Films We Never Got to Review

MINOR REGRETS AT THE END OF A BLOG

When this blog was just beginning, my friend, Tim Stafford, told me he didn't think the blog go last very long. "After all," he asked, "how many movies are there about churches and pastors?"

It's seven years later, and we've looked at a different film every week. There were a few weeks we ran a repeat, but there were quite a few weeks when we discussed more than one movie. That means we’ve looked at more than 350 films, and we still haven’t run out of films to review. I have a list with nearly 300 potential films, and assuming churches keep showing up in new movies -- I think I already have enough to write about for another seven years. But I'm tired and ready to move on to other projects.

You have to pull the plug sometime, but nonetheless, I regret not having a chance to review some great films that had interesting things to say about faith. Some of the films on this list are pretty awful, but still have interesting things to write about. 

Some of the movies on this list are ones I haven't seen, but they might have interesting things to say. 
There are also films that deal with topics that we rarely touched on.

So these are twelve of the films I most regret not getting around to writing about.

12) Fiddler on the Roof (1971)

I've seen this film more than once, and I like it very much. We've looked at musicals (Sound of Music, Cabin in the Sky, Sister Act) but Fiddler would have been the first musical featuring Eastern Orthodox clergy. There haven’t been many films featuring Orthodox clergy -- the only one I can think of is the Mel Brooks comedy, The Twelve Chairs. I could also have written about Andrei Rublev, a painter of icons used for Orthodox worship, or Beyond the Hills about a Romanian Orthodox Covent, but really, I just wish I'd taken the opportunity to drag the priests in Fiddler over the coals for the way they treated Tevye. 

11) The Quick and the Dead (1995) 

I really enjoyed this Sam Rami western, and I would have liked to write about Russell Crowe’s haunted pastor with a history as a desperado. I would have been happy to have an excuse to watch this again. Most of the westerns I’ve written about haven’t been good westerns (we did get to watch the classic High Noon, but most have been along the lines of The Deadly Companions and God’s Gun). It might have also been fun to get to Charleton Heston’s Will Penny in which Donald Pleasence plays a very creepy, evil preacher.

10) The Exorcist 2: The Heretic (1977) 

It really is a shame I couldn't write about this film, since we reviewed the clergy in the original Exorcist. I have read about this film for a long time, starting with Michael Medved’s Golden Turkey Awards (a salute to bad films), but I’ve never seen it. It really is a shame I couldn’t get to Exorcist 2, since we did review the original Exorcist as well as the second sequel. The Heretic stars Richard Burton in a performance legendary for hamminess. Instead, I've settled for the hammy Burton performances in The Sandpiper and The Robe.(FWIW, another bad film I didn’t write about was God’s Not Dead Part IV: We the People. I watched it in the theater, but never got around to writing about it, though we featured the first three God's Not Dead movies.)

9) Lady Godiva of Coventry (1955) - Please don’t assume it is prurient interests that drew me to curiosity about this film (which I’ve never seen). In all the pictures of Maureen O’Hara as the historical streaker, she seems to be surrounded by nuns. All right. I am curious how the filmmakers handled the nudity in studio days with the Hays Code in full effect. (The Song of Bernadette is another faith-centered story from the golden age of Hollywood. It was quite acclaimed. I’ve never seen it, but it looks rather stodgy, and that's kept me from watching it.)

8) The Devils (1971) 

In the blog, we've tried not to shy away from films that are critical of churches and clergy or even the Christian faith. As a result, we’ve looked at films by famous critics of religion like Michael Tolkin and Luis Buñuel. This notorious “historical” work by writer/director Ken Russell (from a story by Aldous Huxley) is one I never got around to watching. It's difficult to find an unedited version of this X-rated film in which Oliver Reed played a priest with unorthodox views on faith and sex whose followers included licentious nuns. But it was not to be.

