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straight story

Posted on September 12, 2007 | Filed Under arts and culture, beauty, simplicity 

What a great movie!

I previewed David Lynch’s film the straight story last evening. It tells the real-life story of Alvin Straight, an elderly Iowan who rode a lawn mower two hundred and sixty miles from Laurens, Iowa to visit his ailing brother in Mount Zion, Wisconsin.

I will be showing the film as part of our monthly Movie Night at the Ensworths’ series for people from our church. It is a beautifully made film, beautiful in its simplicity and its emotional power and its celebration of human goodness, not a goodness that is artificial …

love and war

Posted on February 25, 2007 | Filed Under arts and culture, beauty, war 

We were visited by a major winter storm in Iowa this weekend, and our Saturday and Sunday plans (which were many!) were cancelled. We enjoyed some good down time, a fire in the fireplace, and we watched two movies, two among the list of movies we have been wanting to preview. The two movies could not have been more different!

The one was about beauty: the beauty of love, of loyalty, of humility, of service, of human creativity, of the smallest details of the natural world. The other was about ugliness: the ugliness of war, the ugliness it does to …

so what do i think of the da vinci code?

Posted on May 9, 2006 | Filed Under arts and culture, spirituality 

Not much.

Which means both that I don’t think much of it, and that I don’t think much about it. I have neither seen the movie nor read the book, though I’ve read reviews and talked with folks who have. I do not feel the same sense of threat that some Christians and Christian organizations seem to. I feel no need to make a reply to the assertions of The Da Vinci Code. I believe without reservation that truth will outlast any passing fancy or cultural buzz.

I did not see The Passion of the Christ for the same reasons. In that …

why i won’t see the chronicles of narnia

Posted on December 21, 2005 | Filed Under arts and culture 

I will not be seeing the new movie, The Chronicles of Narnia. I love the books too much …

Film is a wonderfully creative medium, capable of conveying meaning and conjuring beauty in ways unmatched by any other art form. I do love a good movie! But film by its nature limits imagination, while literature by its nature (if it is good writing!) stimulates imagination. The powerful images that have inhabited my mind and soul from childhood, Aslan and Lucy and Caspian and Shasta and Puddleglum and Reepicheep — I will not permit these beloved and edifying images to be reshaped …

“million dollar baby”

Posted on August 10, 2005 | Filed Under arts and culture, grace 

My daughter’s boyfriend had us all watch “Million Dollar Baby” the other night. It was a good movie — well-made, engrossing, creative, understated. It conveyed powerful emotions with spare action and spare dialogue. I enjoyed watching the movie — and I am no fan of boxing — but I didn’t like the ending.

WARNING: STOP READING NOW IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE AND DON’T WANT ME TO SPOIL IT FOR YOU!

What does give a life value?
When is suffering no longer redemptive or no longer redeemable?
When is a life no longer worth living?

I grant that I know nothing of what it …

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