duhbearz-14594

I got about minutes into this and realized the trite, horrible dialogue and grade school level acting was not a joke. There may have been a real story here but I could not see dedicating time to get there because it is so horribly done. I realize this is a christian movie, and that may irritate an atheist like me, but come on! You have to give a viewer something to think about other than just how awful a production is. I have watched hundreds of movies with messages I disagree with that still entertained me and made me think outside of my normal life experience.

So, christians, if you have message to impart, do so. But do it artistically, with subtlety and surprise and intrigue. I could tell this was a jesus movie in the first 30 seconds. So many christian movies have this same flavor of piety and trite innocence with a bad guy that speaks like he collected every alcoholic bad habit and addict phrase ever seen on screen and mimicked his way through a scene. These movies are so bad. They are less interesting than sitting through a stranger's family slide show of their trip to Disney World. If you want to spread your message of jesus' love, do it well or it will only be seen by people who already love your jesus, while gratingly irritating the rest. This is so bad that I feel embarrassed for everybody involved, because I don't think they know just how bad it is.

How many movies recently made have you seen that challenges uour religion or any religion? What aren't there many movies challenging religion? Because of where movies are made and sold. America has the overwhelmingly largest movie and television industry, as well as every other visual media. Christianity is the overwhelmingly largest religion in the USA. Get the connection? Why doesn't the booming film industry in Turkey criticize or challenge Islam, the dominant religion in country? Because of the fear of a massive loss in profits or losing one's own life. Religion, even in today's modern world, has kept itself mostly off limits for economic reasons and CEOs would also rather just avoid the Holy Hassle.

Heretic brilliantly disguises a challenge to all religion (and especially christianity) inside a "horror" movie. The blasphemy in this one is strong, and well articulated and rather extensive. Hugh Grant is brilliant as the atheist academic, well-spoken, well-read, well-organized and well-nutters. I have rarely seen such an astute criticism of religion in a film. The number of one-off comments and Christianity burns are ever present in many other movies, but these anti-christian comments are mostly to expand on the character qualities by the actor presenting the character. I must confess that I agree with everything Mr Reed (Hugh Grant) said about all religions and even "The Only Real Religion". Do I need to say I don't care much for his treatment of women and all that murder stuff, because I don't agree with that behavior at all. Christians will not agree with that behavior either, but they will be happy to see that deplorable behavior emanating from the dude who depises all religion (except for the One True Religion. Sorry, no spoilers here. Buy a ticket.) .

And that is the genius of the writers, producers and director. They knew exactly what they were doing. By making the critic of the all religions big and small, a madman, they have removed much of the onus of the criticized needing to criticize the critic a helpless pursuit. Because if they do criticize this movie, the religious will go see it and maybe do some research to be reminded that their branch of religion is but an iteration or a bundle of iterations of the religious iterations above them on the permutated tree of religious phylogenies. I have read about all of Mr. Reeds claims regarding the various holy phylogenetic connections to past religions that have landed their current mental memes and storylines into our lives. And I agree that religion may have began as an attempt to make sense of events and lives that were missing context, but these religious rules, characters and allegories were soon subsumed by power hungry or order seeking community bosses, sometimes known as holy men. And these holy men often claimed to be in direct contact with one or many of and order's main characters.

That today'religions are constructed from yesterday's emphasizes that humans have changed little when dealing with what we don't know. Every religion plays the god-of -the-gap game. When science or direct observation can't answer the why, how or what questions, you can be sure that the religious thought leader will give the credit to or referral to their god as an explanation. "Only god knows" will be the answer if they don't have an answer ready at hand. Or "because that's how god works and how he wants it".

"Science can't find the answer because science can't find god." Familiar? We can't find unicorns either.

So, please, I beg you to look up the facts that Mr Reed presents to the young ladies and apply what you find during your queries. Be a Mr. Or Ms. "Read". You may find that you can lose your religion like R. E. M and utilize that new found cerebral horsepower on something more important than fighting off your own cognitive dissonance to the "facts" that a virgin birthed a god, yhat a 600 year old man, along with his 100 year or so old sons built a yacht for every species and subspecies of every animal times at least 2, to prepare for a year long voyage. Also, all plants needed to be represented on that boat because they all died in the newly brackish water along with the total population of humans (Except for the Noah 8) because god loved them so. Wake up and enjoy the stories, just don't pay your pastors to tell the stories or to help you base your lives on myths that can neither be proven nor disproven. Leave your fear of God's judgement or wrath where it belongs. Anywhere but your mind. Of course if you fear you will lose your community, then keep pretending to believe, just like most everybody at your church or temple. Zeus be with you!

Not good. M Night laid a big dump on his sacrificial alter, handed his daughter a dull axe and told her to butcher this beast. Dads will do anything for their daughters, including giving their daughter a job she isn't suited for so they can be absurdly unsuccessful in the same venture. I'm sure she did well in school, which is good, as she explores new career options.

Was M Night trying to get his daughter put of show business? Because this movie is yhe big boot to move her on. I just don't get why he would hand her very bad dialogue for her to muddle her way through a facile plot. He set his daughter up to fail.

And this movie sets up a sequel, though I'm not sure who would finance a redo a story with really zero compelling characters and combinations of overacting and underacting, getting us to an ending that came too late. I wish Josh Hartnett had not taken so much time off acting. He was coming off some really good movies when he decided to leave the superficially of tinseltown. Did he get a new agent for his return? Because I think his current agent lost some bets and needs to pay them off by lending Josh's name to movies that shouldn't be made. This movie was so forced whole pretending to be carefree from the actors point of view. By trying to not appear like they were acting, it became glaringly obvious that they were acting and doing it badly.