7) Ganja & Hess (1973) 

Arguably, this blog didn't cover enough vampire blaxsploitation films, and this movie would have helped remedy that oversight. Sadly, this film was also difficult to find in its original form. (Fun fact: Duane Jones's only other starring performance is in Night of the Living Dead.) The Church seems to play an important part in the battle against dark forces, so I do need to get around to watching this sometime even if I don’t have anywhere to write about it.

6) The Miracle Woman (1931)

This is yet another tough film to track down, with one of my favorite directors (Frank Capra), and starring one of my favorite actresses (Barbara Stanwyck). I'm baffled to realize that we haven’t featured any films by Capra or Stanwyck. Though I haven't seen this film, in it, Barbara becomes disillusioned with the Church and takes up a career as a fraudulent evangelist. Pre-Hays Code films like this one had much more freedom to be critical of the Church. I will manage to write about this one someday, even without this blog as a vehicle.

5) Dogma (1999) 

I have seen this Kevin Smith satire of the Roman Catholic Church and angels and demons that was condemned by the Church even before it was released. While I have grave reservations about the theology in the film, at times it's quite funny and would have been interesting to write about.

4) Au Hasard Balthazar (1966) 

Robert Bresson was one of France’s greatest directors, and I was able to review his classic, Diary of a Country Priest. This film contains just a little about church and clergy. Others of his work, such as Angels of Sin (about a convent that rehabilitates convicts) or The Trial of Joan of Arc. Au Hasard Balthazar is Bresson’s only film (and perhaps the only film of any kind) that features the baptism of a donkey.

3) Les Miserables (1935, 1952, 1998, 2012, or any of the other versions)

There are many adaptations of this Victor Hugo film, but I didn’t get to any of them. This is too bad, because Bishop Myriel, who cares for Jean Valjean, is one of the best portrayals of clergy in literature and cinema.

2) The Name of the Rose (1986) 

I’ve read Umberto Eco’s novel, but I’ve never seen this adaptation of the book, and it’s hard to track down. It’s a retelling of a Sherlock Holmes story using Franciscan monks in a medieval abbey. It stars Sean Connery as a friar, William of Baskerville. It also stars Christian Slater and we at Movie Churches do love Christian Slater films (the good and the awful.)

1) Amazing Grace (2006) 

I saw this film and like it very much. Directed by Michael Apted, it tells the true story of William Wilberforce and his campaign against England's slave trade. Wilberforce's pastor was John Newton, the former slave trader and author of the hymn “Amazing Grace.” He definitely would have received our highest Movie Churches rating of Four Steeples.

If only I could have gotten to these dozen films. And maybe, St. Benny the Dip. And…

Movie Churches' Bottom Ten Worst Films

As you read this, remember that any list of worst films doesn't really list the worst films. The worst film ever made was probably a community college film class project in Staten Island or Terre Haute or Fresno. They didn't have any money to make the film, and it was made only to fulfill a general ed requirement. Fortunately, most of us won't ever see the film (unless we happen to be in the same class -- and then we'd have the satisfaction that at least our film wasn't that bad). 

But it’s one thing to make a bad film with little talent and few resources. It's really painful for an audience to watch a bad film made by a studio with millions of dollars and an experienced cast and crew.

It’s also worth noting that some bad films are very entertaining. For instance, Ed Wood’s Plan Nine from Outer Space is often listed as one of the worst films of all time, but it’s quite funny with its wooden performances and cardboard tombstones -- and I’d rather watch it again than many Best Picture Nominees.

There are two things likely to earn a film a place on this list. First, being boring. I’d much rather watch an outrageous film that is poorly acted and written than a “well-made” film in which nothing happens. (I’m not talking about a film like My Dinner with Andre. Sure, all that “happens” in that film is two men having dinner, but so much “happens” in their conversation, and it is quite entertaining.)

The other thing that earns a film a place on this list is the film’s message. Since ultimately this is a blog about faith, there are films that present lies as the truth and hope that is really despair. Those are the worst films in my opinion. 

