Home Video Picks & Passes 02.19.17

Pinocchio and Queen of Katwe

(photo: Shutterstock)

Pinocchio (1940) — PICK

Queen of Katwe (2016) — PICK

 

The best live-action family film of 2016 is now on home video — and believe me when I tell you that every single person I’ve heard from about this film has thanked me for highlighting a film they loved and wouldn’t have seen otherwise.

Starring David Oyelowo (Selma) and Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave), Mira Nair’s Queen of Katwe is based on the true story of an illiterate girl from an impoverished Christian family in the Katwe slum of Kampala, Uganda, who becomes a chess champion.

Yes: Disney made a film about an African Christian female chess champion.

Newcomer Madina Nalwanga, who is actually from a Kampala slum, plays Phiona Mutesi, a half-orphan who lives with her fiercely protective mother (Nyong’o) and young brother. Phiona sells maize in the streets and has no hope of a better life — until she meets an African missionary, Robert Katende (Oyelowo), whose outreach program uses sports and games to connect with kids.

“In chess,” a young player says, holding up a pawn and a queen, “the small one can become the big one.” Don’t miss this one — you won’t be sorry.

Returning to home video, Disney’s great masterpiece Pinocchio is available in a three-disc Blu-ray/DVD/Digital HD Signature Collection edition. No other Disney fairy tale offers such lavish animation, such overtly Christian moralizing, and so enduring a sidekick, Jiminy Cricket.

 

Caveat Spectator: Pinocchio: Fairy-tale scariness and frightening images. Queen of Katwe: Frank depiction of grinding poverty and desperation; some suggestive references regarding exploitation of women; a fleeting but traumatic accident. All fine for older kids and up.

Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne attends a German Synodal Way assembly on March 9, 2023.

Four German Bishops Resist Push to Install Permanent ‘Synodal Council’

Given the Vatican’s repeated interventions against the German process, the bishops said they would instead look to the Synod of Bishops in Rome. Meanwhile, on Monday, German diocesan bishops approved the statutes for a synodal committee; and there are reports that the synodal committee will meet again in June.

Palestinian Christians celebrate Easter Sunday Mass at Holy Family Church in Gaza City on March 31, amid the ongoing battles Israel and the Hamas militant group.

People Explain ‘Why I Go to Mass’

‘Why go to Mass on Sundays? It is not enough to answer that it is a precept of the Church. … We Christians need to participate in Sunday Mass because only with the grace of Jesus, with his living presence in us and among us, can we put into practice his commandment, and thus be his credible witnesses.’ —Pope Francis