Home Video Picks & Passes 05.26.19

A Jim Caviezel movie gets a thumbs-up.

I Am David
I Am David (photo: via IMBD)

Escape from Alcatraz (1979) — PICK

I Am David (2004) — PICK

New on Amazon Prime are a pair of prison-escape movies, one for almost the whole family and one for older audiences and up.

From family-friendly Walden Media, I Am David reunites The Passion of the Christ’s Jesus and Pilate, with Jim Caviezel as a kindhearted prisoner in a Bulgarian Stalinist labor camp and Hristo Shopov as the frightening camp commander.

Based on the novel by Anne Holm, the film follows a 12-year-old boy who escapes from the camp and embarks on a long journey to Denmark.

Scattered religious elements (e.g., a prayer to St. Elizabeth after receiving a holy card) enhance the theme that David must learn to trust that there is good in the world as well as bad.

Escape From Alcatraz stars Clint Eastwood in the archetypal prison escape movie, one that I think makes a fascinating counterpoint to the genre’s most popular examplar, The Shawshank Redemption.

Shawshank is as much about interior freedom as a prison break. Escape From Alcatraz is simply, purely about an impossible prison break, executed with maximal skill and style.

 

Caveat Spectator: Escape From Alcatraz: Violence and a gory image; cursing and racial epithets; brief rear nudity. Older teens and up. I Am David: Frightening situations; brief violence. 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