Anyway, here are films I really couldn't stand -- the worst ten:

10) The Redeemed aka Act of Contrition (2019) 
It seems like I reviewed this film just last week. Because it was just last week I reviewed this film. It was the last film I watched for this blog and one of the worst. Global Genesis Group, producers of many low-budget films, brought us this mess about a member of a mob family trying to reconcile with his family before he dies. Or something like that. It was such a mess of wooden acting, lecturing dialogue, flashbacks, and voice-overs that I couldn’t properly follow the plot. And I didn’t care about the plot. And the clergy in the film were awful.

9) God’s Club (2015)

I’ve watched many Christian films for this blog, and as a rule, they're bad. Frankly, I have some sympathy for the filmmakers. I’ve written a lot of skits and Christmas programs for churches, and it's tough to balance the message with entertainment with realism. Propaganda isn’t necessarily bad, but it is very difficult to do well. If the message is “love your neighbor as yourself,” that’s swell -- but if the message comes out preachy, few will be reached with it. 

The worst are Christian films that don’t even get the message right. God's Club is one of those stories of good Christians versus bad unbelievers. A town that doesn't seem to have a single church, but does have a pretty good sized high school (I don't believe such a town exists in the United States). There's a Christian club at that high school that the bad secularists are trying to destroy. 

Worst of all, the film includes bad theology: according to it, any suicide leads to the lakes of hell. That's not supported by Scripture, and it's damaging to people suffering from mental illness (and their loved ones).

And be wary if Stephen Baldwin is in the cast. If Corbin Bernsen and Lorenzo Lamas are in the cast as well, really, there's no hope.

8) Van Helsing (2004) 

I admit it, I have a fondness for horror films, even poorly made ones. But this big-budget film starring Hugh Jackman has no excuse for being so bad. Universal has a rich heritage with their films about Dracula, Frankenstein’s monster, and the Wolf Man, but this film is a sorry hash. Worst of all (for us here at Movie Churches, anyway) is the character who drinks, curses, and sleeps around but explains, “I’m a friar, not a monk.”

7) The Confessor aka The Good Shepherd (2004) 

Christian Slater made some pretty good films in the 20th century -- we even looked at a couple of them here in Movie Churches (Heathers and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves). But in the 21st century, his films have been, as a rule, direct-to-DVD or streaming and awful. We’ve featured some of his bad films as well as the good ones: The Way of the Wicked, Sacrifice, and worst of all, The Confessor.

In this film, confessions at a Catholic church are tape-recorded and used for blackmail. Of course, there’s murder and fundraising, most of the worst stuff found in the Roman Catholic Church but not, you know, presented in an interesting manner.

6) Robin Hood (2018) 

I just mentioned a Robin Hood film, and we'll look at another version in Movie Churches’ best films. This film, though, tosses the traditions of the character away and makes the film fit the mold of any other modern action film. Plus it goes out of its way to make the church as abhorrent as possible.

5) The Sandpiper (1965) 

Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor made eleven films together, and some of those films were excellent, like The Taming of the Shrew and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? They also made some bad ones. Cleopatra was such a bomb it nearly bankrupted a studio. The Sandpiper was one of the bad ones.

Burton plays an Episcopal priest who runs a parochial school. He’s also married to Eva Marie Saint. But when he meets the beautiful mother of one of his students, he considers leaving his ministry and marriage for the woman. Is there a more difficult question in ministry than blonde or brunette?

4) Shanghai Surprise (1986)

No doubt much of the marketing for Burton and Taylor films was based on their offscreen romance. That was also the marketing hook for this film starring newlyweds Madonna and Sean Penn. It's the only film they made together -- no one wanted another after that. It does make one wonder who thought, “Do you know who would make a great missionary? Madonna!”

3) God’s Not Dead (2014) 

This was the film that let studios know that Christian films could make money. Sure The Passion of the Christ had made millions a decade before, but that was a Mel Gibson film. This film showed that a well-marketed Christian film could make money with no more star power than Duck Dynasty. This might have been fine, but in the cheesy world of Christian film, this piles the cheddar even higher.

