The Giver

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for a mature thematic image and some sci-fi action/violence

Appropriate for: Ages 13+
Genre: Sci-Fi Drama
Length: 94 minutes
Year of Release: 2014

In sixteen-year-old Jonas’ world, everything is black and white. Red, yellow, blue, and green are unheard-of qualities. No color exists. To the eyes of every person in Jonas’ community, the entire world consists of varying hues of gray. Sight is not the only thing that is colorless for these people, though. The individual lives of the people in the community are colorless as well. From the clothing they wear and the houses they live in to the feelings they experience, everything is uniform and regulated. There is no personal property. There are no personal emotions. All this is made possible by the daily injections everybody in the community takes. And, because of it, everyone is happy. At least, as happy as emotionless, colorless people who have no memories of defining life experiences can be.

This is how the Elders meant it to be. The rules against lying, imprecise language, staying out past curfew, and the rest were all instituted so that the people in the community would be able to live in harmony. By eliminating colors and any sense of individuality, the Elders were also able to eliminate emotions like love, hate, and sadness that only brought death and conflict to a world that almost ended in war. It’s now the year 2048 AD, and utopia has been achieved.

At the community’s Ceremony of Growth, Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) and his two close friends, Fiona (Odeya Rush) and Asher, receive the assignments for the jobs they will perform the rest of their lives. Asher is assigned to pilot drones, and Fiona is placed in the nurturing center, where she will help care for the babies that are produced by the assigned mothers of the community. But Jonas—his job is special. The Elders assign him to become the next Receiver of Memory. As he commences his training with the previous Receiver, now known as “The Giver” (Jeff Bridges), Jonas begins to see things that no one else but the Giver can see. He begins to feel things that only he and the Giver can feel. And he’s not so sure that the world is better off without these colors and without these feelings—even if they sometimes cause him pain. Although the words “war” and even “hate” are unheard of in his community, Jonas discovers that death itself has a home there—and no one but he recognizes it because only he knows what it means to love.

Due to some thematic elements and mature themes, this movie probably isn’t a film for young children to watch. However, there is no crude language to speak of, and the boy-girl content is limited to two or three innocent kisses. Even the violence is minimal. One character punches a boy in the face, and a group of security guards chase down the character, ending in a motorcycle chase. The character is also tracked down by a drone and is almost killed when the drone drops him from high in the air. During Jonas’ training, the Giver and Jonas enter the memory of a war. In that memory, Jonas sees people being shot to death. He also enters a memory of an elephant hunt. The memory ends as Jonas sees the hunters shooting the animal. Even in Jonas’ community, death has its presence. Also during his training, Jonas learns that unhealthy babies and elderly people are killed by injections. He begins to recognize that, although his community does not suffer from the violence he saw in that memory of war, the people of the community have made death at home by killing those who are considered “unfit to live” by the community’s standards. Although parts of the movie can get a little intense, The Giver presents and deals with its tough themes really well. The content is best suited to teens and adults, but even mature pre-teens could likely handle the content with some guidance from adults.  

Of all the movies I’ve seen and reviewed this summer, this movie is one of the best. I put it right up there with The Book Thief. It’s not action-packed, the acting isn’t incredible, and the story isn’t thrilling, but this is a solid movie—it’s a beautiful movie. The Giver is based on Lois Lowry’s book of the same name and examines the future of society if this world continues to move in the direction it is currently heading. I have heard from various sources that the movie does not stay quite true to the original story and would, therefore, be disappointing to fans of the book. However, as a movie, The Giver succeeds in communicating a poignant message that the postmodern world needs to hear. It examines the facets of human nature and deftly explores crucial themes such as the sanctity of human life, the centrality of choice, and the purpose of existence.

The Giver addresses the age-old question that the human race has been asking since the Garden of Eden: Why give humans the freedom of choice if they will tend to choose evil every time? This movie reminds us that life is not true life without choice. Without choice and the driving force of emotions, there can be no hate—but there can also be no love. In John 14:21, Jesus said, “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” In other words, those who love God will choose to obey him. If God had not given humans the choice to obey him in the Garden of Eden, humans would not have had the ability to love him or to love at all. Without love, what is life? In The Giver, Jonas discovers that the lives of the people in his community are so empty without colors, without emotions… without love. They may be free from violence, hate, and war, but, at the same time, they are missing the things that make life real. There could be so much more to their lives if only they could have the ability to choose love over hate and life over death instead of living lives of nearly mindless actions and shallow feelings.

