Category Archive: Tim Winterstein

Holy Ghost Hypocrisy

By Tim Winterstein –

There are more prominent hucksters in American religion, but perhaps none as honest as Marjoe Gortner. “Charlatan” is a word custom made for him. I’m not sure why I hadn’t come across the 1972 Academy Award-winning documentary Marjoe before I found it on Sundance Now (you can also see the full film on YouTube here). After watching it, I was all the more surprised I hadn’t seen it—until I found this fascinating interview with the director, Sarah Kernochan, who says it was all but lost until 2002, when she came across an original negative of the film. (Another essay by her is here [although her misspelling of “Pentecostal” and her facile connections make me grimace].) Even so, maybe because he was before my time, I’d never even heard of Hugh Marjoe Ross Gortner.

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Nostalgia Ain’t What It Used To Be

By Tim Winterstein –

I used to like sentimental-type movies (think Lifetime Channel, tug-on-your-heartstrings, push-your-emotional-buttons type things). Or it would be songs like Randy Stonehill’s “Christmas at Denny’s.” At some point I got tired of having my feelings manipulated, and I wanted something real. If that’s your thing, fine by me. I’m not judging. (Well, maybe a little, now and then.)

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Reaching for Immortality

By Tim Winterstein –

[SPOILERS!]

Movies and shows made for children always seem to include sub-themes that resonate with adults. Maybe it’s just marketing so that parents will take their children to the theater (only $7,800 for a family of six!), but I can remember it in television shows as well. Animaniacs was my generation’s Phineas and Ferb. Both have adult jokes running throughout that barely registered with the children who primarily watched those shows. More recently, Disney and Pixar have made sophisticated animated films that appeal to both children and adults. Of course, “children’s” authors have probably always included subtexts that only become clear as one ages (see the Grimms, Roald Dahl, or The Chronicles of Narnia). That’s part of the joy of having certain books read to you as a child and then re-reading them for yourself at older ages.

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Cogs in the War Machine

By Tim Winterstein –

The war machine will take what you have to give, and when you’re used up, it will discard you—at least if you’re General Glen McMahon or any of the other fictional generals who head up the combined allied troops in Afghanistan. War Machine (streaming on Netflix) is comedic, but its underlying themes are deadly serious and maybe even tragic. A veteran (or someone else who knows more than I do about inner workings of the military) could probably point out the moments at which this film touches reality, in the political machinations or the stupidity of how some military operations are decided and carried out.

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Force Majeure

By Tim Winterstein –

Want to start a war between husbands and wives or friends of opposite sexes? Watch Force Majeure together. My wife went to sleep, so we didn’t get to have the discussion. But this is a film that raises questions of the differences between men and women, fathers and mothers. I suspect that, like the characters in the film, the reactions of men and women will match the reactions of Ebba and Tomas, Swedes on vacation at a French skiing resort.

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Confessing with It Comes At Night

By Tim Winterstein –

What’s more terrifying: the things outside the walls that you cannot see or the things inside the walls that you may not fully understand? And so the question is begged: What comes at night? I had wanted to see It Comes At Night as soon as I found out that the writer/director was Trey Edward Shults, who made one of the best films of 2015, Krisha (which is magnificent and terrifying in its own way as an examination of family and mental illness). 

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Snapshots of Grief

By Tim Winterstein –

[NECESSARY SPOILERS AHEAD]

A few years ago, I did the funeral for my grandmother in a small town in eastern Oregon. My grandfather (who had died a couple years prior) and she had lived in this town for many years, and I had visited them there both as a child and then later when I was married with my own family. But what struck me about doing my grandmother’s funeral was that, with her, my last physical connection to that little town died. I could visit on vacation, as I would anywhere else. But there was no familial reason to return there again.

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Nihilism in the Moonlight

By Tim Winterstein –

I’m not going to lie; there’s a little bit of hipster in me. It’s much harder for me to get enthusiastic about movies or music that other people recommend to me, except for a couple of people. I like to be the one who recommends things. I know that’s a fault, but there it is. This is especially true of those things that win at major award shows, such as the Academy Awards. I still haven’t seen Spotlight, though it’s on my list, and I kept putting off seeing Moonlight until last night.

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Inventing New Gods and Old

By Tim Winterstein –

It will always be my favorite example of Hollywood missing the point entirely: the 1999 remake/reimagining of Graham Greene’s novel The End of the Affair. The End of the Affair was one of my favorite novels that I read while I was in college. So, when I first heard that the movie had come out with Julianne Moore, Ralph Fiennes, and Stephen Rea, I was excited to see how Greene’s vision translated to film.

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