There are many things I dislike about the film, but among them is that it sparked getting into an argument with a stranger in the theater. One of the plot lines in the film is about a Muslim father and daughter who are torn apart when the daughter becomes a Christian. As we watched this film in a discount theater, a man nearby scoffed, "That would never happen!"  I responded, "Yes it does." It doesn’t take much googling to find stories about honor killings in the western world, but this movie presents the situation in such a melodramatic way, I could understand the scoffing.

The worst part of the film comes at the end when two pastors pray with a man, who receives Christ as his savior just before he dies from injuries due to an auto accident. After he dies, the pastors celebrate, virtually high-fiving each other for their evangelistic victory. It's one of the more tasteless displays of religiosity I have ever seen.

2) Love Actually (2003) 

Yes, I know many people love this film. It’s a Christmas staple for many. But this film has no idea about what Christmas is all about. I really hate this celebration of debauchery.

1) License to Wed (2007) 

I met Robin Williams one time. I liked him very much. He did a number of great films. This was not one of those films.

The film is about a pastor of a church in an undeterminable denomination who becomes a psychopath in premarital counseling. Watching this film would make any normal person want to stay far, far away from any church or clergy. The whole point of this blog is to demonstrate that the world could use more good churches and good clergy.

And yes, I am ranking William’s Reverend Frank below pastors who were thieves and murderers. This was a miserable film.

For the sake of this blog, I watched these bad films all the way through. Sometimes twice. This blog now is almost done, and I can quit miserable films like that a few minutes in. So can you.

Apocalypse Month Double Feature: Way of the Wicked and The Calling

Way of the Wicked (2014) and The Calling (2000)
The apocalypse film genre has a sub-genre: the Biblical apocalypse. Within that, there's the sub-genre of the birth (and sometimes childhood) of the antichrist. The first and clearly the best of these films is 1968’s Rosemary’s Baby, but since there aren't really any Christian clergy or churches in the film, it's not a good fit for this month's theme. The next best of this subset of apocalypse films is The Omen -- which you (of course) read about earlier this month. And several other films are out stinking up streaming services --  and we’re going to look at two of these bombs today.

2014’s Way of the Wicked is part of another special sub-genre, Christian Slater direct-to-DVD/streaming services films. Remember The Confessor aka The Good Shepherd and Sacrifice? (We’ve also reviewed a good Christian Slater film, but those are increasingly rare.)

Biblical apocalypse movies are usually horror films, which Way of the Wicked is, but it’s a hybrid with teen drama of the CW soap opera variety. The film opens with Father Henry (priest Christian Slater) driving to a house in the woods and knocking on the front door. A woman answers, “What brings you this time?”

The priest responds, “I’d love to speak with your son. Some people find what I have to say helpful.”

A boy’s voice from inside calls out that he wants to see him. Father Henry goes in to find a boy, ten or eleven years old, on a couch. We don’t see the priest request it, but the mother, bizarrely, seems to have given the priest a glass of wine. The priest asks the boy, “Robbie, can you tell me what happened? Did you feel the boy deserved to die? Did you wish him to die?” 

The mother, Mrs. Miller, is upset by these questions and kicks the priest out of the house.

At this point, the film moved on to the opening credits. The opening credits show scenes to come in the film, sort of like when they say “on tonight’s episode” in a 1970’s TV show, then a title card reads“Five Years Later.”

Father Henry is out of the picture for a while. What we get for instead is a whole lot of teen high school drama. Heather Elliot (Emily Tennant) is a pretty girl torn between her cool popular friends and her feelings for the outsider, Robbie. (Yup, the same Robbie that Father Henry harassed at the beginning of the film.) Whether Heather’s feelings for Robbie are affection, lust, or pity isn’t really clear.

It seems one of the things that make Robbie an outsider are events that happened five years before, prior to the start of the film as some boys were picking on Robbie, one of the boys suddenly flew through the air and slammed against a tree. Supernatural forces seemed to be at work -- and the boy died.

