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where faith and film are intertwined

western

The Last Victim – No light in the darkness

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The Last Victim, from director Naveen A. Chathapuram, is a story of bad people doing bad things and the way the evil keeps multiplying with each addition to the body count (which is pretty high). It’s styled as a neo-western, but it could easily have been an urban story of gangs.

The driving force of this evil is Jake (Ralph Ineson), who shows up at a roadside dinner in very rural New Mexico, to confront a former associate he’s tracked down to kill. Jake and his cohort will leave no witnesses (and from time to time, they need to kill off a few more).

The local sheriff (Ron Perlman) has to try to figure out just what’s happened in the diner that has lots of blood, but no bodies to be found. Along with a seemingly green young deputy, they start the investigation.

Susan (Ali Larter), a young professor is driving cross country with her husband on the way to her new teaching job in California They venture off the main road in search of a rustic picnic spot. But when they stumble upon Jake and his crew trying to bury the bodies, they too become witnesses to be eliminated. A good part of the film is Susan in the open country trying to avoid being found by Jake. All in all, of the various main characters, only two are alive at the end of the film.

For mood, Jake occasionally provides voice over that speaks to his pessimistic and misanthropic view of modern society. It’s not so much that he thinks he is noble as it is that he doesn’t fit into the world anymore and doesn’t even want to. So he takes his rage out on the world. In fact, we don’t really know what crimes have been committed prior to the film that leads up to that opening confrontation in the diner. We just know that Jake and those with him are bad guys.

The film wants to be way more philosophical than it is. The film opens with a title card of a quotation about revenge from an 17th century clergyman. But revenge isn’t what this is about. It is just about evil in a dark world. Showing the darkness of the world only can carry us so far. This is not a story of good versus evil, just evil corrupting everything it touches so that the darkness keeps spreading. There is only the faintest hint of hope at the end. And that hint is too tenuous for us to think there is any good to come out of this tale.

The Last Victim is in theaters and available of VOD.

News of the World – No Home to Go To

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“To move forward, you must first remember.”

 What does it mean to journey home when you have no home? What would The Odyssey have been about if Odysseus had no Penelope waiting for him in Ithaca? Paul Greengrass’s News of the World, based on the best selling novel by Paulette Jiles, is just that kind of story.

Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks), a former Confederate soldier, travels from town to town in Texas as a news reader. Most people are too busy to bother reading newspapers (if they can read). Kidd comes to town with a collection of newspapers from around the world and serves as a non-fiction storyteller. He tells of things in Asia and Africa. He may relate sad news of a meningitis outbreak in a nearby town. He brings news of other Texas towns, or of survivors of a mine disaster in Pennsylvania. He is entertaining, but can also be serious, addressing life under the Reconstruction military occupation.

On the road one day, he comes across a wrecked wagon and finds a lynched black man hanging nearby. He also finds a young, blond, blue-eyed girl dressed in buckskins like a Native American. He finds papers that says she is Johanna Leonberger (Helena Zengel). Her parents had been killed by Kiowas. She was taken in and raised by them. She knows no English (although she may remember a little German). Johanna (who doesn’t know that name—her name is Cicada) is wary of Kidd, but more in fear of the soldiers who come along. She reluctantly goes with Kidd. The first thing she says to him (which he cannot understand) is “Home. I just want to go home.” But she has no home. Her Kiowa parents are dead. She is being sent back by the government to live with an aunt and uncle.

Kidd takes her to the next town, where he learns that the Indian agent will be back in three months. He can wait or take her to her aunt and uncle hundreds of miles away.  So these two reluctant travelers set off on a journey in which, like Odysseus, they will find those who befriend them, but many who would do them harm. But even if they overcome the obstacles of the journey, what will await them at the end of their journey?

Although the story is set in 1870, it reflects many themes that are all too familiar to today’s world. There is great bitterness among many over the loss of the Civil War and the Union occupation. At one reading, there is great anger as Kidd reads about President Grant requiring Texas to accept the new amendments to the Constitution (13, 14, and 15) before it can be readmitted. This is a world of polarization, racism (towards Native Americans and blacks), and lawlessness.

