally bad. In the past few years, I have seen several "Christian" films including Left Behind, The Passion of the Christ, End of the Spear, Luther and most recently Facing the Giants. Of those films, I thought that Left Behind was pretty bad, Passion of the Christ overrated. However, Luther, End of the Spear and Facing the Giants were very enjoyable, and had very real applications to my Christian walk.

End of the Spear showed me a picture of what it is like to truly forgive another person. We speak about how God forgives us but when it comes to us forgiving other people, we tend to not model our God. Forgiveness isn't always easy, and End of the Spear uses an extreme situation to make this point. Is the acting the best? No. Is the cinematography academy award winning? No, but the story is fantastic.

Luther was incredible because I had never really connected all of the dots to how important translating the Bible from Latin to a common tongue (in this case, German) was in Church History.

Facing the Giants is another movie that made it to the local cineplex, but still felt like one of the New Line pictures from the eighties. However, like Spear, the story is honest. It also takes an extreme situation and shows God at work. Sure, on one hand it is convenient that everything works out ok (this doesn't happen too much for me), but it drives home the point: nothing is too big for God. Also, the film makes heavy use of non-actors. Sometimes this is painfully obvious, but once I got past that, I really believed them.

Finally, Passion of the Christ. Most of the "Talk Backers" on Aint it Cool News site held this film as the "Gold Standard" in "Christian" movie making. Others called it a snuff film. I thought that, while it contained some very powerful images, and made the crucifixion real, it was overrated. I have tried to watch it again, but have never made it through.

So, if you are so inclined to, throw these movies on your Netflix queue. Pop some corn, get the beverage of your choice and enjoy.

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