Gerard Butler began his career by playing good-looking, muscular men like King Leonidas in ‘300.’ But too often the parts Butler chose were one-dimensional, like the sexist relationship advice writer who falls in love with Katherine Heigl in ‘The Ugly Truth.’

The same can be said of his performance in 2010’s ‘The Bounty Hunter,’ where he and Jennifer Aniston looked stunning together but we had little reason to care about their relationship.

In the newly-released ‘Machine Gun Preacher,’ Butler plays a burly ex-con who finds Jesus and wants to rebuild his life and help the children of East Africa. And, to Butler’s credit, he pulls off this complex character rather well.

Based on a true story, Gerard Butler plays Sam Childers, a former bike gang member, armed robber and heroin addict. After coming out of prison, Childers discovers his wife (Michelle Monaghan) has found God and considers herself Christian. Childers relapses and, after another crime, realizes that he wants to give religion a try, too. He ends up embracing Christianity and building a church where all the ‘mess-ups’ can come when they want to worship. Childers’ boisterous personality flows into his preaching, and he finds a new way to live his life. (more…)

The man known as the Machine Gun Preacher doesn’t consider himself a violent person.

“I will do whatever it takes to rescue a child. If it takes standing up to protect someone, I’m not going to use the word violence,” says Sam Childers, the subject of the new Gerard Butler film “Machine Gun Preacher.”

The movie, directed by “Quantum of Solace’s” Marc Forster, recalls Childers’ stunning transformation from drug addled ex-con to a preacher who risks his life to save Sudanese children from the LRA. The film co-stars Michael Shannon, Kathy Baker and Michelle Monaghan as Childers’ patient wife Lynn. And yes, the titular preacher is packing some serious heat.

Childers, a stocky gent with a handlebar mustache and a no-nonsense stare, says his brush with fame happened slowly enough to let him process it on his own terms.

A 2005 segment on “Dateline NBC” first introduced Childers to the public, and suddenly he was besieged by offers to write about his remarkable life. “Another Man’s War: The True Story of One Man’s Battle to Save Children in the Sudan” let Childers share his saga in print, but he approached a screen version of his life with caution.

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In July, South Sudan officially ended its decades-long struggle for independence from Sudan, the northern region controlled by Arab Muslims who tried for years to force Islam on the mostly Christian south. While the war is officially over, another battle continues, in Southern Sudan, and northern parts of Uganda. That war is waged against the terrorist organization known as the Lord’s Resistance Army, a wild force without a real goal beyond violence and destruction.

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Since the late 1990s, an American preacher has stood against this threat, his orphanage a safe haven in the ravaged land. That man is Sam Childers, a violent drug-dealing biker who underwent a mostly complete transformation after coming to Christ. I say mostly because two things haven’t changed: He still loves motorcycles, and he still loves to fight. Now though, he fights not in dim-lit bars after too many drinks, but in Africa against the LRA. There, he and a few soldiers from the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army take the conflict to the LRA. When LRA soldiers attack a village – intent on torturing, murdering or kidnapping its inhabitants – Sam and his team ride in, guns blazing, to stop them.

“Machine Gun Preacher” is that amazing story, told with great authenticity (thus the R rating) by screenwriter Jason Keller and acclaimed director Marc Forster, whose previous work includes “Monster’s Ball,” “Finding Neverland” and “Quantum of Solace.” A uniting force to Forster’s wide array of films is great characters, and he’s found an epic in Sam Childers, played forcefully by Gerard Butler.

It’s a compelling and accurate portrait of the preacher as a killer angel, the story of one man’s personal journey from drugs and theft into ministry on two continents.

Keller’s story crunches 30 years of Sam’s life into a few hours, and Forster’s film flows quickly from one moment to the next, roughly splicing scenes together with music and voice-over (but not narration) linking them. Forster’s transitions are artistic, though more easily appreciated the second time around.

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Dragons transcend cultural bounds. The Greeks had hydras, depending on your Bible the Israelite prophet Daniel slew a dragon in Babylon, the Chinese zodiac features a dragon and Europe has its own tales including the Catholic story of Saint George.

In addition, dragons are a formidable, if not the ultimate, opponent. They are intelligent creatures that can sometimes talk—see “The Hobbit”—and have armor for skin and a flame-thrower for a mouth. No one wants to fight a dragon unless they are incredibly brave or stupid, or both.

Enter Dreamworks’ Vikings of Berk who star in what is sure to be an instant classic, “How to Train Your Dragon.” This film has a fighting spirit, a huge heart and comedy that transcends age and gender.

Inspired by British author Cressida Cowell’s book by the same title, but really more like a prequel, “How to Train Your Dragon” chronicles the life of young Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III (Jay Baruchel), a Viking boy with a lot of brains, but lacking brawn, who is determined to slay a dragon and gain the respect of his father, Viking chief Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler). But his ambitions change when an encounter with a dragon leads to a relationship that defies everything the Vikings know about dragons, and, through the course of an adventure packed with fast flight, epic battles and a little bit of love, changes village life forever.  (more…)

You’re not using the Almighty’s name in vain when you mean it. So everybody all together now: God Damn the Shaky-Cam.   

Was it Spielberg with “Saving Private Ryan” who started the shaky-cam phenomenon or was it “NYPD Blue?” Whatever. My suggestion is that we build a time machine to locate and eradicate the host virus. Not through violence, through a plea to their humanity (unless it’s Paul Greengrass — we’ll ring his doorbell and run) and DVD examples of what their monster will become.  Then we’ll go back to 1941 where you can drop me off in front of Barbara Stanwyck’s house.

Maybe, possibly, inside the jittery mess that is “Gamer,” there sits an ‘80’s style actioner — an unpretentious time killer with an interesting premise,  lots of action and a little gratuitous nudity to get you through a slimmer than slim story. There’s just no way to tell because you can’t see anything, and the epileptic camera is only part of the problem. The cinematography’s completely washed out and every time you get any kind of fix on what’s happening a wavy, electronic-transmission effect is added for no reason other than to add it. (more…)

Hollywood execs seem to be waking up to the power of women at America’s multiplexes. The success of He’s Just Not That Into You (Warner Bros) and this weekend’s Confessions of a Shopaholic (Disney) can be traced to Meryl Streep’s witty riff on the tyrannical Anna Wintour in The Devil Wears Prada in the summer of 2006. Prada opened to a $27.5M weekend on its way to a $124.75M domestic cume (Streep also earned an Oscar nomination).

Then in July of 2007, New Line grabbed an almost identical $27.47M with the opening weekend of the female-skewing Hairspray, translating to $118.87M domestic. Also Enchanted, starring Amy Adams, was a hit for Disney over the holidays reaching $127.8M domestic.

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