movie review: The Apostle

We finally watched a movie Brandon has been recommending to me for ages: The Apostle, starring, written, directed and executive produced by Robert Duvall. It's about this preacher whose wife sleeps with the youth pastor at the church, and he ends up killing the guy and skipping town. The movie is about what he does in this town while he's on the lam. It's a great movie--excellent performances all around, an original story--and very true to life.

I guess I haven't watched a lot of movies, but this is the only one I've seen that portrays the more "out there," somewhat charismatic evangelical church in a both accurate and respectful light, without minimizing or apologizing for the wackiness and sins of the people in the church, but never mocking or judging either. It's one of the very few movies I've seen that I would call both "Christian" and "high quality." In fact, there's only one other movie like that: Babette's Feast.

So: watch these movies if you are so inclined!