Tag: Sound of Freedom

The Return of the Cinema?

The Portly Politico19 Comments

After years of declining box office totals and the closures of The Age of The Virus, it suddenly feels like moviegoing is back.  Four major releases seem to be driving folks to theaters in droves:  Barbie, Sound of Freedom, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, and Oppenheimer.  Even with relative flops like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and the woke Pixar flick Elemental, everyone seems to be flooding back into theaters, almost out of nowhere.

To be fair, box office receipts for Summer 2022 were up, likely on the strength of Top Gun: Maverick (2022).  Perhaps I didn’t darken the door of a theater in 2022 as frequently as I have in 2023 (there’s something about being single and dating that drives me to the movies frequently), so my admittedly anecdotal observations are skewed.  But, dang, it sure does feel like folks are flooding back into theaters.  In my mind, that’s a good thing.

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Monday Morning Movie Review: Sound of Freedom (2023)

The Portly Politico17 Comments

Before beginning this review, let me state that you must see Sound of Freedom (2023).  It is likely the most important film of the last decade, if not this century, so far.  If you’d like to contribute to help others see it in theaters, Angel Studios has a pay-it-forward program.  If you are financially strapped but want to see it on the big screen—and, trust me, you want to see it on the big screen—Angel Studios allows you to claim free tickets (well, tickets, other folks have paid for).  Lead actor Jim Caviezel compares the film to Harriett Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), which President Lincoln (apocryphally) claimed “started this great war” (the American Civil War) because of the impact it had on the burgeoning anti-slavery movement in the United States.  For what it’s worth, I think Caviezel is correct:  Sound of Freedom is waking people up to the terrifying realities of child sex trafficking.  —TPP

If cinema does one thing well, it is creating an experience for the audience.  We’ve grown used to watching big-budget, CGI-infested foolishness that overloads our senses and shuts down our brains—an experience in and of itself—but the real power of film is to make something beyond our personal experience real for us.  Sound of Freedom (2023) has that effect in bringing to life the real-world tragedy of human trafficking, specifically child sex trafficking.

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