Now Streaming – January 2022

CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY is a wondrously quirky and heartwarming adaptation of Roald Dahl’s classic children’s book about poor Charlie Bucket’s fantastic, life-changing visit to Willy Wonka’s amazing candy factory. The movie imparts many positive moral messages, not the least of which is the fact that having a loving family is the best reward of all.

In desperate need of love and the security of a family, 12-year-old Jesse recognizes similar needs in his new-found friend Willy, a 7000-pound killer whale, living in the North West Adventure Park, and knows there can be only one solution...FREE WILLY. This film is well made and very clean, to the point of being refreshing. FREE WILLY is a great treat and suitable for the entire family.

KUNG FU PANDA is a very funny, very exciting and very clean animated movie about a chubby, disheveled, but warm-hearted panda who is the only one standing in the way of an evil, treacherous snow leopard threatening his village. The movie extols personal themes and character traits espousing virtue, honor, loyalty, and sacrifice, but contains some non-specific Eastern mysticism and violence, so it requires caution for younger children.

In SUPERMAN RETURNS, Superman returns from the remnants of his home planet, Krypton, to Earth, where he finds that the world has moved on without him, but his arch-enemy, Lex Luthor, is up to his old evil tricks. SUPERMAN RETURNS is an entertaining big-budget movie that has some of the strongest Christological allusions ever, but it is set in a darker contemporary world that requires a caution for children 12 years and under.

TRUE GRIT follows the original book a bit more closely than the 1969 movie starring John Wayne, where a spunky 14-year-old girl teams up with a drunken one-eyed Marshal and a talkative Texas Ranger to track down the vicious killer who murdered her father. TRUE GRIT is an exciting, moving, redemptive, and even humorous blend of western chivalry and violent frontier justice, with strong, sometimes overt, Christian, biblical references that also stress chivalry, but strong caution is advised because of some strong foul language and an extreme scene of violence.

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: DOG DAYS shows its young middle-school hero having trouble relating to his father, which results in some regrettable lies that get the boy into further trouble. DOG DAYS is very funny, and the basic conflict is resolved in a positive way, but there’s some light scatological content and not all the bad behavior is rebuked; so, caution for younger children is warranted.

LIKE MIKE tells the story of 13-year-old orphan Calvin Cambridge, who finds a pair of tennis shoes that, when lightning strikes them, appear to help Calvin play professional-level basketball. LIKE MIKE is an energetic, funny movie with a family-friendly heart, including a positive outlook on faith and prayers.

In THE SANDLOT, a young boy becomes friends with eight boys who are devoted to playing sandlot baseball and has some exciting adventures with them as they try to recover a cherished baseball from a mysterious, dangerous building that adjoins their lot. Although THE SANDLOT lags in a few places, overall, it builds suspense and intrigue, and humorously depicts the trials of growing up. The film contains some mild obscenities and, regrettably, some exclamatory profanities. In all, THE SANDLOT is wholesome family entertainment which will cause its viewers to laugh and to rejoice.

In MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, Tom Cruise plays Ethan Hunt who has been pegged as a mole in the intelligence community. Ethan knows that he is not, but he must employ brain, brawn and the Bible to outwit his adversaries and flush out the real mole in an exciting finale. Including some obscenity and profanity, the movie forgoes any sex and the violence is purely action adventure.

M:I-2, the sequel to the hit MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, features lots of pumped-up action, with Tom Cruise again playing special agent Ethan Hunt, who must stop a rogue agent from unleashing a deadly virus. Hong Kong-trained action director John Woo confessed recently that he is a Christian. He uses several Christian symbols to identify Tom Cruise’s character with a saintly quest for redemption and virtue, but this movie contains strong action violence and some other mildly questionable elements.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE III opens with a shocking sequence of events and does not let up for nearly two racing hours. Director J.J. Abrams and Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt have collaborated to set a new tone for the M:I series. With a strong moral worldview and Christian content, although marred by foul language, this pulse-pounding thriller delivers one of the most exciting movie-going experiences in recent memory.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – GHOST PROTOCOL is a very entertaining espionage action thriller starring Tom Cruise where the Impossible Missions Force must go off the grid in order to stop a madman intent on starting nuclear war. Caution is advised because of the intense action violence and some foul language, but GHOST PROTOCOL is a fairly clean, first-rate action adventure with a strong moral, patriotic worldview.

RED TAILS is a rousing war movie honoring the efforts of the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African American fighter pilots, during World War II in Europe. RED TAILS is an exciting, inspiring, well acted war movie with positive references to Jesus Christ and prayer, including a prayer in the name of Jesus, but there’s plenty of foul language and a love affair, so caution is advised for older children under 13.