The ghost with the most returns after three decades in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Three decades after nearly being forced to marry Betelgeuse (Michael Keaton), Lydia Deetz (Winona Ryder) puts the her powers as a medium to use as the host of the paranormal TV series Ghost House, with her dating the show’s producer Rory (Justin Theroux)….
Two 13-year-old girls return possessed after going missing in the woods in The Exorcist: Believer. Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) is the single father to 13-year-old Angela (Lidya Jewett), whose birth cost her mother’s life. Angela goes after school to hang out with her friend Katherine (Olivia Marcum), however, they disappear in the woods and…
A nun with a troubled past learns about the rite of exorcism in Prey for the Devil. Sister Ann (Jacqueline Byers) has taken residency in a school for exorcists run by Father Quinn (Colin Salmon). Working with Dr. Peters (Virginia Madsen) in the school’s psyche ward, Ann has to help ensure that those suspected of…
The contrasting ideologies between Pope Benedict XVI and his successor Pope Francis are examined in The Two Popes. Following the death of John Paul II in 2005, conservative German Cardinal Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger (Anthony Hopkins) is elected the new leader of the Catholic Church as Pope Benedict XVI. Fast forward to 2012 and the Catholic…
A country priest has a crisis of faith in First Reformed. Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke) is the pastor of the First Reformed parish, a historic yet poorly attended Dutch Reform church. Toller is approached by Mary (Amanda Seyfried), a pregnant parishioner, who asks Toller to talk to her husband, an environmentalist, whose despair about the environment…
Imagine Dragons frontman Dan Reynolds organizes a music festival in support of LGBTs in the Morman community in Believer. Raised as part of the Morman church, Dan Reynolds begins to have a major crisis of faith involving the church’s strict stance against gay rights, which has contributed to an pandemic of suicides by LGBT youth…
A country priest has a crisis of faith in First Reformed. Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke) is the pastor of the First Reformed parish, a historic yet poorly attended Dutch Reform church. Toller is approached by Mary (Amanda Seyfried), a pregnant parishioner, who asks Toller to talk to her husband, an environmentalist, whose despair about the…
This review was originally published, under its original title Libera Nos, as part of my coverage of Hot Docs 2017 The daily routines of a Sicilian exorcist is observed in Deliver Us. Over the past number of years, the requests to the Catholic Church for the rite of exorcism has been on the rise, to the…
A police sergeant investigates a series of murders that may be related to demonic activity in The Wailing. One morning in the isolated town of Goksung, Sgt. Jeon Jong-gu (Kwak Do-won) is called to the scene of a brutal ritualistic murder. This is the latest of a series of homicides in the city, which seems to…
Priest is the second religion-based action/horror collaboration in a row between director Scott Stewart and star Paul Bettany. I thought that, their previous film, Legion had a campy glee to it, which made it an enjoyable film. I can’t really say the same about this film, which takes place in a futuristic society where the church has totalitarian rule and priests…
If nothing else, Machete is a good demonstration of Robert Rodriguez’s skills as an editor. What began as a faux-trailer in Grindhouse is now a full-fledged film. Most of the footage from that trailer reappears in this film with the newly shot footage and the transition seems flawless. As for the film itself, it’s definitely…
Ridley Scott’s new film version of Robin Hood received fairly poor reviews from most critics. However, I feel that it might have fared better if it didn’t have the stigma of being attached to the classic story. Let it be said that this is not the traditional Robin Hood story that has been told in…
