Film Reviews - Faith and Film
By Daniel B. Clendenin Ph.D.
Our latest film review is featured below. This and all previous reviews may be found in the Comprehensive Index of Film Reviews.
These films provoked me to think afresh about our human condition and what it means to believe, confess and live the Gospel in our modern world. My selection criterion was simple—these are films I liked.
The single best film resource is the Internet Movie Database. For specifically Christian perspectives, see the following three books.Donald Drew, Images of Man; A Critique of the Contemporary Cinema (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1974); Robert Johnston, Reel Spirituality: Theology and Film in Dialogue (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 2000); and William Romanowski, Eyes Wide Open; Looking for God in Popular Culture (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2001)." For a broader critique see the now classic work by Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death; Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (New York: Penquin, 1986).
Please Give (2010)
Writer and director Nicole Holofcener has created a nuanced portrait of five women from four generations who each struggle in their own way to make moral sense of family life in New York City. Kate and her husband Alex run a "vintage" furniture store that thrives because they buy low from distressed customers and sell high to status-conscious New Yorkers. Kate feels uneasy about that formula, she frets about the homeless, and surfs the internet at night for volunteer opportunities that might add meaning to her life. Their fifteen-year-old daughter Abby whines for $200 blue jeans ("you buy them for yourself," she tells her mom), obsesses about her admittedly horrible acne, and does a lot of truth-telling. In the apartment next door is a crotchety ninety-one-year old widow who is angry at the world and cared for by two granddaughters in their late twenties whose mother committed suicide — Rebecca is a saint who has no life of her own and knows it, while Marissa is a bitch who thinks she has a life but doesn't know it and later finds out. No one has it easy in this film, and we love each character for the way they try, well or poorly, to negotiate the moral complexities of very ordinary lives.