Home :: Film Reviews
by Ethan Vincent
reviewed by Claude Bernard
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The steady expansion of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
has brought with it the opportunity to explore in a more in-depth
fashion the cultural, social, and political context that has framed the
men and women who joined the Church in the nineteenth century and were
consequently willing to leave behind kin and country to settle in the
southwest of the United States at the behest of Brigham Young.
by Ron Williams
reviewed by James Willmore, Jenny Willmore
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Producer and director Ron Williams began his film as an attempt to
follow his ex-wife, Nancy, as she entered drug rehab. While filming,
Nancy’s daughter, MaCall Peterson, was involved in the accidental
overdose and death of her friend Amelia Sorich and the subsequent
attempt to hide the body. From this development, the filmmaker realized
the scope of the movie had changed considerably. He began to wonder if
there was a relationship between Utah County residents’ reputation for
overly blissful happiness and the struggles that addicts in Utah face.
Thus was born the documentary Happy Valley,
a title meant as a play on the nickname for Utah Valley. Although much
of the movie does not take place in Utah Valley, the title and
publicity poster conjures up caricatures of the stereotypical Utah
County resident—determinedly and obliviously happy.
by Randy Astle
reviewed by
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Mormon cinema on the Internet is a moving target.
Because change in this medium occurs so rapidly, the information
presented in this review will necessarily become dated in a few months
and much more so in the years to come. What I hope to provide,
therefore, is a snapshot of online resources related to LDS or Mormon
cinema near the beginning of their evolution. I believe that the
Internet will become the next great force in both Mormon cinema and
world cinema in general, if it has not already done so. Hence, while
the current article may prove useful for contemporary readers by
surveying online resources currently available, hopefully it will also
be of interest to readers years from now by providing a glimpse back
into one of the greatest, and newest, LDS art forms in its infancy.
by Christian Vuissa
reviewed by Dennis R. Cutchins
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Let me begin by stating that I thoroughly enjoyed this film. Yes, The Errand of Angels is yet another LDS missionary film, but eight years after the release of the groundbreaking God’s Army
(2000) the genre has matured a great deal. The drama in the film is
subtle. No one dies, for instance, or loses their faith, and there are
no gang members terrorizing the neighborhood. Writer and literary
critic William Dean Howells suggested that realism should not deal with
what is possible, but with what is probable, and this film definitely
meets that standard. It is a mature Mormon movie. Viewers who have
served LDS missions will likely recognize many of their own experiences
on the screen. Moreover, this is not an “inside joke” film that only
LDS audiences will understand. Rather, it is about people and
relationships. In that respect, this is not exclusively an “LDS film”
in which religion is the major issue. It is, rather, a film in which
the principal characters happen to be Latter-day Saints and happen to
be serving missions. Director Christian Vuissa notes that
“understanding relationships and showing the process of discovery and
realization are driving forces when I write a screenplay” (Errand of Angels Press Notes, http://www.errandofangelsmovie.com/).
Those relationships, both between the missionaries and with their
investigators, form the dramatic backbone of the film, and despite a
lack of “action movie” action, there is plenty here to keep your
attention.
by Mark V. Olsen, Will Scheffer
reviewed by Kent R. Bean
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I understand the inherent difficulties in writing an analysis about a series that deals with polygamy—and not polygamy in some distant time or place, but polygamy in present-day Utah. The practice of polygamy is such a difficult question precisely because it seems so premodern, and we Latter-day Saints have done such a fantastic job of embracing the conditions of modernity. (As a youth, I remember a fireside speaker referring to ours as a “space-age” religion, contrasting it against other religions whose doctrines hampered them from modernizing.) Some might object to a review of Big Love in BYU Studies because the series does not represent the Mormon image, and therefore it should not be discussed in a publication dedicated to Mormon issues.
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