Confessions of a Liberal Puritan

Just a quick note on a couple of movies I finally saw this week: "The Second Chance" and "Mrs. Henderson Presents".

I say 'finally' not in the sense that they've been out forever (as far as I know, neither of them has been playing in my city very long), but because it's been quite a while since my last trip to the movie theater.

"The Second Chance" was a film I knew little about, except that a friend who works for a United Methodist education ministry (I forget the actual acronym) had sent 'round an email some weeks ago saying that she'd heard the buzz on this film and it sounded like something that 'church folks' should probably try to see, whenever it finally made it to the theaters. So, I figured 'what the hey!' and shelled out my six bucks for the matinee at one of my local theaters.

I have to say, the film was much better than I'd expected (my prejudices generally run high against 'serious' movies dealing with ministers and the inner city and starring performers I've never heard of before). I only found out while watching the closing credits that the film had been shot on location at several churches in the Nashville area (including one Baptist mega-church that's right around the corner from the little Presbyterian church I preached at this morning), but even without recognizing the specific locations, I did recognize the dilemmas faced by the inner-city pastor frustrated with 'guilt crumbs' from white suburban Christians and fed up with gangs and drugs encroaching on his ministry, as well as the temptations and fears plaguing the white suburban 'rock-star' preacher trying to follow in his father's footsteps. I especially liked the ending, which didn't try to tie everything up in a nice, neat bow or answer all the questions, but merely brought a moment of hope and reflection, raising a host of possibilities for what might happen next. (Come to think of it, it kind of reminded me of Mark's Gospel, ending with the empty tomb and the women keeping silence in Mark 16:8, and leaving it to the believing community to fill in 'the rest of the story'.)

I thoroughly enjoyed "Mrs. Henderson Presents" (as did the mostly middle-aged and older crowd I saw it with, which was skewed only slightly towards the female demographic), even though it was not the best or most challenging performance I've ever seen from Dame Judy Dench (not her fault -- the character was fun, but the script didn't provide her with too many challenges, merely contenting itself with utilizing her undeniable comedic talents). I was more startled by how much I enjoyed Bob Hoskins' performance as the middle-class and occasionally uptight theater manager with a heart of gold, since the last time I'd seen him in the theater, he'd been playing yet another lowerclass gangster and treating Jet Li like an attack dog in "Unleashed". I don't remember ever seeing Bob Hoskins play this sort of character before, and he was awfully good at it. Not at all my type, but it didn't take him long to convince me and the rest of the audience that the upper-crust pseudo-ditz played by Dench WOULD go for him in a big way.