This year was the comeback of entertainment. After a two-year lull, Hollywood may have returned with a whimper, but dozens of smaller companies, mostly notably Skydance and the Daily Wire, quietly produced cinematic gold.
Here are my selections for the ten best movies of 2022:
1. Man of God – This movie joins the ranks of The Passion of Joan of Arc and Monsieur Vincent as one of the great cinematic hagiographies of all time. Nectarios of Aegina, like his Lord, lived a life of constant suffering and betrayal, but he used it to produce tremendous spiritual fruit.
2. The Bad Guys – Based on a hilarious kid’s novel, The Bad Guys provides beautiful animation, fun characters, and a surprisingly spot-on assessment of morality.
3. Top Gun: Maverick– Tom Cruise is back in a rare sequel that improves on the original. The practical effects are amazing, but faith in the American spirit is what really makes it a masterpiece.
4. Elvis– Baz Luhrmann and the King were made for each other.
5. Prophet– This is a wonderful biopic of Bl. Stefan Wyszynski, a figure relatively unknown in the West, although his prized pupil St. John Paul II is more famous.
6. Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank – This is probably my most unpopular opinion as most reviews were paltry to say the least. However, I found it incredibly entertaining and inventive, a perfect blend of classic Mel Brooks humor, silly samurai tropes, and child-like imagination.
7. What is a Woman? – Matt Walsh’s style might be snarky, but his documentary is an incredibly revealing look at the transgender ideology, mostly that its advocates can’t answer the simplest of questions.
8. Nope– I’m a sucker for alien movies, and this is one of the best in years.
9. Shut In – A classic exercise in minimalism, this riveting horror film takes place in a closet.
10. Goodnight Oppy – Based on the extremely successful Martian probes, Goodnight Oppy is a celebration of God’s creation and human ingenuity.
Honorable Mention:Father Stu, Luck, A Matter of Life, Turning Red, and Weird: The Yankovic Story.
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Nick Olszyk teaches theology at Marist Catholic High School in Eugene, Oregon. He was raised on bad science fiction movies, jelly beans, and TV shows that make fun of bad science fiction movies. Visit him online and listen to his podcast at "Catholic Cinema Crusade".
Sophie Nélisse portrays Irena Gut Opdyke in the new film “Irena’s Vow.” / Credit: Quiver Distribution
CNA Staff, Apr 12, 2024 / 16:00 pm (CNA).
A new film depicting the incredible true story of Irena Gut Opdyke, a Polish Catholic nurse who risked her own life to hide Jews persecuted by Nazi Germany during World War II, debuts in theaters across the country April 15-16.
“Irena’s Vow” is told through the eyes of strong-willed 19-year-old Irena Gut. When Gut is promoted to be the housekeeper in the home of a highly respected Nazi officer after learning that the Jewish ghetto is about to be liquidated, she makes it her mission to help the Jewish workers.
Gut decides to shelter them in the safest place she can think of — the basement of the German major’s house. Over the next two years, she uses her creativity and quick thinking to keep her friends safe until she is able to help them escape.
Actress Sophie Nélisse portrays Gut in the film. She and Jeannie Smith, Irena’s real-life daughter, spoke to CNA about what they hope viewers will take away from the film and what it’s like for Smith to share and watch her mother’s story on the big screen.
Sophie Nélisse portrays Irena Gut Opdyke in new film “Irena’s Vow.” Credit: Quiver Distribution
“I immediately fell in love with Irena’s story because I felt it was just so relevant to this day, and I think there’s so much to learn from her story and a tale that brings a lot of hope, I find, despite all the horrific events,” Nélisse said.
As a Catholic, Smith shared that her mother’s faith “100% played a role” in the work she did to save the lives of Jews.
“She was raised that people mattered and that the differences in people did not matter,” she said. “They were all human beings and part of one human family and stood under God created by him.”
Smith added that Gut had “childlike trust.”
“[God] would open a path and she would walk in it and then it was up to him to take care of her, and her job was just to do what she was supposed to do — to follow. She kept that her whole life. It just was part of her. It wasn’t even something she had to think about,” Smith said.
Gut had no intention of ever sharing her story when she came to the United States, Smith explained. It wasn’t until she crossed paths with a “Holocaust denier” that she opened up about her experience.
“She was faced with a Holocaust denier, over the phone, a young man who was just doing a report in school about the propaganda of it all,” Smith recalled. “That’s when she realized that if she didn’t start talking, history could easily repeat itself.”