In one town they travel through, the town boss is interested in Kidd’s news reading, but only wants things from his paper read. (Hello, Fox News) That is the extreme of the sense of isolation and insularity that all the towns reflect. As a news reader, Kidd is bringing the outside world to these communities, and with it a different way of looking at things.

That different way of understanding the world plays out in the relationship between Kidd and Johanna. Raised in the Kiowa traditions, Johanna sees the world as a whole—the circle of earth and sky. Kidd explains to her that for white people, it is always a line, heading forward. But for Kidd, that line really isn’t moving forward. His itinerant life is really a way of avoiding a loss he cannot bear to confront.

The idea of home comes up frequently throughout the film, beginning with Johanna’s first words. We wonder what home she wants to go to. She has been orphaned twice. She barely remembers her birth parents (but she does find her way to the cabin they lived in). She does not know the aunt and uncle she is being sent to. When she sees a band of Kiowa across the river she calls out for them to wait for her, but they are too far away to hear her cry. So there are three homes that have or might make up her life.

Kidd on the other hand is homeless. He travels from town to town, but never back to San Antonio where his life was before the war. While Odysseus wished he could make a straight line home to Ithaca, Kidd seems to be doing all he can to avoid returning home. When he does it is filled with sorrow. But it also frees him to find a new life, a new reality.

This film asks us to see the brokenness that is so prevalent in the world around us. How will we respond to such a world? Will we focus only on ourselves and our immediate surroundings? Do we only care about what is happening to us, to our neighbors, our community? Will we hear the stories of different people near and far? Will we find our freedom in being open to those we do not know, but who will bring their world to ours?

News of the World is available digitally and on Blu-ray and DVD.

Photos courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Cowboys – Dad to the Rescue

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Is it kidnapping or liberation? Anna Kerrigan’s Cowboys is the story of a father who is trying to give his child the chance to a potentially fulfilling life. But the only way to do that is to go against his estranged wife’s wishes and do so outside of the law.

Troy (Steve Zahn) and his wife Sally (Jillian Bell) have been separated since Troy was released from jail. Their ten year old child Joe (Sasha Knight) wants to spend lots of time with Joe, and one day alone with him Joe asks Troy to tell Sally that he is a boy in the wrong body. He no longer wants to wear dresses. We have seen that Joe is always sullen when at family functions dressed as a girl and expected to act as such. Sally is not open to this revelation. She keeps trying to force girly things and toys on Joe. Troy and Sally can’t even agree on a pronoun for Joe. Finally, Joe can’t take it anymore and wants Troy to take him away. That night, Troy shows up and Joe sneaks out the window and they’re gone.

Troy leads them up into the Rockies and is headed for the Canadian border. Meanwhile, Sally has called in the police. The detective in charge (Ann Dowd) can tell that there is more to the story than Sally is telling. As she learns more, she wants to help Troy and Joe find a way out of the mess. As the manhunt draws nearer, Troy (who is bi-polar and has lost his meds) becomes more erratic.

The story is told with lots of flash backs that reveal bits of the story leading up to Joe’s coming out. That backstory also includes the reason Troy had to spend some time in jail. We also see that even with the problems Troy and Sally have had, this is a loving family. Joe having to deal with coming out as transgender was a strain that Sally was not able to deal with. It is understandable that one cannot quickly come to understand one’s child as being totally different than what you have known them as.

The film comes up a bit short of its potential. Part of the reason is the part of the story dealing with Troy’s bi-polar issues really doesn’t add much to the story. In some ways it becomes a distraction to the real issue of coming to terms with a transgender child—both for the parents and for the larger community. At the end of the film we see Joe getting on a bus to return to school for the first time. We know that will be a difficult transition as well. There is grace at that point, but we sense that it has been arrived at a bit too easily.

Cowboys is available via virtual cinema through local theaters and on VOD.

Photos courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.

The Sisters Brothers: Mining the Golden Kingdom

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Written and directed by Jacques Audiard (Rust and Bone, Dheepan), The Sisters Brothers tells the story of Charlie and Eli Sisters (Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly), two contract killers in mid-19thCentury America. Here, Charlie and Eli are teamed with detective John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) to find and kill the humble prospector Hermann Warm (Riz Ahmed). However, when a betrayal leads to a change in plans, the brothers set out on a journey into the wild to complete their mission.

