Category: 2010s

With an impressive cast, including Harry Lennix, Chaka Khan, and Dawnn Lewis, I had gone into this telling of Jesus’s last days from the Gospel of John expecting a gospel music version of Jesus Christ Superstar. In some ways it is more and others much less. It obviously has a much lower budget than the average film I watch, but they attempt to do a whole lot with that budget combining a whole bunch of styles from outdoor live action shots to meta stage renditions to CGI heavy scenes in between. Some of these worked better than others. I preferred the live action straight tellings more than the more experimental scenes, but mostly I really loved the music throughout. Some film versions of Bible stories are told to reach a mixed-background audience, but this feels firmly as if it were made solely for Christians.  

Late twenty-somethings Raven Goodwin and Dominique Perry are constantly pressured to get married. When an attractive new pastor comes to their church at Christmastime, they find themselves rivals for his attention. The quality of the film is about average with any other romantic made for television Christmas film. It’s not a particularly unique story and I almost universally find outside pressure to couple up rather grotesque. The competition between the women gets downright nasty at times, but the leads are still appealing and it’s mostly harmless, mindless entertainment. While I tend to find religious themed films annoying, I do enjoy a church setting. Particularly in a film such as this where there is sniping and fighting, congregation members are constrained from certain types of actions unless they want to be subjected to community disapproval.   

After rising rodeo star and horse trainer Brady suffers a horrific brain injury, similar to one a friend of his had experienced that now confines him to a wheelchair, he is forced to reexamine the direction he wants to take his life. It feels like a fairly authentic portrayal of life amongst the Lakota Sioux on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, perhaps made further so by having Brady’s family played by his real life father and sister. After Nomadland, I was interested to check out Chloe Zhao’s other films. She has incredible eye for the wide expanses of middle America and some of the less celebrated people who incorporate those areas.