So, much of the film is about a love triangle between Heather and Robbie and Heather’s longtime boyfriend, Greg (who is more than a bit of a bully). Between classes, Greg sees Heather talking to Robbie, so he throws Robbie against a locker. Then, without anyone touching him, Greg goes flying through the air, slamming into one locker and then another.

An ambulance comes to take Greg to the hospital. We see that Father Henry is watching from afar.

Heather continues to meet with Robbie, and they have deep theological discussions. Robbie says, “The Bible says we’re the center of the universe. If this is the center, this is a sick joke.” (In a science class in the film, there's some talk about whether the earth is in the center of the universe. There is some talk in the film about whether the earth is the center of the universe. They also discuss the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Later, with her father, Heather goes to a diner/coffee shop to a coffee shop called “Galileo's,” but if you hope for Martians in this film, your hopes will be dashed.)

In a rather ugly scene, Greg takes Heather to the woods and says to her, “Heather, you are looking so sexy! I’m crazy about you.” They share a joint. He says, “You are so hot right now!” He tries to kiss her, and she rebuffs him. He attempts to rape Heather, but she kicks him in the groin and takes his car back to town. This whole incident is watched from the trees, but it is unclear if Father Henry or Robbie -- or both  -- is the watcher. There's a whole lot of stalking going on.

Greg never makes it back to town. On the way back, he is run over and killed by a tractor. A tractor with no engine. Clearly, malignant, supernatural forces are at work.

Father Henry goes to Heather’s police detective father, John, and tries to convince him that Robbie is responsible for the death. The priest brings some medieval tome or another (not the Bible) and points to a text that reads, “A child with a wicked soul will be born.” The book predicts the birth year, THE SAME YEAR ROBBIE WAS BORN! (Along with 140 million other children, but…) Henry says, “That is the point. This, all that’s happening, involves history. All this going around us, it has all been foretold… This has everything to do with Robbie Mueller.”

John logically remarks, “It doesn’t have Robbie’s name printed here!”

The priest responds, “I know it doesn’t have his name, but I know it’s him. I’ve been following him for years. Did you know Robbie’s mother was raped? They never knew the real father. Then his step-father died of a heart attack.” 

Really, what more proof do you need that you’re dealing with the antichrist? 

“There are signs. If you look at one sign it doesn’t mean anything, but if you step back and look at the entire picture, it all makes sense. Robbie is a disturbed boy, a violent outcast destined to bring turmoil to the planet. If you don’t believe me, look at this… Pieces of the puzzle, the answers you are looking for are in here.” And the priest gives John the books that are full of ravings and little sketches of demons.

John buys Henry’s line and puts pressure on Robbie. Soon, he's in trouble with his superiors for persecuting the boy without evidence. And we learn that Henry was defrocked for pestering Robbie and his mother.

And it turns out...SPOILERS… Who am I kidding? I mean, really, how many of you are going to track down this film and watch it? It turns out Robbie wasn’t the antichrist. Heather was.  

The strategy through which Satan plans to take over the world using a teenage girl from a small town with the powers of the most minor of X-Men is never at all clear, but you do get to see Christian Slater choked to death by his own crucifix chain, so the film has that going for it.

If Way of the Wicked was a WB teen soap, 2000’s The Calling is a Lifetime "Woman in Peril" film.

Kristie (Laura Harris) thinks she’s marrying the man of her dreams, but Marc St. Clair, the rising television star, is actually a servant of Satan who allows Kristie to be raped and impregnated by an evil creature on their wedding night.

Most of the film is Kristie’s narration to Father Mullin (Peter Waddington) from her hospital bed.

Her son, Dylan, grows to be an awful kid, trying to kill other children, torturing a dog, and impaling a guinea pig. (Okay, our family tried to have guinea pigs, so I’d give him a pass on that one.) Of course, Marc, his purported father, isn’t much help in raising Dylan well (I don’t mean to be a prude, but I don’t think “orgy” is an appropriate theme for a child’s 6th birthday party.)

