Author: Greg Batiansila

  • I Can Only Imagine

    I Can Only Imagine

    For the approximately six of you who have read my previous, somewhat (mostly?) pretentious, overly-hyperlinked reviews here, you’ll recall my contention that if Christians should prevail at any sort of filmmaking, it will be documentaries. That’s because we Christians have stories to tell, and documentaries are about story first. Cinematography is a nice to have,…

  • Mully

    Mully

    Mully is a documentary that tells the story of the extraordinary life of Charles Mully. Mully’s story is so impossible that if you pitched it to a studio, they’d tell you to try telling a true story with some elements of reality in it. Come to think of it, if you pitched Mully’s story to your…

  • 5 Truths About Christian Film Festivals

    5 Truths About Christian Film Festivals

    I recently attended a Christian film festival. My short The Lost Keys was named a semi-finalist there, so I thought I’d go and find out what we were the semi-finalist of, and get an idea of the landscape of Christian film at the grassroots level. I’m not going to name the film festival, since I don’t…

  • Love and Friendship / Bad Moms

    Love and Friendship / Bad Moms

    A couple of films were released this summer, and they did not have a Giant Beam of Light extending from the sky to the earth. I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only person who would have observed it, and alas, I am not. This guy calls the Giant Beam of Light the “cargo shorts…

  • The Machinery of Grading Movies

    The Machinery of Grading Movies

    “‘You don’t get the point,’ he wanted to explain; ‘the picture you see doesn’t consist of the things you see and say words about. There is something else, something you don’t see at all, something you aren’t intended to see. Look at this one over here, by the door here, where the light from the…

  • The Revenant

    The Revenant

    Let’s just get this out of the way: DiCaprio is magnificent in The Revenant. Give him an Oscar. It’s a part that requires a passion very few other actors possess, or at least are capable of revealing. Then again, I did say “very few.” That’s because it wouldn’t take much to see Daniel Day Lewis…

  • Ant-Man / Bridge of Spies

    Ant-Man / Bridge of Spies

    Ant-Man doesn’t deserve some of its problems. A few – like “why was this made at all?” – might never be clearly resolved. That problem is wrapped firmly in the claws of another problem: the very public divorce between the film’s original writer – who was also going to direct the project – and Marvel…

  • Inside Out

    Inside Out

    While Hollywood relentlessly seeks its next billion dollar tentpole – a Ghostbusters UNIVERSE? – maybe MIB meets 21 Jump Street? Oh, so Wasp is in Phase 3? – Pixar’s approach and process can now be deemed innovation: meticulously crafting films, characters, and stories on an aggressively slow timeline, collaboratively, with a widely-shared and admired approach…