Christian film reviews and plot analysis

A beautifully acted melodrama with a classic American storyline: one member of a family is working to achieve a dream (to set up a farm in this case), which creates tension with the rest of the family.  The Yi family have moved to rural Arkansas. The father, Jacob, is delighted with their mobile home and plot of land. His wife Monica: not so much. Their son David and their daughter Anne accept the situation and make themselves at home. The couple are both ‘chicken sexers’: workers who divide the female chicks (off to careers of egg-laying) from the male chicks (off to be incinerated). Jacob buys an old tractor from a local character called Paul. Paul is introduced as what I believe Americans call a ‘hick’, and more specifically as the nutty-Christian variant of that stereotype. I don’t know how this would go down in the states, but both times I’ve seen it here this scene stimulated hearty laughs in the audience. Paul is unkempt, rustic to the point of disrepair. His unhinged and invasi

A suffering man (Ruben- Riz Ahmed) is achieving worldly success, with all the joy and release that this can bring. He is in a great band with a woman he loves, and they're on tour in the best motorhome. But then a keystone of that world is taken away (his hearing) and the success dissolves. At first he fights uselessly against this cataclysm, but at length he humbles himself, and enters the Kingdom of God.  (I know from my own experience that eternity makes the mortal sick, you painfully purge your pride and self-hatred as you draw toward it. Before I was baptised I literally vomited up black stuff for a few days.)  I really felt that the deaf community here didn't so much represent the church, but rather actual heaven. Joe (Paul Raci) is a kind of priest-leader of the community. And, if they were following the ways of the flesh, they would certainly be a cult (it is a 'high-demand' group, taking your phone and car keys away on entry!). However, they're not, and Joe