New on circuit on February 22.

Beautiful Creatures

By John Mulderig, Catholic News Service

On its surface, the Gothic romance “Beautiful Creatures” comprises a passable, if pretentious, blend of supernatural elements reminiscent of the “Twilight” franchise and a lush setting straight out of a Nicholas Sparks adaptation.

But a mixed religious outlook makes the occult elements underlying writer-director Richard LaGravenese’s screen version of Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s 2009 novel more troubling than they might otherwise seem.

In fact, few in the targeted audience of teen date movie consumers are likely to possess the discernment necessary to bring this kaleidoscope of positive and negative spiritual attitudes into proper focus.

Viewed from the perspective of restless teen Ethan Wate (Alden Ehrenreich), life in the small town of Gatlin, S.C., is nothing short of a nightmare. Overrun with churches and populated by moronic, book-banning evangelical Christians, it’s a venue of stultifying boredom.

All that begins to change, though, with the arrival of mysterious new-girl-in-town Lena Duchannes (Alice Englert), for whom Ethan quickly falls.

Like Ethan, who can’t get enough of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s “Slaughterhouse-Five,” Lena is a literary rebel. She not only fancies Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” – which the Gatlin authorities, for unexplained reasons, have seen fit to censor – but the works of anarchic poet Charles Bukowski as well. (How LaGravenese resists the temptation to drop angst icon Sylvia Plath’s name into the mix is anyone’s guess.)

Since Lena’s blue-state cultural tastes obviously make her “different,” her blinkered classmates and their equally close-minded parents jump to the ridiculous conclusion that she’s a witch. Thing is, they’re right. But Ethan is no disapproving Darrin Stephens of “Bewitched,” so this revelation doesn’t bother him a bit.

Still, it’s not all monotony-breaking fun and games for Ethan and Lena. Their heterogeneous relationship draws the steadfast opposition of Lena’s warlock uncle and guardian Macon Ravenwood (Jeremy Irons); it also places them at risk due to the schemes of her spell-casting mother, Sarafine (Emma Thompson).

Appropriately, given that he’s 17 and she’s approaching her 16th birthday – a pivotal event in the life of a young witch, so we’re told – Ethan and Lena’s physical interaction is generally restrained. One scene, however, does end ambiguously enough to leave the audience wondering whether their on-screen necking leads on, after the cut-away, to something less acceptable.

In the case of Ethan’s best pal, Link (Thomas Mann), plot complications and writhing visuals leave us in no doubt that he has been seduced, as well as bewitched, by Ridley (Emmy Rossum), a troublemaking relative of Lena’s.

By contrast to the mercilessly caricatured Anglo-Saxons of Gatlin, the burgh’s African-American librarian Amma (Viola Davis) is enlightenment personified. Thus she blithely combines her role as a custodian of conjuring lore – as well as her practice of seeking guidance from deceased ancestors after placating them by placing titbits of their favourite foods on top of their graves – with faithful church attendance.

The wrap-up does celebrate the power of sacrificial love, a theme obviously in keeping with scriptural faith, and even a local preacher’s sermon is used to reinforce this message. But by then, most of the Christians of Gatlin have been shown to be so hateful – and witchcraft portrayed as so much fun – that impressionable viewers may be too confused to pick the wheat from the chaff.

The film contains an ambivalent portrayal of Christianity, brief sacrilegious behaviour  restrained scenes of violence with fleeting gore, semi-graphic non-marital sexual activity, at least one use of profanity and some crude and crass language.

 

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters

By Kurt Jensen, Catholic News Service

The title doesn’t quite say it all about “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters”. There’s not so much witch-hunting going on as there is non-stop splatter, sans dialogue, hung on far less plot than a video game.

Witches are shot, stabbed, blown up, slain by crossbows, hacked to pieces while flying on brooms, beheaded by farm implements, burned — everything but melted.

Writer-director Tommy Wirkola “updates” the Grimm Brothers fairy tale first by showing the original, in which a young brother and sister are abandoned in the forest by their father, find a house made of gingerbread and candy, and are instantly imprisoned by the witch therein. She fattens Hansel on sugary treats (to snack on him later) while trying to sacrifice Gretel because the girl’s heart will give her special powers. They break loose and roast said witch in her oven.

