Cinematographer and director.
Left Behind: The Movie (2000) -- Kirk Cameron's conversion to Christianity wasn't pretty. First he sucked the humor of Growing Pains dry (a shame, since Cameron was really funny on that show initially) and then he lost his personality entirely and began condemning everyone around him, friends and strangers alike. He was to Christianity as Tom Cruise is to Scientology. Left Behind is a movie (based on a popular series of books) meant to show what happens to all those left behind after Jesus comes down to pick up his believers. The old stories I heard for years of pilots in planes being taken away, cars crashing, and all the mayhem only the sickest of Christians would want to imagine come to life on the screen. As a religious movie, it's mostly foolish. As critic Derek Armstrong rightly points out, those who are left behind are then forced to accept Jesus not out of love or faith or belief, but out of fear. And the movie does the same to viewers, essentially saying, "If you don't accept Jesus, this is what will happen to you." Theology aside, however, it's not as bad as you might expect. Watched as a non-religious film, it's a decent-enough action movie based around a premise that could as well have been a hurricane or alien invasion or any of the rest of them. There's just more preaching near the end of the movie, as well as some of the sci-fi / paranoia elements of modern Christianity. The effects are bad, Kirk Cameron is a robot, and this film isn't going to save anyone, but it has a lot more going for it than The Passion does. (Bill Corcoran directs the sequel, Left Behind II: Tribulation Force.) C
Copyright (c) Apr 2006 by Rusty Likes Movies