Billed as comedy, the film is actually anything but. Though there remains moments of humor and levity, Brothers actually takes itself quite seriously, establishing the harshness of the time. Strong performances by the entire cast ground the film, even giving it a surprising level of poignancy.

Further, The Sisters Brothers subverts the values inherent to the Western genre by holding it up to the ideals of the modern era. Held in constant juxtaposition with one another, Eli and Charlie represent two differing Western worldviews. While Charlie lives a life without rules in a constant quest for power, Eli is discontented with a life of violence. Though Charlie remains entirely focused on the mission, Eli remains torn between who he is and who he wants to be. Fascinated with luxuries like a toothbrush or flushable toilet, Eli yearns for a civilized life.

Eli yearns for home.

Whether it’s how they interact with women, handle disputes or their life goals, Charlie and Eli have conflicting ideas about what it meanst to be successful. In doing so, the film usurps the tradition values of the Western (and stereotypical Western values) of taking power by force. In other words, whereas the Western genre usually focuses their stories on one’s ability to show force in a savage time, Brothersquestions that ideal by offering an alternative to violence.

What’s more, Brothers also demonstrates the power of the Kingdom in the lives of those who get a taste for the best that it has to offer. Despite the fact that he’s being hunted by contract killers, Hermann remains steadfast in his belief that his secret will change the world. However, more than simply emphasizing the financial impact of his discovery, he is most concerned with the positive social impact on the local community. He yearns to make his way to Dallas in order to participate in a mysterious commune that believes in seeking the benefit of everyone who lives there. To Hermann, Dallas remains the ideal goal for humankind as ‘a new kind of society’ and the mere prospect of it has reshaped his entire worldview.

More than this though, Hermann’s belief affects everyone who listens to his story. His pronouncement that there’s a ‘better way’ serves as a calling to those around him. Suddenly, men like Charlie, Eli and Morris are faced with a choice to continue on in the ways of the West or potentially experience something hopeful and new (albeit terrifying). By no means is Hermann a preacher… but his perceived Kingdom is infectious. There is something hopeful about the world he proclaims and it has the potential to change everyone and everything around him.

In the end, Brothers is an entertaining film with ambitious ideas. More than a simple character piece, the film examines the truth behind our culture’s idealization of power over community. Holding up the wild West to modern values, Brothersknows we need our history to speak into our present.

 

The Sisters Brothers is opens on September 21st, 2018.

Damsel – A Comedy (sort of) of Pessimism

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“Love and survival are all I want.”

“You’re not exclusive in that notion.”

In Damsel, the Zellner Brothers play with some typical movie genres. As a result, viewers are asked to wrap their minds around things that seem to not quite fit together, but in reality make for a quirky, yet enjoyable experience.

As an example of how things don’t quite fit, we see scenes in desert, in forests, and a seashore, that all seem to exist in the same vicinity. It doesn’t really matter how odd this is, it provides a bit of discontinuity meant to keep us slightly off balance. The same is true with some of the language used in the film. It seems too modern for the setting of a western probably sometime in the 1800s.

As the film opens, two men are waiting for a stagecoach in the middle of a red rock wilderness. One (David Zellner) is heading west in search of a new start after catastrophe in his life. The other, a minister (Robert Forster), is headed east after failing to bring salvation to Indians. The wisdom the minister provided the other man is that “Things are going to be shitty in new and fascinating ways.” He then takes off his clothes, giving them to the other man and heads out into the desert to die. The other man takes the clothes and partial Bible and assumes the persona of Parson Henry.

Then, there is the main story as Samuel Alabaster (Robert Pattinson) comes ashore with a crate in which there is a miniature horse. He comes into a typical western town where he enlists Parson Henry to accompany him to marry his fiancée Penelope (Mia Wasikowska), who has been kidnapped. The plan is to rescue her, propose, give her the miniature horse as a gift, and have Parson Henry do the ceremony. But this hero/damsel-in-distress trope is quickly turned on its head. The story has so taken us in that we can’t help but follow it through even more twists along the way of this odd odyssey. It is hard even to classify this as a comedy or tragedy because the humor and pathos are so intertwined.

