If you’re not interested in having Will Ferrell lecture you on the evils of capitalism this coming weekend and would instead prefer to cozy up at home before the warm glow of plasma with a cold one in one hand a Redbox receipt in the other, here are five fairly new-to-DVD flicks that won’t leave you feeling sucker punched.

1. The Road: Director John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winner was unforgivably snubbed for Oscar consideration last year, as was leading man Viggo Mortensen for his heart-wrenching work as a widowed father leading his adolescent son across a dangerous, barren  post-apocalyptic America. Muted, heartbreaking, and yet hopeful, this is a story about a father teaching his son about what it takes to survive at any cost other than losing your humanity. Perfectly acted, beautifully directed and paced in such a way that casts an hypnotic spell, “The Road” is part Christian allegory, part zombie movie, and boasts an unforgettable cameo by Robert Duvall. (more…)

Last week I posted an article from the Washington Post asking… “Hollywood Gets More Religious?” When the author of that piece used the planet-worshipping “Avatar” and Christian-ridiculing “Invention of Lying” to back his point that Hollywood’s suddenly jumped on the Religion Train I was skeptical, but left that one up to the readers to decide.

Agenda? What agenda?

Daniel Krandall over at “The American Culture” took a look at the same piece and smelled a different rat, but a rat nonetheless:

The only explanation I can come up with to explain those who deny Hollywood’s left-wing agenda is that they want to remain on the “Above the Line” cocktail party invite list. Either that they are lying to themselves, and are nothing more than useful idiots to left-wing ideologues.

The Washington Post recently reported on Hollywood’s turn toward films promoting spiritual themes. The litany of spiritual themed movies includes Avatar, The Road, The Invention of Lying, The Lovely Bones, The Blind Side, The Book of Eli, Legion, and The Last Station. While many might pause at the “spirituality” the Dream Factory promotes in some of these films, I was struck by this opening quote from Greg Wright, editor at HollywoodJesus.com:

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…so says Robert Butler in yesterday’s Washington Post: 

It’s everywhere at the multiplex these days: religion. Or if that word makes you uncomfortable, you can go with the more general “spirituality.”

Do you ever wish you would die?

No. It would be foolish to ask for luxuries during times like these.

Times like these represent a post-apocalyptic world where, for reasons never explained, civilization and most of every living creature has been wiped out; a world where forests and cities and mountains have been replaced by a grey barren landscape littered with dead trees; a world where the earth itself seems to grow impatient with the sound of footsteps, often starting fires and creating earthquakes in order to rid itself of any intrusion; a world where the last remnants of man roam in cannibalistic gangs hunting for food.

At first glance this may not sound like the kind of cinematic experience you’re looking for during the holidays. Not with glib Victorian-era detectives and CGI’d Smurfs to choose from. But director John Hillcoat’s spellbinding, emotionally moving, and frequently terrifying adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning “The Road” is, at least in spirit, richly rewarding and therefore perfect for this time of year. This is the rare film about something that matters.

Man (Viggo Mortensen) and Boy (Kodi Smit-McPhee) push a shopping cart down an empty road framed by tall, bare trees swaying in a wind that makes an unholy sound. Both are filthy, exhausted, constantly threatened by cannibals, always hungry, and father and son.  They head south towards the coast never knowing what’s around the corner. One day it could be marauders, the next a stash of non-perishable food. Why they’re headed in this direction doesn’t matter. What matters is what father teaches son along the way: “Keep the fire.”

That fire is our own humanity. (more…)

The Oscar-nominated movies in recent years have been enough to make a grown man cry… Or worse. Consider “There Will Be Blood,” “No Country for Old Men” and “The Reader” as a sampling of the morbid films jockeying for Oscar glory. This year, add Oscar wannabes “The Road” and “Precious” to the list.

Newsweek scribe Ramin Setoodeh writes about the trend in the liberal magazine’s latest edition. Setoodeh bemoans the fact that some of the best films lately take a too sober view of society. On that we can agree.

Then, Setoodeh whips out his trusty Bush bashing cudgel and starts a whacking:

You can blame Hollywood’s doom and gloom on the Oscars, but I’m not going to. Instead, I think it’s George W. Bush’s fault. Most liberal directors felt restless under his presidency, and they pushed the envelope with over-the-top, operatic tragedies. (more…)

With only a day to go until Thanksgiving, Hollywood’s latest tale of post-catastrophe life ensures that audiences are truly thankful for what they have this year.

“The Road” is the dark post-apocalyptic journey of an unnamed man (Viggo Mortensen) and his young son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) as they travel from desolate, dangerous middle America toward the east coast. They hope to find remnants of civilized life there and to recreate what they lost in the mysterious unnamed cataclysm—probably a nuclear war—that left the world lifeless. Lifeless, that is, except for roving bands of cannibals and a few other pilgrims, like them, who search for some semblance of the past.

 The film is directed by John Hillcoat and adapted by Joe Penhall from Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. While not a classically scary film, I still sat on the edge of my seat for the entire 119 minutes. “Bad guys” rarely appear, but the knowledge that at any point cannibals could find the protagonists is disconcerting, and by the end of the film I was emotionally drained from the tense world in which the man and the boy live.

Much like McCarthy’s other work adapted for the screen, “No Country for Old Men,” a sense of hopelessness pervades this film. Early on, a roving band forces Mortensen to use one of his last two bullets—bullets presumably being saved for a desperate murder-suicide when hope finally runs out. From there, the run-ins with cannibals and a few other travelers never end happily. At best the encounters are bleak. Even at the end of “The Road,” hope for the future is tempered by the chilling terrors of the past, and the knowledge that further horrors await. (more…)

It’s the end of the world – and I feel haunted

Imagine that the entire world as you’ve known it has come to an end right before your eyes. Almost everyone has died, or gone crazy scavenging for food, even becoming cannibals in the name of survival. Your beautiful wife, who was the light of your life, left you to wander off in the night and die rather than endure another terrifying day of huddling from the elements and hiding from the human monsters that most everyone else has become. 

And now all that’s left is you – and the ten-year-old son whose care has become your entire purpose of your existence. You had a good life once – until just a decade before – with a dignified career, nights at the opera, and joy emanating from every pore of your beautiful spouse. But now it’s all a memory, and a fading one at that. You haven’t been called by your own name in so long that you and your son are only known as Man and Boy. 

What then, the universe asks? Do you keep a faith in God, or curse the hopelessness around you? Do you try to maintain the fire of a good soul and pass moral values to your son, or do you let your morals and humanity eventually slip away? If your morals slip away in the middle of nowhere, does anyone notice? 

Those are the questions that lie at the root of director John Hillcoat’s profoundly moving adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Road.” Starring Viggo Mortensen in an alternately feral and saintly performance of shattering emotional depth – his are the most haunted eyes I’ve ever seen sustained in a film performance – it is a film that doesn’t shy from some of the most disturbing questions of human existence, yet also guides viewers gently through to a sense of grace and hope that will move, for even days afterward, those brave enough to take the journey.  (more…)