A couple weeks ago I shared an article from Reel Spirituality on an approach to reviewing movies that is not criticizing, but is approaching a movie as an exploration and us as the movie-goer as an explorer. This article was touched on and expanded on a little bit more when Elijah Davidson, Co-Director of Reel Spirituality, was a co-host with Mikey and I on our latest episode of the podcast on Jupiter Ascending. It was really great to get a chance to dig a little deeper on this article and it has been really helpful in shaping how I approach reviews and movies.
As a follow up to that article, the other article I was referring to on the podcast is the one I am sharing this week. This time, instead of Gareth’s article, I am sharing Elijah’s article titled, “Conviction and Witness.” Elijah uses his review of the movie Witness, starring Harrison Ford, to further discuss how we approach movies as Christian believers.
Our goal with this website is to encourage better film-watching, and not just any kind of film-watching, but film-watching that hopes to encounter God. And that encounter happens in the relationship between the movie, the Christian tradition, and our lives. And sometimes the movie that impacts a person or a community is a “poorly made” movie. Who are we to say what God might use, movie or otherwise?
What I really enjoyed about the article is that, like Gareth’s article, it presents the movie watching experience as a way to interact with movies, learn from them, and that God can speak and take action through the movies we view. I suggest you read the whole article and also go watch the movie Witness. Even though Elijah wrote that article in 2013, it is still available to view on Netflix and I already have it queued up to watch in the near future.