But the thread that runs through all the characters and their journeys is a desire to find happiness in a world filled with disappointment. But instead of happiness, the words of the old preacher about “new and fascinating ways” for things to go bad play out over and over. But while pessimism pervades the story, the characters seem to rely on a thin hope of optimism to survive. They may never have any evidence that things will get better, but they never give up on that possibility. Just as many of the laments within the Psalms may think that God does not see or care, the psalmists persist in calling on God to restore and renew them. While these characters do not operate with the idea that God will give them happiness, that hope of newness leads them on.

Phots courtesy of Magnolia Pictures

 

The Rider – Spiritual Depth in a Cowboy’s Story

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What happens when all you’ve ever dreamed of is taken away? That is a question that many films ask, but few answer it as beautifully and spiritually as Chloé Zhao’s The Rider. This is a partially fictionalized story set on the Pine Ridge Reservation. It blends fiction and non-fiction seamlessly to subtly blend hope and despair, beauty and starkness, suffering and healing.

Lakota cowboy Brady Blackburn (Brady Jandreau) is recovering from a near fatal rodeo accident. With a metal plate in his head, doctors have told him that he can’t ride anymore. But riding and training horses are all he’s ever cared about. The film begins following Brady with staples still in his scalp. As he heals, he longs to get back in the saddle, but for him it could be deadly. The film watches as he breaks a wild horse, first by talking, touching, and in time riding. Brady has a gift for calming a horse and gaining its trust.

With his friends Brady tries to keep up the hope that he’ll ride again, and they encourage him. Brady also visits Lane Scott, a rodeo rider, who was injured in an auto accident and can only communicate with one hand. With Lane, Brady speaks and touches in ways very much like he does with horses. He exudes gentleness and compassion.

One of the things I noticed in the film is that nearly everyone is injured and in need of healing in some way. Brady’s sister Lilly (Lilly Jandreau) has Asperger’s syndrome. There is a man with a hook of a hand. Brady’s horse Gus has a nose worn raw from rubbing a fence. But sometimes, things cannot be healed. His other horse Apollo is injured beyond help. It leads Brady to wonder why he rates being kept alive more than a horse does.

Although the film only occasionally is overtly religious (the film does have some excellent authentic prayers), its spiritual power is much more subtle. Healing in this film is rarely about the physical. It is the healing of souls that the characters engender in one another. Brady and Lilly both have severe handicaps, but their love for each other and their commitment to care for one another gives them strength and hope. Lane is completely wheelchair bound, but Brady sets things up so he can relive the experience of riding once again in a scene that may seem heartbreaking at one level, but at the same time, it is a powerful example of giving a friend a gift of regeneration—at least regeneration of the soul.

The Rider is the kind of film that may exhaust you from the depth that is hidden within its simplicity. But from that exhaustion one will come away with a renewed belief in the perseverance of the human spirit.

The Rider  received four Film Independent Spirit Award nominations.

Photo courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

 

 

Hostiles – Journey Between Life and Death

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“When we lay our heads down out here, we’re all prisoners.”

In Scott Cooper’s new western Hostiles, the cowboy-and-Indian genre is used to consider the power that prejudices hold over us. But it also gives a glimpse of the possibility of reconciliation that can overcome even lifelong animosities.

Cavalry Captain Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale) is a former war hero. He now spends his day chasing down renegade bands of Comanches and bringing them to jail. He’s due to retire, but instead he is assigned a public relations mission—to escort a dying Comanche chief to his ancestral lands in Montana. Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) has been imprisoned in New Mexico for decades. Now dying of cancer, he is granted permission from the President to return to Montana with his family (who will again be imprisoned after his death).

Blocker wants nothing to do with this. Yellow Hawk has killed many of his friends through the years. But when threatened with a court-martial and loss of his pension, he reluctantly agrees. Blocker and a small detachment set out on the journey that will be a bit like The Odyssey with various trials and dangers on the way.

Soon after they leave, they come across a homestead that has recently been attacked by a band of Comanches. Only the wife/mother, Rosalee Quinn (Rosamund Pike), survived the attack. She is near catatonic watching over her “sleeping” children. Blocker brings her along on the way to the next fort. The women of Yellow Hawk’s family share their clothes with Rosalee, the first act of compassion by either side. As the journey progresses there will be much that gives those on each side insight into the life of the others.