A fanatical cab driver convinces Kristie that her son is the antichrist. She decides the only way to save her son is to have him baptized, so she takes Dylan to Father Mullin to be baptized. (I guess I should add she takes Dylan without her husband’s knowledge, fights with her son, and knocks him unconscious.) Father Mullin is baffled and flutters about asking stupid questions. Kristie tries to baptize Dylan herself, causing the awakened child to scream and cry out. But Kristie’s husband arrives with the police, halting the ceremony.

The cab driver, Carmac, again finds Kristie and tells her she will have to kill her son by drowning him. Kristie takes the challenge and does just that.

Dylan had become a celebrity on his dad’s television station with the bar trick of saying things backward, so his Easter Sunday graveside service is televised. A supernatural storm arises during the service, and people hear knocking from inside the coffin. 

Dylan is alive, and what was his funeral turns out to be his resurrection and is covered by media around the world. (This does seem to fulfill the prophecy of Revelation 13:3 about the beast being miraculously healed, causing the world to follow him.) The forces of darkness in this film to have a much more thought-through and competent plan for world domination than we saw in our first film.

This causes Father Mullin to believe Kristie’s story, and he takes her out of the hospital. They drive off in a cab. For reasons I couldn’t quite figure out, the Father throws his clerical car out the cab window into the street.

So the priests in both films seem quite incompetent, dim, and ineffectual, but we’ll still give them a generous Two Steeples for meaning well. As for our Apocalypse Rating, Way of the Wicked gets just One Tombstone, while The Calling gets Three for bringing the world much closer to its end.

Back to back to school month: Heathers

Heathers (1989)

We’ve had some bad Christian Slater films here, with another scheduled for next month (coming attractions -- Apocalypse Month). Heathers, though, is a classic in the high school genre. Drive-in critic Joe Bob Briggs argues it's the best high school comedy, knocking out all the John Hughes contenders. Director Michael Lehmann won the Independent Spirit Award for this film as Best First Feature. Empire Magazine ranked the film #412 in the 500 Greatest Films of All Time.

Heathers is a dark satire about adolescent suicide and murder. Veronica (Winona Ryder) is a part of her Ohio high school’s top clique, the Heathers -- though she's the only girl in the group not named Heather. The Heathers and the young men who follow them dominate the school, forcing other students to bow to their narcissistic whims. Things change when a new kid, J.D. (Slater), comes into the school. He's a rebel who charms Veronica into considering the attractions of homicide. 

Admittedly, there isn't a lot of church and clergy in this film, but what is there is choice.

Glenn Shadix (of Beetlejuice fame) plays Father Ripper, the priest who conducts Heather Chandler's funeral after J.D. and Veronica accidentally (?) poisoned her. The couple forged a suicide note for Heather, causing great concern in the school and community that it may be a harbinger of a plague of teen suicides. Father Ripper, dressed in a white robe, collar, and paisley stole, addresses these concerns in his homily at Heather’s funeral:

“I blame not Heather, but rather a society that tells the youth that answers can be found in MTV video games. We must pray that other teenagers of Sherwood, Ohio, would know the name of that righteous dude that can solve their problems. It’s Jesus Christ, and He’s in the Book.”

The packed house in this formal church answers the priest's words with a loud “Amen.”(It was filmed in Pasadena's Church of the Angels, an Anglican church with stone walls and elegant stained glass windows.) 

It’s an open casket service and a rather strange quirk in proceedings is to encourage individuals to come forward and pray beside the body. The audience is allowed to hear the silent prayers, including Veronica’s apology for killing her friend. Not all of the attendees treat the setting with respect (one of the remaining Heathers uses holy water to straighten her hair).

More die in the film. J.D. tricks Veronica into helping him kill two of the school's football stars, Kurt and Ram. Again, a fake suicide note is produced, this time making it appear the young men were gay lovers who killed themselves to hide their passion from the world. We don’t get to hear Father Ripper at this funeral, but we do hear Ram’s father stand by his son’s open casket (both boys lie in state, wearing their football helmets). The priest watches as the father looks at his dead son and loudly proclaims, “I don’t care that you were a pansy. You made me proud. I love my dead son.” (J.D. ponders a little too loudly at the service whether he would still love his gay son if he “had a pulse.”)

