Home Movies

Blu-Ray cover for Risen.
Blu-Ray cover for Risen.

Risen,

directed by Kevin Reynolds

(PG-13, 107 minutes)

Risen is more nuanced than many so-called faith-based films. But it's still a specialty product that's likely to appeal only to believers, and only because its message is in line with their beliefs.

What's most encouraging about Risen is its refusal to retreat into awe and wonder. For much of its playing time, it maintains a certain skepticism about its central mystery by playing like a police procedural set in Judea in A.D. 33.

Clavius (Joseph Fiennes) is an ambitious Roman tribune who acts as a sheriff for the occupied country. We meet him as he leads a raid on a band of Jewish resisters and coolly executes their leader.

Immediately after, he's summoned by Pontius Pilate (Peter Firth) to oversee the crucifixion of a troublemaker claiming to be the Jewish messiah. Clavius rides to the crucifixion site, orders the soldiers to expedite the execution, and, when a man appears with documents to claim the body of the man called Yeshua (Cliff Curtis), better known these days as Jesus, Clavius signs off on the release.

Pilate and the Jewish high priests are concerned that Yeshua's followers might steal the body and claim that the messiah has arisen. So Clavius assigns a couple of soldiers to guard the tomb, which has been sealed by a huge stone lashed with ropes.

As you can figure, Yeshua's body disappears anyway. Clavius is charged with investigating, with the help of Lucius (Tom Felton). The most interesting part of the film involves Clavius and Lucius threatening and cajoling witnesses as they search for the missing corpse, or at least a corpse that can represent Yeshua.

The final act encounters a problem inherent to all films that feature miracles as dramatic devices: Clavius is more interesting when he's a cynical investigator trying to figure out what sort of scam Yeshua's disciples are running. Then he sees the evidence with his own eyes. By becoming a believer, he loses much of what made him worth watching.

The Finest Hours (PG-13, 117 minutes) Chris Pine stars in this heavily CG'd adventure drama about a dangerous wave-tossed 1952 Coast Guard rescue of a broken oil tanker off the coast of Cape Cod. It's not The Perfect Storm, but it has its moments. With Eric Bana, Casey Affleck, Ben Foster, Holliday Grainger; directed by Craig Gillespie.

Zoolander 2 (PG-13, 102 minutes) Ben Stiller's Zoolander came out some 15 years ago. A spoof of fashion and self-important models, it did modest box office and carried itself further on word-of-mouth on cable and DVD viewings.

Derek Zoolander was a one-joke character: the world's most formidable male supermodel but an absolute dunderhead outside of the tightly cloistered realm of fashion. Why Stiller felt like now is the right time to fire up the leather pants and fur-covered smoking jackets again is unknown but, as becomes clear very quickly in this sequel, that is not a question anyone much bothered to ask.

The film often resorts to a Celebrity Laugh-In model, cramming scenes with as many peculiarly familiar faces as it can -- think Demi Lovato, Fred Armisen, Justin Bieber, Kiefer Sutherland, Willie Nelson, Katy Perry, Neil Degrasse Tyson -- and giving them a joke line or two for their day on the set.

One would hope Stiller would have crafted a better epitaph for his comic career than this, but perhaps it is the most fitting way for him to go out.

How to Be Single (R, 110 minutes) Too much cast for too little movie, this romantic comedy fails to connect with its predictable story of a search for love from a female perspective. With Dakota Johnson, Leslie Mann, Rebel Wilson, Alison Brie, Damon Wayans Jr.; directed by Christian Ditter.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Rust Never Sleeps (not rated, 116 minutes) This concert documentary from Neil Young and Crazy Horse's 1978 tour, best viewed by the musicians' hard-core fans, features performances of "Cinnamon Girl," "Like a Hurricane" and acoustic and electric versions of "Hey Hey My My." With Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina; directed by Young.

MovieStyle on 05/27/2016

Upcoming Events