The most obvious theme of the film is the way racism and prejudice have been central in our national understanding. The attitudes with which Blocker and his cohort, and Yellow Hawk and his family view each other is not really as persons but rather as stereotypes. It is only as they slowly see each other’s strengths and weaknesses that they begin to see the common humanity. But even with racism so front and center, the film also subverts our ideas. One of Blocker’s party is African-American, a buffalo soldier with whom Blocker has served for some time.

But there are also deeper conversations to be drawn from the film. This is a story that is permeated with death. Yellow Hawk is dying. Rosalee’s family is already dead. Death can come upon them in many forms at any moment. The soldiers (as well as Yellow Hawk and his son Black Hawk (Adam Beach)) are all trained in killing. Death is seen as loss, as tragedy, as inevitable, as fulfillment, as an escape, and as punishment at various points of the film. Killing may happen as a necessity, as desperation, or as an act of anger and revenge.

As we study the various characters in the film, we may well see signs of what is now recognized as Post Traumatic Stress and Moral Injury. After an early encounter, a young Lieutenant (Jesse Plemons) is disturbed because this was his first time to kill a man. Master Sergeant Metz (Rory Cochrane) tells him that after enough killing, you don’t feel anything. The lieutenant responds, “That’s what I’m afraid of.” MSgt Metz and Blocker, both long time Cavalry soldiers exhibit signs of “melancholia”—they are weary of all the killing and of all the men that they have lost.

The paradox of the film is that it simultaneously is a journey from life to death and a journey from death to life. Yellow Hawk grows more ill as the journey progresses. There are various deaths along the way from a variety of reasons. Few of those who set out will make it to the end. But there is also movement in the other direction. Those who are dead on the inside find a chance for new life if they are willing to seek it. It is this hope that makes Hostiles more than just a rehash of the exploitive history of the American West. It allows the story to reflect the conflicts that continue to fill our culture and if we will choose to see them as journeys of death or towards life and fullness.

Photos courtesy Yellow Hawk, Inc.

The Ballad of Left Brown – Cliché Western Rides Again

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There’s a new Western in town: The Ballad of Lefty Brown. Once upon a time Westerns were a staple of the movie industry. Now when one comes out they create a bit of nostalgia. As a genre Westerns focused on the mythology of America—especially freedom and hard work creating a growing, prosperous nation. At their best, Westerns dig deeper to address some of our culture’s problems. But for the most part they were really a veneer that made America look like we wanted it too. The latter is very much what we find in The Ballad of Lefty Brown.

The twist in this film is that the sidekick becomes the hero. Lefty Brown (Bill Pullman) has been the sidekick of famed Montana lawman Edward Johnson (Peter Fonda) for many years. Now Johnson is about to head to Washington as a new Senator. He wants to leave Lefty in charge of his ranch, even though Johnson’s wife Laura (Kathy Baker) doesn’t think Lefty is up to the job. Lefty isn’t too sure he is either. He has always been in Johnson’s shadow. Even when Lefty, Edward, the current Governor Jimmy Bierce (Jim Caviezel) and Tom Harrah (Tommy Flanagan) were keeping peace in the area and inspiring dime novels about their exploits, Lefty was never in the stories.

When Edward and Lefty are out looking for some rustlers, Edward is killed. Lefty vows to get those responsible. When he sets off he comes across Jeremiah (Diego Josef) a young man who has read all the stories and seeks glory as a gunfighter. When Tom Harrah (now a U. S. Marshal after years of alcoholism) comes to stop Lefty, Lefty convinces him to join in the hunt. The three track down the killers, but they also discover that there are powerful people behind the killing. On returning with the information, Lefty discovers he’s been framed for the killing. He is determined to see justice done, even if it means exposing the political corruption that may taint an old friend.

In Lefty, Pullman is almost channeling Gabby Hayes, who was a frequent sidekick to heroes like John Wayne, Roy Rogers, and Bill Elliott. There is a certain incompetence that characterizes sidekick, and Lefty seems far below the skill level we expect in a hero. But his sense of loyalty, determination, and justice, propel him to be the hero he has never been.