From then on, her mother slowly began talking, but it was evident to Smith “how hard it was for her, especially that first time, and I stayed away from the subject.”
“It wasn’t until I went with her to a school — I was almost 20, [and] I took her to a school so she could talk to kids — that I not only heard her story but saw the saw amazing reaction … and I thought, ‘Man, this story is powerful.’”
Gut received several recognitions for the work she did to protect Jews during the Holocaust, including being honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli Holocaust Commission. This title is given to non-Jews who risked their lives to help Jewish people during WWII. She also received a Medal of Honor in a ceremony at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, and her story is part of a permanent exhibit in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., among other recognitions.
One that particularly meant a lot to Gut was the papal blessing she received in 1995 from Pope John Paul II for her sacrifice. Smith explained that her mother had a very painful experience when she went to confession, after enduring sexual abuse and being forced to have sexual relations with the German major.
Unable to confess to her usual priest one day, Gut went to a young priest who Smith said was “more anti-Semitic and told her she didn’t have a part in the Catholic Church, which broke her heart.”
“So [there was] this papal blessing where Pope John Paul II, the Polish pope, sent a delegation from the Vatican, and we had a ceremony in a Jewish synagogue in Irvine, California,” she said. “So the mixture was amazing, and it was just coming home for her. It meant a lot.”
Nélisse pointed out that Irena Gut’s life can inspire everyone.
“I think we as individuals think that we can’t really make a difference or that we’re too small to really have an impact, and I think that she’s the perfect example that — I mean, she obviously did heroic things — [but] by doing tiny things that seem so simple, it could be smiling to someone or helping them with a bag or complimenting them, it does have a ripple effect,” Nélisse said.
Smith added that she has heard from kids who were thinking about taking their lives by suicide, but one day someone sat with them at lunch and that changed their minds. She hopes that her mother’s story reminds people that “we are all able to do amazing things.”
“People will call my mom a hero or somebody who’s special, and she wouldn’t have liked that and I don’t either, because you label somebody that way and it gives them permission to do things that you can’t, [but] the bottom line is we are all able to do amazing things,” she said.
Jonathan Roumie portrays Jesus in the series "The Chosen" / "The Chosen"
Boston, Mass., Jul 17, 2023 / 13:30 pm (CNA).
Filming of the fourth season of “The Chosen,” the popular Christian television series about Jesus and his… […]
1 Comment
Re: “The Passion of Joan of Arc”: this film was based heavily on the trial transcript, which (as many historians have noted) is proven to have been falsified on many points by the pro-English tribunal. Dozens of eyewitnesses who were at the trial later said the record was manipulated to make her look more guilty, and a comparison of the final Latin version with the original French shows that it was mistranslated in a systematic manner that could only have been done deliberately. For example, she did not refuse to submit to the Church (in fact she had already done so when examined in March 1429 by high-ranking clergy at Poitiers); nor did she consent to the alleged “relapse” into “male clothing” (i.e. the soldier’s riding outfit that eyewitnesses said she had been lacing into one piece to make it more difficult for her guards to pull her clothing off when they tried to rape her): the trial bailiff, Jehan Massieu, said the guards took away her dress and forced her to go back to the soldier’s outfit so the judge would have a pretext for condemning her for a “relapse” into cross-dressing. There were many other crucial parts of the transcript which are also false or badly misleading, and therefore the film is also false on these points.
Re: “The Passion of Joan of Arc”: this film was based heavily on the trial transcript, which (as many historians have noted) is proven to have been falsified on many points by the pro-English tribunal. Dozens of eyewitnesses who were at the trial later said the record was manipulated to make her look more guilty, and a comparison of the final Latin version with the original French shows that it was mistranslated in a systematic manner that could only have been done deliberately. For example, she did not refuse to submit to the Church (in fact she had already done so when examined in March 1429 by high-ranking clergy at Poitiers); nor did she consent to the alleged “relapse” into “male clothing” (i.e. the soldier’s riding outfit that eyewitnesses said she had been lacing into one piece to make it more difficult for her guards to pull her clothing off when they tried to rape her): the trial bailiff, Jehan Massieu, said the guards took away her dress and forced her to go back to the soldier’s outfit so the judge would have a pretext for condemning her for a “relapse” into cross-dressing. There were many other crucial parts of the transcript which are also false or badly misleading, and therefore the film is also false on these points.