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A different way of telling a story

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

King Herod rules Judea for the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus. He is haunted by prophecy and orders the slaughter of newborn sons in Bethelehem. It's one year earlier Nazareth. Mary (Keisha Castle-Hughes) is betrothed to Joseph (Oscar Isaac) in a world of cruel Roman taxation. She is visited by the Angel Gabriel. Her elder cousin Elizabeth and her priest husband Zachariah would give birth to John the Baptist. Meanwhile, three wise men follow astronomical signs to Judea.This is a functional solid telling of the familiar story. It doesn't add anything unique. Mary is a scared little girl. It's not earth-shattering or memorable. The three wise men get some screen time. It's all good for the kids in Sunday school.

I'm not going to discuss the plot of this movie since probably most people interested in seeing it know the whole story and have heard it a couple hundred times. Instead, I'll talk about what I think it did well and poorly in. The strongest point in this film in my opinion was how the characters were humanized. We get to see a lot of the emotional struggles that Joseph and Mary and Mary's family went through during this time in their lives, which is good because that's something that I feel isn't addressed enough. Mary is still the spiritually flawless person that the Church reveres her as, but she is still definitely human in this film as well and clearly experiences a wide range of emotions that the audience can relate to. The same is true for Joseph, and his character is developed throughout as he learns how to become a father and husband. The wise men are touched upon throughout and provide a small amount of comic relief. King Herod and his son are also included and have a side story of sorts.Another big factor is the scripting. Most of the behind the scenes sequences that are kind of synthesized by the filmmakers are well scripted, but problems arise when the screenwriters have to include iconic lines straight from the Bible. It's kind of necessary for the movie since, well it's a Bible story, but I wish they didn't have to use the lines from scripture because almost all of them seemed really forced and out of place.The biggest detracting point that I see in the film is the dramatic sequences. Some of them were just fine and well executed like the slaughtering of the the infants and the scene where Mary goes into labor. However, the scenes where the Roman soldiers rush into Nazareth and are all intimidating could probably have been left out. They didn't contribute at all to the story and even resulted in some bad acting from a few nameless characters. This also ties in a bit with Herod's side story since most of the times he is seen before being visited by the wise men don't contribute to his character or the story. I think showing the end at the beginning with him and his son was good, but they could have cut down on the number and or length of his other appearances. In terms of technical specs, I felt like the casting was good with the accents that are evident but not so strong that you can't understand them. The lighting was good throughout, though I'm not really sure why I noticed that. You could make a case against the quality of the acting, but it should be satisfactory for anyone that isn't scrutinizing it too much.It's not a bad family film. The infant slaughterings and two childbirth scenes are relatively intense, but all are fairly brief and are minimally graphic. If you hate Christian films, this is better than most of them, though it still might be irritating to watch. It doesn't have the same quality that The Passion of the Christ does, but neither is it made poorly like some Christian movies (e.g. Courageos, Facing the Giants, and Letters to God) all of which have terrible stories and let the religiousness of their films limit them to an unholy degree. Since I'm not going to review any of these movies, I may as well put this out there now: If you're making a fictional inspirational film, make sure that it's a good movie before putting any inspiration into it and don't be religiously affiliated. The two reasons to not being religiously affiliated are 1. Religious plots are usually not good unless religion is a minor factor like in Angels and Demons or The Last Crusade and 2. By being religiously affiliated you won't be able to include any kind of profanity or anything controversial beyond a PG level, which severely limits your credibility, plot, and characters. Sorry if that last bit was too off topic. Overall Rating 8/10.

When I heard about this movie, my immediate thought was finally a movie about the birth of Christ. No Santa Claus, no trees, or Christmas carols. Its the true story of Christmas. I was amazed that this crew pulled it off and they did it very good. The setting was perfect, the story followed accordingly to the bible scriptures, the acting was good. Kiesha Castle Hughes portrayed Mary very well. She had the character look down pat and she delivered the dialogue with a good sense of passion and grace. Oscar Isaac did a great job portraying Joseph. He had the look down perfectly and capitalized on bringing the true couple of Mary and Joseph to life on the silver screen. Overall, for a movie that portrayed a good bible story was pretty good. I thought it could have been a little better but for a first time attempt to bringing this tale to life, its acceptable.

Keisha Castle-Hughes is without question one of the best actresses of her generation, and here she plays Mary, mother of Jesus, with an almost eerie authenticity. Though Castle-Hughes is in fact Maori, she definitely looks like the real Mary likely would have looked: small, olive-complected, with dark curly hair. I've seen many a portrait of or movie about Mary in which she was improbably tall, blond, and blue-eyed.The physical accuracy of the central characters is across the board. All first-century Jews are portrayed by actors who look like first-century Jews probably looked.The movie itself is a painstakingly accurate adaptation of Jesus' conception and birth as told in the first four gospels of the New Testament, but beyond that, it is actually a very sweet, if indirect, love story. Mary is betrothed to Joseph before she conceives Jesus, and she questions why she has been promised to a man she does not love and in fact barely knows.But after she reveals her pregnancy and gets to know Joseph, she sees that he is a good, kind, and unselfish man. During their trek to Bethlehem, she realizes (when gently wiping down his feet, bloodied from their long trek, as he sleeps) how strong and stoic he is, not to mention how fiercely protective he is of her and her unborn child, even in the face of the humiliating fact that the child is not his. And when the baby is born -- in a truly dazzling sequence which involves the Star of Bethlehem shining on the precise spot of the birth -- Joseph holds up the baby, laughing with joy as if it were his own son.This is not the most exciting movie ever made, but it is definitely worth watching.