Movie Night
For the past few years, we’ve had a social justice movie night, watching films on your own schedule and then meeting virtually to discuss. The films explore different social justice themes, and our discussions often include the intersection of social justice, spirituality, and faith.
In 2023, we started keeping track of the films we’ve watched and discussed. We’ll try to alternate challenging movies with more light-hearted and hopeful films.
➡️ Join the meeting (Google Meet)
2024
June 18, 2024 6:30 PM
🎬 Civil War
Themes: Politics, society, war
Whether it’s a preview of America’s future seems beside the point — because it works so effectively as a fractured mirror of our unsettled present. – The Movie Cricket
Once you understand that Civil War isn’t about what you think, you can appreciate it for what it actually is: a searing meditation on what happens when political orders collapse and violence takes on a sinister logic of its own. – Vox
In a hotly divisive, post Jan. 6 election year, Alex Garland embeds us with journalists, led by a wow Kirsten Dunst, covering a speculative second war between the states. The result is the most original and propulsively exciting movie of the year so far. – ABC News
May 21, 2024 6:30 PM
Themes: Patriarchy, feminism, climate change, community, redemption, hope
“Mad Max: Fury Road” is an action film about redemption and revolution. Never content to merely repeat what he’s done before (even the first three “Mad Max” have very distinct personalities), Miller has redefined his vision of the future yet again, vibrantly imagining a world in which men have become the pawns of insane leaders and women hold fiercely onto the last vestiges of hope. —Roger Ebert
The characters were intriguing, the stunts were exhilarating, and every frame was bursting with incredible, how’d-they-do-that nerve. “Mad Max: Fury Road” set a new high-water mark for action filmmaking when it came out in 2015, and no summer blockbuster since has been able to match its turbocharged ingenuity. — The New York Times
📺 How to watch
Stream on Max.com (HBO)
Rent on YouTube, Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, Vudu, Microsoft
April 16 6:30 PM
🎬 How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Themes: Climate change, capitalism, health, politics
📺 How to watch
Stream on Kanopy (free with library card)
Rent on YouTube, Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, Vudu, Microsoft
"How to Blow Up a Pipeline" is one of the most original American thrillers in years, and one that draws from a deep well of movie history as it develops its characters and sets up its plot twists. It's likely to become controversial because of how it presents its central characters—a group of young American self-described "terrorists" trying to blow up a Texas oil pipeline to protest an array of social ills—as a legitimate though troubling force for social change, and even compares them (in scenes of conversation between the characters) to revolutionaries throughout history, including the founders of the United States of America.
– RobertEbert.com
March 26 6:30 PM
🎬 harriet
⚠️ Given numerous church activities related to Lent, Holy Week, rummage sale, and others, we’re canceling March movie night. We’ll pick it back up in April!
Themes: Slavery, racism, liberation, courage, community
The story of Tubman’s escape from enslavement on a Maryland farm and her subsequent leadership in the underground railroad is conveyed in bold, emphatic strokes. Villainy and virtue are clearly marked, and the evil that Tubman resisted is illuminated alongside her bravery. – The New York Times
📺 How to watch
Stream: Netflix, DirecTV
Rent on YouTube, Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play
February 20
6:30 PM
🎬 Omar
Themes: Palestine, war, oppression, apartheid
A young Palestinian freedom fighter agrees to work as an informant after he's tricked into an admission of guilt by association in the wake of an Israeli soldier's killing.
Nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. Winner of a Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
“A story of love and betrayal set against political tumult and violence in Palestine, ‘Omar’ is both classic and painfully present in its concerns.” - Tom Long, Detroit News
“It's told with a stark, pitiless clarity that leaves you with fewer answers than before.” - Ty Burr, Boston Globe
— Kanopy
📺 How to watch
Barbie is surprisingly spiritual, treating the messiness and contradictions of womanhood with reverence.
—The New RepublicIt’s funny, it’s bright and uplifting, and I think has a lot to say about the modern world – both in terms of feminism and gender equality.
—BBC
📺 How to watch
Stream on Max
Rent on YouTube, Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, Vudu, Microsoft
Rent at Redbox
2023
November 21
6:30 PM
🎬 Frida
Themes: Gender, sexism, LGBTQ+, politics, art, faith
The movie has a rambunctious spirit and a liberated sense of color—an appreciation of the raw, strong Mexican folk tradition that gave both artists their special juice. Taymor and the gaggle of screenwriters who worked on the movie are much too shrewd to accept the sentimental feminist view that Kahlo was Rivera's victim. Smart, willful, and perverse, this Frida is nobody's servant, and the tiny Hayek plays her with head held high. You may want to laugh now and then, but you won't look away.
📺 How to watch
October 17
6:30 PM
🎬 First Reformed
Themes: Climate change, faith & spirituality, trauma, mammon
Environmental discussion and devout Christian doctrine don’t always sit well together: those who believe the planet was created by divine forces can be sceptical about man’s capacity to destroy it. Veteran auteur Paul Schrader’s thorny, challenging parable addresses that conflict in its story of an upstate New York priest (a superb Ethan Hawke) who, persuaded by a radical environmentalist in his parish, argues for climate change as a matter of Christian stewardship. This being small-town America, not everyone agrees. Bringing contemporary eco-consciousness to a classical story of faith in crisis, the film offers little comfort or counsel, but it’s a provocative conversation piece.
– The Guardian
📺 How to watch (as of 9/26/23)
Stream: Max, DirecTV
Rent: AppleTV, Amazon Video, YouTube
Coming soon…
Killers of the Flower Moon
Telling the story of the mass murder of the Osage Nation, Martin Scorsese wrestles with himself, Hollywood as a whole, and the original sin of America itself.
Pan’s Labyrinth
"Pan's Labyrinth" is one of the greatest of all fantasy films, even though it is anchored so firmly in the reality of war. On first viewing, it is challenging to comprehend a movie that on the one hand provides fauns and fairies, and on the other hand creates an inhuman sadist in the uniform of Franco's fascists. The fauns and fantasies are seen only by the 11-year-old heroine, but that does not mean she's "only dreaming;" they are as real as the fascist captain who murders on the flimsiest excuse. The coexistence of these two worlds is one of the scariest elements of the film; they both impose sets of rules that can get an 11-year-old killed. —Ebert
Children of Men
It is above all the look of "Children of Men" that stirs apprehension in the heart. Is this what we are all headed for? The film is set in 2027, when assorted natural disasters, wars and terrorist acts have rendered most of the world ungovernable, uninhabitable or anarchic. Britain stands as an island of relative order, held in line by a fearsome police state. It has been 18 years since Earth has seen the birth of a human child. —Ebert