The film’s shortcoming is that it is so cliché. It seems all the characters are what we would expect in an old Saturday Morning serial. The noble Edward, the morally week Marshal, the corrupt politician, the young tenderfoot with dreams of grandeur. And at the center of it all is the sidekick, usually the comic foil, but can he rise to the task of being the story’s hero? For those who want a bit of the nostalgic feel of old Westerns, The Ballad of Lefty Brown might feed that, because it is all so familiar. But aside from the virtues of loyalty and friendship, there’s not much here to challenge our thinking about what America really is or should be.

Preacher, S2: The Wandering Preacher Returns

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Combining the dry dustiness of Breaking Bad, the dark humour of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the unpredictable violence and bleakness of Game of Thrones, Preacher continues to establish itself as one of the more unique voices in television.  Following the journey of Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper), a small-town preacher possessed with the spirit of an angel/demon hybrid name Genesis, the show frequently breaks new ground as it explores the border between edgy storytelling and spiritual conversation.

Season 2 picks up almost immediately after the events of last year’s season finale, as Jesse, girlfriend Tulip (Ruth Negga) and Irish vampire Cassidy (Joe Gilgun) have set out on their spiritual quest to find God, who is missing from Heaven.  Unaware of the destruction of their hometown of Annville, the trio venture out into the Texas wilderness, fuelled by their anger towards the Almighty but without any actual direction.  To make matters worse, Jesse is also being pursued relentlessly by the Saint of Killers (Graham McTavish), a Hell-bound assassin hired kill him in order to reclaim Genesis.

With its dark tone and violent imagery, Preacher likely isn’t for everyone and season two certainly ups the ante.  (In the premiere alone, we are witness to multiple deaths and the most creative use of an intestine ever.)  However, the script and storytelling are so bold and rich that it continues to be one of the most theologically challenging shows in recent years (or, potentially, ever). Painted as an anti-heroic preacher, Jesse’s quest for God is more out of vengeance than reverence.  He, and his partners-in-crime, are broken and lost, cursed to roam the earth looking for answers.  Their home town has been completely wiped out, presumably devoid of survivors.  For them, there is no true place of safety and rest anymore.  In Preacher, theirs is the very definition of a desolate life.

But it’s in the midst of this anguish that the film reveals a genuine spiritual interest.  For example, when it’s revealed in last season’s finale that God is absent, the people completely give themselves over to their deepest and darkest impulses.  In a moment of sheer acquiescence, the people of Annville are so lost that they literally explode.  Yet, this fall to despair ultimately demonstrates a desire… no, a need… for God to rule.  Though the brokenness stems from a feeling of abandonment, it subsequently also shows that there is a reason that belief matters.

At the heart of this show is an angst and recklessness that echoes the current state of our global culture.  While some would argue that the purpose of religious interests is merely to impose rules and ‘keep people in line’, Preacher suggests that the need for God stems from a need for hope.  Like the people in Annville, our world has a desperate desire to believe that there is someone who has answers for the mess below.  Where is God in a world of hatred and evil?  Is it true that the only God that matters is the ‘god of meat’, as Quinncannon (Jackie Earle Haley) insists?  While these questions aren’t new to our world (or the media), what is drastically different is the tone and approach.  Unlike other spiritually themed shows, Preacher doesn’t merely tiptoe into questions like this… it runs full speed into them!

It’s this combination of spiritual boldness, dark humor and character that makes Preacher so interesting.  Like the smallest of plants taking root in the desert, Jesse’s quest still reveals a glimmer of life and hope in the midst of the dryness of the Texas desert.

Preacher returns on Sunday, June 25th on AMC and resumes on Monday nights beginning the 26th.

3.14 Losing LOGAN

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This week on the show, Steve reconnects with Arnaldo Reyes and Peter Adourian to talk about purpose and hopeful death in James Mangold’s LOGAN.  (We may even answer the eternal question: Why Arnaldo doesn’t like Jackman’s Wolverine!)

Want to continue to conversation at home?  Click the link below to download ‘Fishing for More’ — some small group questions for you to bring to those in your area.

3.14 Logan

Thanks to Peter Adourian and Arnaldo Reyes for joining us on the show!