 December
2007
This month's reviews/features:
Bella
One to See...
There’s a good picture out right now that most will
benefit from seeing. Titled Bella, it’s about
irreversible
moments in our lives and deals with the question of
adoption versus abortion. It pulls no punches in making
its point.
Here’s the gist of the movie: (By the way, the word
bella is Spanish for “beautiful” and is pronounced “bayya.”) José is
a young Latino man who is head chef at the
New York restaurant owned by Manny, his materialistic,
slave-driving brother. Nina works at the restaurant but
has been missing work days because of her morning sickness;
she is unmarried and pregnant. When Manny fires
her, Nina is faced with the excruciating dilemma of being
out of work and with child. Her immediate thought is to
have an abortion, believing that she is not ready to raise a
child and not wanting to put a child through the difficulties
of life with a single mother. Aware of the situation,
José walks off the job to befriend Nina, persuading her to
spend the day with him. He asks Nina whether she would
consider having the baby and putting it up for adoption,
to which she says no. José doesn’t berate Nina but simply
takes her to his parents’ house, a place characterized by a
warm, loving, and unhurried atmosphere.
But why is José so anxious to help Nina?
The answer to that question is seen in a
series of flashbacks to a time several years
ago when José was an up-and-coming soccer
star. He was on his way to an award
ceremony when he was involved in a tragic
accident. This changed everything in his life, including
his attitude toward himself and others.
Bella is not an explicitly Christian film, but
God’s
presence is strongly felt within it. In their day together,
for instance, José and Nina encounter a blind man who
has a sign saying, “God closed my eyes. Now I can see.”
At the evening meal in the house of José’s parents, his
younger brother offers a touching blessing in Spanish and
asks his non-Latina fiancée to repeat it after him. Above
all, José and his parents walk their Christian talk. Star and
co-producer Eduardo Verastegui had this to say about his
film (excerpted from the review of Bella in
Plugged In
Online): “What I’d love to see happen with this film is to
someday have this 12-year-old knock on my door and say
that her mother was going to have an abortion. But she
saw this film. That would be my Oscar.”
Bella is rated PG-13 for thematic elements. There
is no bad language. Go and see it; you will be uplifted.
Rating: 3 ¼
stars
The Golden Compass
And One to Avoid
By all accounts, there’s a film coming out that
Christians would do well to avoid and protect their
children from. The Golden Compass will be released on
December 7 and is based on the first of a trilogy of
children’s novels by British author Phillip Pullman. The
following comments are taken from the Internet Snopes
site:
- Pullman is “a proud atheist who belongs to secular
humanist societies. He hates C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles
of Narnia and has written a trilogy to show the other
side. The movie has been dumbed down to fool kids
and their parents in the hope that they will buy his
trilogy where in the end the children kill God and
everyone can do as they please.”
- Pullman has said, “I don’t profess any religion; I
don’t think it’s possible that there is a God; I have the
greatest difficulty in understanding what is meant by
the words ‘spiritual’ and ‘spirituality.’” In a 2003 interview
with The Sydney Morning Herald, Pullman
said, “My books are about killing God.”
- Conservative British columnist Peter Hitchens has
labeled Pullman “The Most Dangerous Author in
Britain” and described him as the writer “the atheists
would have been praying for if atheists prayed.”
Enough said?
Of interest: see review by
Plugged In Online.
Rating: not
rated
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Index of movie
reviews...
(2003 reviews through present)
Jay Maurer, a member of West Side Presbyterian Church, is
a long-term movie buff and former college teacher of The Film as
Literature. He has written movie reviews for The Good News
(West Side newsletter) since 2002.
If you have comments or questions
about the movie (or play) reviews, please contact Jay at
dramachap@msn.com.
Ratings are expressed in
increments of ¼ star.
A rating of 2 ½ stars or higher is meant to be a recommendation.
1 star: poor
2 stars: minimally satisfactory
3 stars: quite good
4 stars: superb
Criteria for determining the ratings:
- Reflection, either explicit or implicit, of Christian values,
including suitability of language and lack of gratuitous violence
- Quality of the acting
- Originality
- Unity of the entire picture
- Substance, or in the words of C.S. Lewis, weight
Other Christian movie review Web sites:
Plugged In Online
ChristianityTodayMovies.com
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