The Giver is a must-see. The message alone and the questions it raises are worth your money, and the tender beauty and innocence of this film is worth watching over and over again.

The Death Cure

Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Appropriate for: Ages 13+

Genre: Young Adult Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi

Length: 336 pages

Year of Publication: 2011

(This book is a sequel to The Maze Runner and The Scorch Trials.)

It’s been twenty-five days. Twenty-five days alone in a white cell in the headquarters of WICKED. Thomas is alone—separated from his friends, the rest of the Gladers. They had survived the Scorch Trials, and their promised reward was supposed to be a cure for the Flare, the deadly disease that ravages a world half destroyed by sun flares. Before the Scorch Trials, Thomas and his friends had been told that they were all already infected by the Flare and that the cure would be given to those who survived the trek across the burning desert land known as the Scorch. But it had just been another one of the organization WICKED’s lies. There had been no cure at the end for Thomas or his friends. For Thomas, there was only his white-walled cell and three weeks alone with his own thoughts. Where his friends are—he has no way of knowing.

On day twenty-six of his solitary confinement, however, the door of Thomas’ cell opens. The man who had spoken to the Gladers before the Scorch Trials enters and tells Thomas something he doesn’t quite expect: Thomas is immune to the Flare, and he always has been. In fact, most of the other Gladers and girls from Group B are immune too. The Maze, the Scorch… it was all an experiment. It was a test performed to see how brains of people immune to the Flare react to certain variables. The goal was to find a cure for the Flare.

But every experiment needs a control group. Some of the Gladers aren’t immune. Some of them are already on their way to succumbing to the Flare—on their way to becoming Cranks. And WICKED still hasn’t found a cure.

Which of Thomas’ friends aren’t immune? And is WICKED finished messing with their brains? What more do they want with the Gladers? Can Thomas trust WICKED? Can Thomas even trust his friends? Thomas is let out of his cell and soon reunites with his friends. No more maze. No more Scorch. They must face the real world now. The Trials may be over, but Thomas’ real test is just beginning.

This third and final book in James Dashner’s Maze Runner series is yet another suspenseful and action-packed novel about the teen-aged character Thomas as he struggles for survival in the post-apocalyptic world. This time, Dashner follows Thomas and his friends as they experience the world outside of the maze and the Scorch and as they make decisions that may affect the future of the entire human race.

Although Dashner’s main focus is—yet again—on suspense, action, and intrigue, he does touch on some important life questions. The characters must determine whether an honorable end justifies the unethical means used to reach that end. They must decide if it is right to put the few at risk in order to save the many—if it is okay to endanger some people for the greater good—if it is moral to treat people like lab rats. Thomas and the other Gladers also face the question of what makes someone human. According to Dashner, the characters who have been infected by the Flare disease slowly lose their humanity until they are no longer human. Although this and other assertions in the book are contradictory to the biblical worldview, they still give readers the chance to think over important questions related to morality and human worth. They also encourage Christians to look to the Bible for the answers to these tough questions and to remember that it is the image of God in all of us—not our sanity, not our compassion—that makes us human. Although the questions brought up in this book are important for even young people to consider, the issues presented could likely serve to just confuse teen readers who blunder through this book without guidance. Therefore, teens should not read this book without either an active mind, a Bible, or guidance from an parent or spiritual leader.

The writing style is easy to read, but the philosophical questions mentioned above combined with the overall subject matter of the book make Dashner’s third Maze Runner book inappropriate for younger readers. Teens are best suited to handle the content of The Death Cure, but parents of teens should still be aware of a few content issues in this novel.

As in the previous two Maze Runner books, the characters enjoy spouting certain offensive words and phrases. The Gladers continue to glean many of the expletives from their own made-up vocabulary, but the count of widely known cuss words used by the characters continues to rise in this book. God’s name is also misused about three times. In addition to some disappointing vocabulary, Thomas and the Gladers continue to speak with a disrespectful undertone of sarcasm to pretty much everyone—even their friends. They can be especially rude to adults, most of whom are the “bad guys” in the story. To top it off, the book includes a smattering of crude humor to complement the offensive language and disrespectful bantering.

