A Walk With Grace (Movie Review)

Amazon.com: A Walk with Grace: Ashley Bratcher, David Lee Smith ...

Plot Summary

When Nate’s mother dies, he’s forced to return to his small hometown in Ohio to settle the estate, which involves deciding whether or not to sell the family business. This enterprise is a factor that’s the only thing keeping the town afloat, but Nate’s cousin insists that they take the cash from a shady businessman and get out. However, Nate is extremely wishy-washy about this for no particular reason except that the selloff deal is opposed by Nate’s former girlfriend, Grace. Will Nate make the right decision before it’s too late???

Production Quality (2 points)

For the most part, the production quality of A Walk With Grace is professional with just a few problems. While video quality and audio quality are on par, there’s some inconsistent lighting throughout as well as some moments of shaky camera work. However, these concerns improve with time, and the sets, locations, and props are stable throughout. Elsewhere, the soundtrack is fairly cheesy, and there are a handful of editing problems to contend with. Nonetheless, this section does enough to earn an above-average score.

Plot and Storyline Quality (0 points)

From the get-go, everything about A Walk With Grace screams “Return to Hometown Plot.” This is evident by the obvious expository dialogue that constantly reminds viewers of what the returning character used to do and by the stereotypical characters that are only supported by vanilla conversations and bland, repetitive statements that only center around the main plot points. As such, there’s no good reasons for why characters do what they do, and things only happen in the narrative so that they can fit into the predictable molds that were predetermined for this type of story. In this vein, the scenes are too carefully planned out and choreographed for certain events to happen at just the right times, including instances when characters perform actions that are opposite their previously stated intentions. It also goes without saying that there is simply a lot of content in this film, including stupid opinions about young people, nauseating references to small town vs big city concepts, and yes, tons and tons of lame romantic subplots. Because A Walk With Grace aims at nothing from the beginning, it only gets worse as it goes on and culminates in a ridiculous concluding sequences that fixes everything in every possible way and completes every possible romance it started. In short, there’s nothing that earns this section any points.

Acting Quality (1.5 points)

Despite the fact that many of this movie’s scenes are quite staged, which makes the acting a bit stiff and overly practiced, the performances aren’t as bad as they could be. Nonetheless, there’s definitely some improvement in the area of being more natural with line and emotional delivery. However, this cast does enough to receive an average score.

Conclusion

A Walk With Grace is basically just another installment of old news. Though it’s a given for new Christian films to possess respectable production quality (which is something that unfortunately took too long to achieve), storylines are still mightily suffering. It’s not acceptable to continually churn out the same old, worn-out narratives and hope something new will happen. However, since one category of Christian entertainment has shown elevated effort, perhaps the other elements will soon follow.

Final Rating: 3.5 out of 10 points

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The Hail Mary (in progress)

The Hail Mary film by DR.jpg

Currently being filmed

Website

Writer(s): Daniel Roebuck

Director(s): Daniel Roebuck

Producer(s): Daniel Roebuck, Tammy Roebuck, Samantha Edwards, Davie Cabral

Cast: Daniel Roebuck, Sean Whalen, Timothy E. Goodwin, Duane Whitaker, Joe Estevez, Wyatt Root, Harri James, Ashley Berman, Marsha Dietlein

Plot summary: A comedy about Sister Kathy, a Nun with a sense of humor and purpose, who finds an angry loner in need of redemption and leads him to his atonement by conning him into creating a football team for her All-Boys Catholic School.

Heaven’s War {Beyond the Darkness} (Movie Review)

Image result for heaven's war
The magic of the cosmos…

Plot Summary

Senator Jonah Thomas is a rising political star who wants to be the good guy in Washington, but evil individuals, both human and spiritual, have their own plans for him. Jonah’s political career is pushing his family to the brink, and he doesn’t realize the evil devices that await him in one fateful meeting. As his soul hangs in the balance, he will be given one last chance to battle for his eternal destiny in a very poorly-animated CGI world.

Production Quality (0 points)

Imagine you have this great idea for a complex sci-fi plot that requires a lot expensive CGI and animation tools. Would you go ahead and make it even though you didn’t have the funding to make it on a level we see in theaters today? Essentially, Heaven’s War is a poorly funded attempt at a possibly good idea that will fall totally flat due to how bad the production is. The extremely cheap special effects and the cheesiest possible animation and CGI draw so much attention to themselves that they negate any possible good elements in other parts of the production. They affect everything and make it an unpleasant experience whether via disorienting editing, cheap flashback quality, weird sound effects, or wild and quick cuts between scenes. Even if other elements of the film are fine, the special effects failings are the types of issues that infect everything, which keeps this production rated at zero.

Plot and Storyline Quality (0 points)

Besides this, the plot is fairly confusing and hard to follow. Even though it’s an interesting idea to explore the spiritual realm, everything is too focused on American politics, which begs the question why the major spiritual battles highlighted here center around raising taxes and finding a vaccine for cancer. If this isn’t the intention, it comes off that way through expository dialogue and devices that move the plot forward, such as news reports and phone conversations. As the story wildly jumps from one random idea to the next, the slightly interesting flashback\psychological vision elements had something going for them, but the way they are presented is a disservice. Poor delivery and unclear direction doomed this plot from the start, not to mention the extremely cheesy portrayal of the spiritual realm that is almost a laughingstock. After lots of disorienting battle sequences and explorations of alternate realities, problems are suddenly quickly fixed at the end with no feeling or reality behind it, and by the time it’s all over, you suddenly realize that this film barely had any actual content in it. Hence, no points can be awarded in this section either.

Acting Quality (1 point)

Surprisingly, as bad as it is, the acting is the strongest point of this movie because it’s the only section that gets any points. Even still, the acting often comes off as un-earnest, overly practiced, and robotic. For the most part, emotions are black, forced, and unnatural. There are some good moments for some of the cast members that are basically just average, but as a whole, the acting is cardboard and the casting poor. This rounds out an unacceptably bad film in the new era of Christian entertainment.

Conclusion

Danny Carrales’ intentions to make different types of Christian films are definitely noted, but their application is way off the mark. It would have been better to make Heaven’s War fully animated so that more time could have been spent on making a real plot. Relying only on special effects of any quality level is never a good idea because they can’t write the story for you. Even the best sci-fi idea will fail if the characters can hold it up for you because the audience has no real connection to the concept without feeling like real people are experiencing it. Basically, better luck next time.

Final Rating: 1 out of 10 points

DiVine Appointment (status unknown)

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Status currently unknown

Writer(s): Tara Lynn Marcelle

Director(s): Tara Lynn Marcelle

Producer(s):  Jason Campbell, Tara Lynn Marcelle, April Kennedy

Starring: Chris Minor, Jenni Kennedy, Darwin Shaw, William McNamara, Kera O’Bryon, Matthew Lloyd, Micah Lynn, Troy Means, Mai Arwas, Bryan Michael Nunez, Timothy Goodwin, Gabrielle Diaz, Joe Estevez

Plot Synopsis: After a tragic accident, Jordan Travis is forced to quit his band at the start of their success. Empty and broken, he finds a job in the wine vineyards of Northern California. What follows, is a series of people and events that lead him back to his first love, and ultimate destiny, which can only be found in a ‘Divine Appointment’.