Happy Monday! Hope you all had a nice weekend. I spent mine getting the house decorated for Christmas. I hate the amount of time that it takes us to “put up Christmas” both inside and out. On the other hand, I enjoy the fruits of our labor when the front of the house is all lit up and the inside has been transformed into a veritable wonderland with the ornamented and lit tree, the red and white table cloths, the mantle with lights and pine branches. It really is a special time of year and very festive.
One of the things we discovered as we were hauling out large plastic bins full of Christmas decor was that a mouse (two? more?) had gotten into a 25 lb. bag of rice that we had on a shelf in our storage room. They had nibbled through a corner of the bag.
We found out because a blow up mattress that we had to move to get at some decorations had rice falling out of it — there was literally a hole chewed in the plastic and something had been storing rice inside of it. That led us to the bag of rice and — I kid you not — fully three-quarters of it was gone. Gone! That’s 18.75 lbs. of rice! Where did they take it? Besides the blow-up mattress (which we had to throw out) we found another large pile of rice under the cushions on a sofa.
But we didn’t find 18 lbs. of rice. Where’s the rest of it?
I know, I know …. first world problems. But I was astonished that however many mice were helping themselves to the rice, they had moved almost 19 lbs. of it! If they had been smart mice, they would’ve just left it in the bag and come back to get what they needed when they needed it.
A few posts ago, I wrote about a new film from Angel Studios called “The Shift” and told you I’d let you know what I thought of it when I saw it. Well, I went to see it last night with the Missus, having gotten the specially-priced $5 tickets for us.
Let me start with what the film did well. The cinematography was excellent. Apart from one or two moments where the scenery felt low budget, the rest of it was extremely well shot. The majority of the movie has a dark, grim dystopian look which fits the sci-fi genre like any big budget Hollywood movie.
The acting is excellent. Neal McDonough (Yellowstone) turns in a terrifyingly real performance as the ice-cold villian known as “The Benefactor.” The protagonist, Kevin, played by Kristoffer Polaha (Jurassic World Dominion), and his wife, Molly, played by Elizabeth Tabish (The Chosen), both make their characters truly believeable, with some of the best dialogue I’ve heard in a Christian-themed movie when they meet in the opening scene.
The premise is intriguing. A married man (Kevin) is “shifted” from one reality to another by The Benefactor, where his life continues while trying to find a way back to Molly, while another Kevin apparently takes his place back in his original reality. It’s an imaginative plot that holds a lot of promise.
However, in my opinion, the movie fell short in both character development and in story-telling.
For instance, while Kevin and Molly’s relationship is developed quickly as a time-saving device, the development of other relationships is barely shown at all. After his initial encounter with The Benefactor, the next thing we know Kevin has been in his new reality for five years.
In his new reality, Kevin has to work, but we’re never shown how he gets his job or even what he does. We see him sneaking folded sheets of paper to a co-worker, Gabriel (Sean Astin, The Lord of the Rings), but we have no backstory to their relationship or why Kevin has chosen to give Gabriel these pages (they end up being scripture passages he recalls and types out, though not word-for-word). It’s obvious that having or citing scripture is illegal, but we don’t know what this reality is or who “owns” it.
In a restaurant scene, everyone in the place seems to know The Benefactor and is terrified of him. But we have no idea why. Is this The Benefactor’s “home” reality? Has he shifted all of these people to this reality and have they all decided to work for him? Why do they fear him if he promises to give them something they want in return for working for him? Or has he threatened or deceived them all?
One of the waitresses is clearly traumatized by The Benefactor. When she falls victim to a whim of Kevin’s through the power of The Benefactor, it’s not shocking because we don’t know her story. It’s holes like that in the plot that make it difficult to stay with it.
The other misstep, in my opinion, was the overt Christian messaging. I really think this movie, which is loosely based on the story of Job in the Old Testament, could have stood on its own if it strengthened the plotline and stayed away from the preachy-ness that often keeps movies like this from reaching a larger audience. Sound of Freedom, another Angel Studios product, was very successful in allowing the story itself to be the message, rather than using the dialogue to “explain” the message.
In the end, it was hard to keep up with and figure out what was going on as the story progressed. My better half didn’t like it at all. There were some things that I liked about it but overall I didn’t find it to be a great film, which is too bad. However, as a Christian-themed movie, the solid acting, cinematography and creative approach gives me hope that we’re making progress for faith-based films.