On the boy-girl side of things, there’s a bit of romance, but nothing overdone or inappropriate. Two of the characters hug and hold hands occasionally. They also kiss each other a few times—mostly on the cheek. That is pretty much the extent of the romance.  

As in the previous two books, the violence and overall intensity of the book is the main cause for this book’s PG-13 feel. To name a few of the violent and intense moments, characters are knocked out, threatened at gunpoint, and shot at. Others are electrocuted by futuristic weapons created for the purpose of stunning enemies. After being hit, the characters are overtaken by spasms as they lay helpless on the ground. One character’s leg is grazed by a bullet. A main character has a bad habit of regularly instigating fistfights with people he disagrees with. Another character shoots someone in the head and later throws a knife into an enemy’s neck. People are crushed by falling debris. Near the middle of the book, WICKED takes over a character’s control of his body and makes him attack his own friends with a knife against his will. The book also contains some talk of brain operations to remove chips inserted there by WICKED. The most disturbing elements of the story are the Cranks. The Death Cure features the creepy, zombie-like characters from The Scorch Trials—including descriptions of their not-so-hygienic bodies and of some disturbing encounters between them and uninfected characters. At one point, a bunch of Cranks swarm a car and try to get at the people inside by tearing away the windows with their bare hands. One very likeable character succumbs to the Flare and becomes a Crank himself. In addition, the huge, slimy, and dangerous “Griever” creatures from the first book return for a final intense fight. In all, the violence is at a level similar to the previous book, The Scorch Trials, if not a little higher. The death toll, however, has certainly gone up from the last book.

The Death Cure is another fun, exciting, and intense sci-fi action book—a must-read for adults and teens who have read and enjoyed the previous two Maze Runner books. Although the author doesn’t adequately answer every question raised by the previous books, The Death Cure brings a somewhat satisfactory ending to Thomas’ story. Even while the story is pretty unrealistic (as with most futuristic movies and books), the book still presents some interesting questions about right and wrong that are especially pertinent to today’s world. To those of you who have not read the previous two books, however, I would suggest skipping the series altogether and waiting for the movies. To me, reading the books was pretty much just like watching a movie. There’s not much to the stories beyond the plot and action, so you could save a lot of time—but still have a similar experience—by just watching the movies that are almost certainly going to be released within the next half decade.

Into the Storm

(This review can also be found at http://www.christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/2014/intothestorm2014.html.)

Overall Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of intense destruction and peril, and language including some sexual references

Appropriate for: Ages 13+

Genre: Action Disaster Thriller

Length: 89 minutes

Year of Release: 2014

On graduation day for the high school in the town of Silverton, Oklahoma, everyone’s future is looking bright, and it’s the job of two brothers, Donnie and Trey, to capture that optimism. Their dad, Greg (Richard Armitage), is the vice principal of the high school, and he has assigned them to gather footage for a video time-capsule. The two high-schoolers have spent a lot of time with their video cameras over the past several days—interviewing people around the town, asking them to look ahead twenty-five years into the future and share their thoughts on what the years ahead will bring. Now, on graduation day, their last job is to capture the ceremony on camera. To the two boys, it seems like that ceremony is all their dad cares about. Donnie is sick of his father’s perpetually high expectations for everything he does, and he feels like all he ever gets from his dad is criticism. When Donnie gets a chance to help the girl of his dreams with a video report that she is making, he skips the ceremony and leaves his brother alone to take care of recording the graduation. Unfortunately, however, it turns out that Donnie picked a bad day to wander off without his dad knowing.

Meanwhile, storm chasers Pete (Matt Walsh) and Allison (Sarah Wayne Callies) and their team are busy with their video cameras too, hoping to document America’s next big storm. Pete’s lifelong dream has been to capture up-close and personal footage of an epic tornado, and he’s ready to make that dream happen. It’s that time of year for tornadoes, and he’s got all the gear—but it just doesn’t seem like he has the right team for the job. The weather analyst, Allison, seems to lack the instincts necessary for chasing storms. She’s brought them to the town of Silverton, but the forecast predicts that only thunderstorms will disrupt the high school’s graduation ceremony. When the hail comes and the winds start to get fierce, though, Pete’s hopes start to rise. He might finally get his dream storm after all.

