Son of God
This is similar to the previous movie Passion of the Christ. It deals with more than just the persecution of Jesus. While still including the arrest and beatings, it tried to give more background to how Jesus acquired his followers.
When I left the theater after viewing, Passion of the Christ, I felt bad for being a sinner in the same way that I felt bad being German after viewing Schindler's List. When I walked out of this movie, I was more focused on what a loving leader Jesus was than how much suffering he did for his followers.
Roma Downey stars as Mary, the mother of Jesus and also co-produces it with her husband Mark Burnett (creator/producer of Survivor). I am glad that they didn't have any other "recognizable" stars in the movie to take away from the story. Diorgo Morgado played Jesus and while he was believable, I kept thinking he was too handsome to look at which made me feel weird like I was lusting at Jesus.
Overall, I give this a one thumb up for cinematography and storytelling. I was glad that I saw this movie and would recommend it.
God's Not Dead
This is a story about an atheist college philosophy teacher (Kevin Sorbo) who challenges his class to write down the phrase "God is Dead". One of his students, Josh (Shane Harper), refuses and so the professor requires him to defend his position to the entire class. The main supporting characters are made up of the professor's girlfriend whom is a non-practicing Christian, her atheist materialistic brother (Dean Cain), Josh's pastor (real life pastor David A R White) and a fellow student (Hadeel Sittu) raised Islamic but exploring Christianity.
This movie has a good basis of a story with interesting characters and a foot-tapping song by the Christian group, Newsboys. In fact, when I think of the movie, I hear the line from that song "God is Not Dead, He's surely alive." Then the movie became issue-driven instead of story-driven and fell flat in its ending.
The good people in the movie were all Christian and the bad people were either atheist or non-Christian. This attitude annoys me because when did a BELIEF become fact and if you don't agree with my belief, then you are either bad, wrong of both?
This could have been a wonderful movie but it chooses to dictate its preaching instead of presenting different beliefs and letting each viewer decide on their own.
I give this a half a thumb up for the potential that it could have been along with its catchy song. I am left disappointed in that my view of Christianity is a belief that there is a God and that he is the only one who can judge after our earthly life and that we all can live our own lives following our heart's passion.
Heaven Is For Real
This movie based on the book by the same name follows the story of Pastor Todd Burpo's account of his son Colton's experience of seeing Heaven.
Colton had a severe appendicitis rupture and almost died. He had an out of body experience where he saw his parents in separate areas of the hospital and then saw Jesus in heaven. He also met his paternal grandfather and older sister, both of whom passed on before Colton was born. Todd has to come to grips with his own beliefs and allowing his son to believe what he saw. Colton's experience affects his family, community and of course faith.
Non-believers might think it is a preachy movie but not even close to the above-mentioned God's Not Dead.
I enjoyed this movie for allowing minds to be open and discussed calmly and rationally yet still passionately. I give this a strong one thumb up signifying each individual belief that we follow in our hearts. Please read the book though or a more complete detailing of the Burpo's story and even better would be to read it as a group and openly discuss it.
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