We do see one more funeral at the church, though it is actually part of a dream of Veronica’s. Now Father Ripper is dressed in a flowery, hippy robe with a plethora of beads. Everyone in the pews is wearing white robes and 3-D glasses.

Though the sermon is just a figment of Veronica’s imagination, the words she puts into Father Ripper’s mouth are interesting and strange, “‘Eskimo.’ Heather underlined a lot of things in this copy of Moby Dick, but I believe ‘Eskimo’ is the key to understanding Heather’s pain. On the surface, Heather was the vivacious young lady we all knew her to be. But her soul was in Antarctica, freezing with the knowledge of how her fellow teenagers can be cruel, the way that parents can be unresponsive. And as she writes so eloquently in her suicide note, ‘the way life can suck.’ We’ll all miss Sherwood’s little Eskimo. Let’s just hope she’s rubbing noses with Jesus.”

In this same dream, the first dead Heather appears to Veronica and tells her she is SO bored of Heaven, “If we sing Kumbaya one more time…”

From Veronica’s dreams and attitudes, it seems she doesn’t believe that Father Ripper understands or cares about young people more than any other adults. Just as teachers are only concerned about their jobs and parents are concerned about themselves, the priest is just concerned about selling Jesus. But Father Ripper doesn’t kill others or himself -- which isn’t nothing in this film, so he avoids our lowest rating. We give Father Ripper and his church a Movie Churches rating of Two Steeples. 

(Heathers is rated 'R' and currently available on Amazon Prime. If you've already seen the film, the best way to watch it again is on Joe Bob Brigg's Last Drive-In Theater supplemented by excellent commentary.)

Sacrifice (2011)

 I've reviewed a direct-to-video Movie Church with Christian Slater before, when we looked the horrible Movie Church in a horrible movie called The Confessor. Today's film not only has the dreaded Slater credit, but the even less promising threat of Cuba Gooding Jr., who went from Oscar winner to box office poison.

So I approached this film with great trepidation, and you probably won't be surprised to learn that the 2011 film Sacrifice (written and directed by Damian Lee, who has made a whole bunch of films I've never heard of) is really pretty awful. But we're here to look at the church in the film.

I'm pretty positive about the church in this film, because the priest in this film, Father Porter, (played by Christian Slater) wasn't always a priest. He was with the "special forces" in Afghanistan with a team of four other soldiers. They each got a one-word tattoo, a virtue, on his hand in solidarity.  The other four had "freedom", "family", "blood", "courage" on their hands and Porter had "sacrifice" (TITLE DROP!).

The other four soldiers died, and Porter has survivor's guilt. He decided become a priest because, as he says, "it was the hardest thing I could possibly do. Stupid, right?" He is, to say the least, conflicted about calling. He says, "Sometimes I wonder if I chose God or He chose me. 'Cause if he chose me, He made a mistake."

But we see him doing a decent job in his duties. An elderly woman comes to him and asks him to listen to her confession. He responds, "Didn't I hear your confession last night?" But he listens.

She tells the priest that sometimes she thinks she'll end up in a higher level in heaven than her husband. She asks him what she should do about this sin of pride. He gives her four Hail Mary's but doesn't ask her to call in the morning.

While he's hearing her confession, young thugs break into the collection box of the church and accidently knock over and break the statue of the Virgin Mary. A young man named Mike, visiting the church, offers a Virgin Mary statue to replace it. Mike is a drug dealer and the statue he gives was stolen from drug overlords -- and it's composed of pure heroin. But it's the thought that counts.

Father Porter also cares for John Hebron, an undercover police officer who takes on the drug world's worst of the worst. Because he caught some really bad guys, their associates came back and killed his wife and daughter. This has turned him into a cop on the edge who lives by his own rules. (Martin Riggs in Lethal Weapon you say? Of course, but not nearly that good.)