The drenching rain brings an abrupt end to the graduation ceremony, and the storm begins. As deadly tornadoes ravage the town, Donnie, Greg, Pete, and Allison and the rest of the storm’s victims learn to rethink their own priorities as they realize that there is much more to life than personal success and satisfaction.

Into the Storm has some great things to say about self-sacrifice, priorities in life, and the importance of living every day like it’s your last. This movie reminds us that we should not bank our happiness on personal success or on passing pleasures but that we should look for joy in the things that we tend to take for granted. Instead of perpetually hoping for something better in the future and pouting through our “unfair” or “boring” lives, we should be thankful for the lives we do have, the family we have been given, and the love we don’t always deserve. At the end of the movie, one previously cocky, crude high schooler says, “It only matters that I’m alive. I’m just thankful that I’m alive.” Other characters assert after the storm that “being together is all that matters” and that people should “take life one day at a time.” Although the world certainly needs to hear these messages, none of the hope and happiness that these characters show in the aftermath of the tornadoes’ destruction quite makes sense without Jesus Christ in the picture. In the final scenes of the movie, we hear the words, “Our faith will carry us through.” But the faith they’re talking about is not faith in God. It is faith in the human race. According to the biblical worldview, such faith is useless. No one can find true hope in life without Jesus, who sacrificed himself for the sins of the world so that those who put their faith in him might have eternal life. Although this movie doesn’t give the world the answers that it needs, it still brings up important questions about hope and purpose in life. It offers viewers the perfect opportunity to explore these themes. It reminds Christians of their true source of hope—the real Savior of the world.

On the other hand, however, this movie is a perfect illustration of why Hollywood is having one of its worst summers ever. The filmmakers had the not-so-brilliant idea of making the footage appear as if it were taken from the video cameras of the characters themselves. While this was probably intended to give the movie a more intimate feel, it only succeeds in making it seem more unrealistic and unprofessional. With that, some weak acting, and a simple and somewhat predictable plot, the only substantial accomplishment of Into the Storm is its series of impressive CGI tornadoes and the destruction that they bring.

And the destruction is certainly substantial. An entire town is leveled by the end of the movie, and several buildings are shown being torn up in the midst of the actual storm. Trees, cars, and houses are picked up and tossed about by the massive tornadoes, and a number of characters are carried off and killed by the violent winds of the storm. One minor character is pulled up into a flaming tornado that was ignited in a nearby gas leak. Two characters nearly drown, several are hit by debris, and others barely evade falling trees and power lines. Although the blood is limited to a few scratches and cuts, the intense moments in this film are enough to make it too much for young kids.

The movie also earns its PG-13 rating with a disappointing amount of foul language. In an hour and a half, they managed to fit in about two dozen uses of the word “s***,” and one to five uses each of the expletives “h***,” “a**,” “son of a b****,” “d**n,” “p***ed,” “sucked,” and “screwed.” The Lord’s name is taken in vain quite frequently, and there are also a few inappropriate references to parts of the body. A fair amount of the profanity comes from a group of thrill-seekers who are shown either drinking beers or being drunk during most of the movie.

On the boy-girl side of things, there are no explicit sexual scenes and only one scene with kissing: in the opening scene of the movie, two teenagers are briefly shown making out in the back of a car. However, there are still some objectionable references that parents should be aware of. Donnie has a crush on a pretty girl at his high school, and his brother accuses him of staring at her picture in the yearbook. Trey shows Donnie a shot of one of the high school teacher’s cleavage that he got while interviewing her for their video time-capsule. When Donnie goes off to talk to his crush, Trey tells him to “get some skin on camera” to show him later. During one of the boys’ interviews with a high school basketball player, the jock says that, in twenty-five years, he’ll be married to a “super smokin’ hot cheerleader wife” and mentions that he’ll “bang her up good.”  

Overall, I would not consider this movie worthy of a visit to the movie theater. I cannot recommend Into the Storm for young or sensitive viewers due to the profanity, sexual references, and destruction. However, for teens and adults who don’t mind intense action and who appreciate movies like the 1996 film Twister, this movie might be worth renting for a couple bucks. Despite the occasional cheesiness, the movie may even present families with an opportunity to discuss some important spiritual topics.