Tag: Movie Reviews

Digging in Deeper: Colossians 3:12-13

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“Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another if anyone has a grievance against another. Just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you are also to forgive.” (CSB – Read the chapter) ‬‬

Yesterday was a family day, and family comes first. So, with a rare Saturday post, here’s the final post for this week. One of the great things about the Gospel story is that it lies at the heart of nearly all of the stories we tell. That’s why I am able to write up reviews of so many different series and movies from the standpoint of their Gospel connection. Sometimes you have to look a little harder than others, but it’s nearly always there. Looking for these connections allows us to engage with the stories we tell through the lens of what is true. The latest opportunity I’ve had to do this is with the latest entry in the Despicable Me series. Let’s talk about Despicable Me 4.

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Digging in Deeper: 1 Peter 3:18

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“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

What is it that draws someone to the Gospel? A whole number of different things. Some are pretty good reasons. Others aren’t quite so good or reasonable, but thankfully the destination is ultimately more important than the path as long as you do indeed wind up in the right place. One of the most powerful draws to the Gospel historically has been the promise of God’s love as expressed through the substitutionarily sacrificial death of His Son, Jesus. This assurance that God values your life even more highly than His own is a pretty potent one indeed. As the apostle Peter put there, Jesus was willing to lay down His life in order to make it possible for you to get to God. The latest entry in what has become one of the most Gospel-soaked film franchises in recent memory offered up a picture of what this is like in one of the most powerful recruitment scenes I think I’ve ever seen. Let’s talk for just a few minutes today about the most recent adventure for super spy Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning.

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Digging in Deeper: Deuteronomy 6:7

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“Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Children typically wind up looking like their parents. Now, this doesn’t always happen. Sometimes the relationship between fathers and their sons, between mothers and their daughters, winds up with their becoming completely different from one another, but that’s more of an exception than a rule. In most cases, the resemblance is striking – and I don’t just mean physically. In many cases, this is intentional. Parents themselves grew up really enjoying a particular hobby or activity, and as a result, they work rather diligently to teach their kids to enjoy it as well. Sometimes this results in a total whiff (like my attempting to pass down a love for cartoons to my kids which failed rather spectacularly as I am the only one in the house with any kind of an interest in pretty much anything animated). But sometimes we manage to knock it out of the park (like I did with my passion for Kansas basketball and Kansas City sports teams). I’m thinking about all of this today because I recently (and finally!) got to watch the latest installment in the Ghostbusters franchise, Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The movie itself doesn’t have much of anything to do with this, but it got me thinking about it all the same. Let’s talk about the film and I’ll explain why.

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Morning Musing: Psalm 19:1

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“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the expanse proclaims the work of his hands.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the things our Internet-addicted age has suffered is a loss of wonder. We see so many wild and incredible things online that it’s hard for us to be impressed by anything. Unless it is simply a spectacle, we hardly look up. This is really too bad because the world is wonderful. I mean that literally. It is filled with things that are wonders of the first order. This is because it is created by a wonderful God. We are created in the image of this God and are wonderful ourselves. We are capable of wonders. But this is so easy to forget when we get caught in a rut of the mundane and cease to see even the wonder in the mundane. This can become a pretty hopeless situation, but sometimes a story comes along that reminds us to see the wonder in life once again. Let’s talk today about one of these stories that took the form of a movie released just before Christmas about the world’s most famous chocolate maker. Let’s talk about Wonka.

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Digging in Deeper: John 15:12-13

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“This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the long-running debates about the action/spy-thriller genre of movies is which super spy is the greatest. Realistically speaking, there are only two possible entries in the debate: James Bond and Ethan Hunt. Everyone else falls a distant second to them. Bond has the advantage of a whole series of books and 27 films. Hunt has 9 seasons’ worth of a television series totaling 206 episodes as well as 7 movies with an eighth to be released next summer. Both are cool, suave, and always collected. They always get the job done. And in getting the job done, they’ve saved the world more times than is worth counting. So then, which spy is the better spy? Having recently watched or rewatched all of the previous six Mission Impossible movies, I would like to stir the debate once again by making an argument in favor of Hunt. Let’s talk about why.

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