Thrill-ride to redemption

{mosimage}There's no reason to think a movie that moves so much you may need Gravol with your popcorn is necessarily a good thing, but The Bourne Supremacy is a much better wild ride than you might expect from an action movie sequel whose title seems aimed at 13-year-old wrestling fans.

Underneath the juvenile title is a very adult film that uses the paranoid's paradise conceit of the international thriller genre to probe questions of identity, sin and redemption.

Matt Damon again plays Jason Bourne, a young soldier brainwashed by an ultra secret arm of the CIA to be the American government's assassin. When we last saw him in The Bourne Identity, he had woken up with amnesia and the instincts of a very efficient killer.

A western that parallels events today

{mosimage}Contrary to rumours carried by the better class of newspaper, western movies are not dead and will not die. The west, the frontier, the endless sky, the open plain, the man on horseback, the pistol, the rifle, the Indian, the settler, the rancher and the farmer have a claim on the American imagination because they're there in American history.

Or, never mind the history. Director Ron Howard's new movie demonstrates that the beautiful landscape of mountains and plains is still beautiful - still the best backdrop a movie could ever hope for.

Dark vs. light, Russian style

{mosimage}For those who found the Lord of the Rings trilogy a tad bombastic and perhaps simplistic in its fairyland reduction of the forces of light and forces of darkness into two massively clashing armies, now there’s an alternative — from Russia, with love.

Zombie sequel reaps what it sows

When Hieronymus Bosch painted hell in the 15th century it was shocking, thrilling and repulsive. The same was true of the 2002 British horror movie 28 Days Later.

Making a choice: to forgive or not

TORONTO - To discover the meaning of forgiveness, film maker Johanna Lunn had to consider the nature of evil.


“In the course of making the film, I really had to ask myself, ‘What is evil?’ I’m forever, eternally an optimist and would maybe secretly like to believe that evil doesn’t exist,” Lunn told The Catholic Register before Forgiveness: Stories for Our Time was to premiere in Toronto’s annual Hot Docs Festival in late April. The film will be shown on CTV May 26.

De Palma’s ode to the fruitlessness of war

{mosimage}Director Brian de Palma is obviously outraged, morally scandalized, angered and saddened by the war in Iraq. A Catholic educated in Quaker schools who came of age protesting the Vietnam War in the 1960s, de Palma is not the kind of American President George Bush can count on for support.

Documentary explores new style of mother-daughter relationship

{mosimage}TORONTO - Mothers moving in with their adult daughters is the focus of a TVOntario  documentary being filmed.

Critics pan The Da Vinci Code

{mosimage}CANNES, France - Toward the end of the movie The Da Vinci Code, the main character, Robert Langdon, tells his sleuthing partner, Sophie Neveu: "You are the last living descendent of Jesus Christ."

Despite poor reviews, Da Vinci phenomenon grows

{mosimage}Finally, the buildup to The Da Vinci Code movie release is over and we can now dispense with speculation about its faithfulness to the famous novel by Dan Brown. All in all, the movie follows the novel quite faithfully, with all of its wild and erroneous claims about "real" history. And, the movie has no notice that it is based on a work of fiction. There is no disclaimer about the picture it presents of Opus Dei or of traditional Christian orthodoxy. However, it is quite significant that both Ron Howard and Tom Hanks played up the element of fiction in interviews, rather than bragging about Brown's alleged incredible research. Neither was inclined to give serious attention to the fact that the movie was advertised with the line: "seek the truth."

Movie's Pro-Life Message Connects With Viewers

{mosimage}HAMILTON, Ont. - A movie much anticipated by Canada’s pro-life community because of its life-affirming message is set to make its debut in this country after having an impact south of the border.

Oscar nominees: Forgive us our sins

{mosimage}It’s always a mistake to imagine we know exactly what original sin is. Narrowing it down to illicit sex, lies, greed, violence etc. narrows down our humanity and tempts us to imagine that by some heroic effort or stroke of genius or act of contrition we might make it all right, take back that original sin, undo the fall.

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