Because Everybody Else Has One

Another big week with only one or two truly notable movies. Here are my quick thoughts on everything but The Divergent Series: Allegiant, which will get its own full review by the weekend. Sink. Starting with a local, Afrikaans drama, Sink is clearly better than the vast majority of those godawful Afrikaans movies but, unlike something like Dis Ek Anna, it only really holds up against its own, quite particular Afrikaans film industry. Taken as a film in and of itself, it is very well intentioned and it makes it pretty clear that newcomer Brett Michael Innes has enough writing and directing chops that he can definitely grow into a very accomplished filmmaker in the future. He isn't there yet, though. Sink, which tells the story of a white couple trying to come to terms with the death of their Mozambiquen maid's young daughter under their watch, uses a non-linear approach to storytelling that robs the film of all its emotional power to the point that the first hour, at the ve...

This Jew's take on the apparently almost entirely made up story of a very, very young Jesus Christ! What could go wrong? This review is also up at Channel 24 What it's about As he and his family return to Judea/ Israel after years in exile in Egypt, Jesus Bar Joseph, aged seven, has to come to terms with his strange powers and the even stranger circumstances surrounding his birth. What we thought As a reasonably observant Jew, I am, most decidedly, not the target audience of the Young Messiah. And yet, that doesn't necessarily mean that the film didn't have a chance in hell of working for me. For a start, though I don't believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah or the so-called Son of God, I do find the whole story of Jesus to be pretty damn good mythology. I don't care much for it religiously, in other words, but as a fan of great stories, it's certainly one of the better ones. And historically, it's really interesting too. Further, y...