We do hear, in a flashback, Father Porter's memorial sermon for John's wife and daughter. "We celebrate the lives of Anna and Noelle, and cherish them in our hearts as we commend them to God's merciful love, the author of all life. God has created each person for eternal life. Jesus, the Son of God, with His death and resurrection has broken the chains of sin and death that bound humanity."

John, the cop, comes often to the church to light candles in his wife's memory. The priest asks why he lights the candles even though he doesn't believe in it. John says it's because his wife believed in it. The priest says, "God works in mysterious ways," which is a reliable go to cliché in hack films. John pulls out a flask and shares it with Father Porter. I'm assuming Kool-Aid was in the flask, but we're never told.

You may not be surprised to hear that eventually the bad guys come after that heroin statue in the church, and it's up to the cop on the edge and the special forces priest to stop them.

For a decent funeral sermon and that special forces training, I'm giving Father Porter and his church Three Steeples.

(This film earns its R rating. And on another pointless side note, the film opens at a game of the NHL finals. And it appears literally dozens of hockey fans are in the stands.)

Confession Movie Churches: "The Confessor (AKA "The Good Shepherd"), 2004

As a rule, if a movie stars Christian Slater, and it was made in this century, avoiding that movie is a safe choice. "The Confessor" (also known at IMDB as "The Good Shepherd") isn't really an exception. Like so much of Slater's recent fare, this was direct to video rather than a theatrical release, but it's confession month here at Movie Churches, and the film does have that title, so I didn't really see a choice here.

Christian Slater plays Father Daniel, a priest whose specialty is fundraising. I don't remember that being listed in Scripture as one of the spiritual gifts, but I might have to give it another look. Another priest, Father Andrew, is accused of murder and asks for Father Daniel's help. Father Andrews claims innocence. He also claims to know who the real killer is, but says he can't reveal it because he can't reveal what was told him in confession. So it's up to Father Daniel to find the real killer, as priests do, you know. (I don't remember homicide investigation being listed as a spiritual gift either, but again, I'll have to check.)

As always, we're here to critique the churches in the movie rather than the movie itself. And the churches in the movie are pretty awful. The Roman hierarchy over Father Daniel is a duplicitous bunch. They are much more concerned about the image of the church than the young man who was murdered or the priest accused of the murder.

Spoiler alert! (Which perhaps isn't possible with a Christian Slater direct-to-video film. It's like being concerned about spoiling a quart of milk that's been out in the sun for a month.) Father Andrew is murdered in prison (though it's made to look like a suicide). Father Daniel takes over Andrew's church.

Now there are things to be said in behalf of the church Father Andrews pastored. It's next to a halfway house for teenagers. So, yay for caring for the disadvantaged. Unfortunately, the halfway house is run by Lucy Gallagher, an abusive, middle aged heroin addict. She uses the kids as a part of a prostitution/drug ring. On the plus side, she does seem to be concerned about the spiritual lives of her charges. In fact, she requires that all who live in her halfway house go to confession at the church.

On the negative side, Ms. Gallagher tape records all of those confessions, and uses the information to abuse and blackmail the teens. I thought that tape recorder was the most interesting thing in the film; it's really the reason I decided to write this review. Though many churches don't have literal tape recorders around when we're confessing, we're still scared of 'em. The Catholic Church, through years of tradition, came up with a system for making confession as safe and private as possible. I do love the idea that a priest would rather go to prison than reveal what he heard in confession.

Many of us are afraid of sharing anything more personal than an allergy flare-up at a prayer meeting because we're afraid our information won't remain confidential. Our deepest secret shared as a prayer request might be used as a conversional filler when there's a lull during a friend's coffee break. And yet James 5:16 commands us to confess our sins to each other. I don't think James would have thought kindly of tape recording confessions.

I'd like to be in a church where I could confess my deepest secrets and know they won't be used for gossip, let alone for the purposes of blackmail. Perhaps I could find a place where I could even feel comfortable confessing I'd watched a Christian Slater movie without fear of rejection or judgment.

The church in the film gets one steeple.