Evidently, this gives them a career goal, and the scenario quickly shifts to grown-up Hansel (Jeremy Renner) and Gretel (Gemma Arterton), clad in tight black leather as heavily armed mercenaries. With their arsenal of advanced weaponry, they clear out that old black magic from around medieval Augsburg, Germany, and rescue accused witch Mina (Pihla Viitala) from a Salem-type mob of dentally challenged peasants.

If there’s witch-hunting to be done, it has to be by professionals, and, the siblings insist, “The only good witch is a dead witch.”

They contend with loutish Sheriff Berringer (Peter Stormare) and their arch-enemy Muriel (Famke Janssen), leader of the “dark witches.” They have to stop her before the coming of the “blood moon,” which involves the sacrifice of children by a coven of plug-uglies on a mountaintop.

They also have to deal with their abandonment issues, their mother having been a “white witch,” Hansel’s diabetes from all the sugar he consumed as a child, and his attraction to Mina. The result is more a noisy, numbing, immoral assault than a viewing experience.

The film contains pervasive gory violence, a vengeance theme, fleeting rear and upper female nudity and some rough and crude language.

 

The Sessions

By John Mulderig, Catholic News Service

It’s hardly a surprise when a contemporary Hollywood film showcases errant sexual values. What is disconcerting in the case of the fact-based drama “The Sessions” (Fox Searchlight) is the fact that such a skewed understanding of human sexuality should be subscribed to by a character representing a real-life Catholic priest.

As recounted, apparently, in the autobiographical writings from which the movie is adapted, devoutly Catholic 38-year-old journalist and poet Mark O’Brien (John Hawkes) has sought the advice of the clergyman in question, one Father Brendan (William H. Macy), because he finds himself in unenviable circumstances: Paralysed from the neck down by a childhood bout of polio, and forced to spend most of his time in an iron lung, O’Brien has been deprived — among many other things — of the opportunity for physical intimacy.

Having decided to engage the services of a so-called sex surrogate to “remedy” this situation, O’Brien wants Father Brendan’s OK for his proposed course of action. Sadly, that approval is all-too-readily forthcoming.

Sympathetic but irresolute Father Brendan, who has previously bemoaned that his training for the priesthood has equipped him with nothing more than a few “vague ideas,” takes a moment to pray, then opines that Jesus will give O’Brien “a pass on this one.” So O’Brien should “go for it.”

However distressing the memoirist’s plight, Father Brendan’s proper response, of course, should have been to counsel his parishioner that all sexual activity outside of marriage is objectively sinful, and that personal misfortunes, physical or otherwise, cannot alter eternal moral truths.

Given those facts, he should have exhorted O’Brien to exercise his baptismal priesthood by sacrificially embracing the chastity appropriate to his state in life. Undeniably, it would have taken courage to offer such guidance, and courage to accept it. But the cowardly alternative only appears to be compassionate.

So it’s off to the races with surrogate Cheryl (Helen Hunt), who insists that, although she’s being paid to have sex, her role is quite distinct from that of a prostitute — though how exactly she never manages to explain. Things only become more jarring when we’re given a glimpse of Cheryl’s home life with her husband and teenage son, since this raises the ethical stakes by introducing the element of adultery.

Although the titular encounters between the two main characters are not prurient or pornographic, they are nonetheless excessively explicit.

Writer-director Ben Lewin’s script, moreover, displays an initially ambiguous, but ultimately negative attitude toward its protagonist’s faith — which Cheryl predictably identifies as a source of guilt and inhibition for O’Brien. Cheryl explains that she herself was raised Catholic but has long since thrown the church over.

In fact, Cheryl is about to convert to her husband’s faith — Judaism. A ritual mikvah bath undertaken as part of that process becomes an opportunity to show the Jewish faith as more body-positive than Catholicism.

The film contains anti-Catholic bias, a priest character who fails to uphold church teaching, strong sexual content, including graphic scenes of adulterous sexual activity with full nudity, a benign view of non-marital and aberrant sex, at least one rough term and occasional crude and crass language.