Latest news with #TheKingofKings'
Epoch Times
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Epoch Times
Epoch Watchlist: Recommended Viewing for April 25–May 1
This week, we explore a visually stunning animated epic and a gripping adventure that celebrates the bond between man and nature. New Release 'The King of Kings' A father's evening tale becomes an adventure as his son imagines traveling with Jesus—witnessing wonders, facing trials, and grasping his sacrifice. Through a child's eyes, it rekindles timeless themes of belief, compassion, and renewal. Visually rich and spiritually grounded, this animated epic unfolds with reverence and beauty. Oscar Isaac brings warmth and depth to Jesus, while Kenneth Branagh's narration adds grace. Rather than chase spectacle, it leans into sincerity—drawing you in with tender moments and enduring truth. Animation | Family Release Date: April 11, 2025 Director: Seong-ho Jang Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Oscar Isaac, Kenneth Branagh Running Time: 1 hour, 43 minutes MPAA Rating: PG Where to Watch: Theaters Rated : 5 stars out of 5 Family Pick 'White Fang' Jack Conroy (Ethan Hawke) ventures into the rugged Yukon to fulfill his late father's dream, joined by prospector Alex Larson (Klaus Maria Brandauer). Along the way, Jack rescues a mistreated wolf-dog, setting the stage for a powerful story of survival, friendship, and personal growth in the wild. With stunning Alaskan landscapes and a standout performance from Hawke, this film captures the essence of adventure and heart. The bond forged between Jack and his wolf feels authentic, making their scenes both touching and memorable. Adventure | Drama | Family Release Date: Jan. 18, 1991 Director: Randal Kleiser Starring: Ethan Hawke, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Jed the wolfdog Running Time: 1 hour, 47 minutes MPAA Rating: PG Where to Watch: YouTube, Amazon, Apple TV Rated: 3 1/2 stars out of 5 A Love Torn Asunder 'Atonement' Saoirse Ronan plays Briony Tallis, whose youthful misunderstanding sparks a tragic series of events. Briony's actions disrupt the lives of her sister Cecilia (Kiera Knightley) and Robbie (James McAvoy), tearing apart their future together. This film adaptation captures the essence of the Ian McEwan's novel of the same name, while skillfully condensing it for the screen. It's not for those seeking quick thrills, but for anyone who appreciates complex characters and a plot that unfolds at a thoughtful pace. It's one of 2008's finest. Related Stories 4/17/2025 4/13/2025 Drama | Romance | War Release Date: Jan. 11, 2008 Director: Joe Wright Starring: Keira Knightley, James McAvoy, Brenda Blethyn Running Time: 2 hours, 3 minutes MPAA Rating: PG Where to Watch: YouTube, Amazon, Apple TV Rated: 4 stars out of 5 Falling for the Fall Guy 'The Lady Eve' Barbara Stanwyck charms as Jean Harrington, a con artist who falls for wealthy, naive Charles (Henry Fonda). When he spurns her, she returns in disguise as the elegant Lady Eve, mixing romance and revenge. This is a playful battle of wits and hearts, driven by Stanwyck's magnetic charm and Fonda's awkwardness. Their unlikely pairing sparkles with mischief under Preston Sturges's clever direction and screen play. Screwball Comedy | Romance Release Date: March 21, 1941 Director: Preston Sturges Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn Running Time: 1 hour, 34 minutes Not Rated Where to Watch: Amazon, YouTube, Apple TV Rated: 3 1/2 stars out of 5 What arts and culture topics would you like us to cover? Please email ideas or feedback to
American Press
23-04-2025
- Entertainment
- American Press
Free tickets on Thursday to ‘King of Kings' film
(Special to the American Press) Special to the American Press The Johnson Firm is offering free tickets to all showings of the 'King of Kings' movie at Cinemark Lake Charles at Prien Lake Mall on Thursday. 'We believe in supporting meaningful experiences that uplift and inspire our community. 'King of Kings' is a powerful presentation of faith, hope and the story of Easter,' the firm said. 'This is our way of saying thank you to the people of Southwest Louisiana and sharing in a message that brings families together and reminds us of the values that matter most.' 'The King of Kings' is an animated Christian film written loosely inspired by the children's book 'The Life of Our Lord' by Charles Dickens. In the film, Dickens attempts to perform a recital of 'A Christmas Carol' before a theater audience, only to be constantly interrupted by his overly rambunctious son Walter, who very noisily acts out the exploits of King Arthur backstage with the aid of his rotund feline sidekick. The performance ruined, Dickens considers punishing the boy, but his wife Catherine suggests the writer instead try to lure Walter away from his obsession with the Round Table by offering him another story about a king even greater than Arthur — the 'King of Kings,'Jesus Christ. The Johnson Firm said tickets will be available at the cinema on a first-come, first-served basis for all showings of 'King of Kings' on Thursday. Showtimes are at noon, 12:30 p.m., 2:45 p.m., 3:15 p.m. 5:30 p.m, 6 p.m., 8:15 p.m. and 8:45 p.m. 'Join us in celebrating this season of renewal — we're honored to help you be a part of it,' the firm said.
Forbes
16-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Christian Films Dominate Box Office This Easter Week — Boosted By Conservative Influencers
Christian movies are dominating the box office this week, led by the animated hit 'The King of Kings,' which is backed by the studio behind the controversial 2023 smash 'Sound of Freedom' and is being promoted by right-wing influencers on social media, who have billed it as an anti-'woke' movie. "The King of Kings" grossed more than $14 million in its opening weekend. 'The King of Kings' finished second behind blockbuster 'The Minecraft Movie' at the box office this past weekend with $19.3 million, which is only about $200,000 behind the opening weekend of Angel Studios' 'Sound of Freedom.' Four of the top 10 films at the box office this week are faith-based movies, according to Box Office Mojo's latest daily totals, including all three parts of the television series 'The Chosen: Last Supper,' which distribution company Fathom Entertainment released in theaters. 'The King of Kings' is an animated film featuring a star-studded cast that follows writer Charles Dickens as he teaches his son about the life of Jesus Christ, while 'The Chosen: Last Supper' is the fifth season of the historical drama series that depicts Jesus's life. 'The King of Kings' had the biggest box office weekend for a biblical animated film, surpassing the Oscar-winning animated movie 'The Prince of Egypt,' which earned $14.5 million in its opening weekend in 1998. Some conservative influencers have championed 'The King of Kings' on social media, many of whom Angel Studios has reposted on X, though it's unclear whether the studio is working with them (Forbes has reached out to Angel Studios for comment). The studio has reposted four posts on X from right-wing commentator Benny Johnson over the past week, and the company's Chief Content Officer Jeff Harmon appeared on Johnson's YouTube show last week. In one of Johnson's posts, reposted by Angel Studios, he said the 'demand for faith-based, non-woke entertainment is undeniable,' citing the film's positive audience scores. In his interview with Harmon, Johnson repeatedly described 'The King of Kings' as counterprogramming to Disney's remake of 'Snow White,' which debuted in theaters last month amid a storm of controversy as conservative critics slammed it as 'woke.' Harmon criticized the 'race swapping' of 'Snow White' in his interview with Johnson—Disney cast Latina actress Rachel Zegler to portray the titular princess, who is white in the original movie—and criticized Hollywood for recycling 'junk food stories.' Angel Studios also reposted a post from Joey Mannario, a conservative commentator who has more than 600,000 followers on X, who said the studio 'NEVER misses when it comes to bringing quality entertainment without any wokeness.' The studio also reposted Anna Lulis, a conservative user with more than 80,000 followers, who said the film's success is evidence that 'culture is shifting.' 'The Kings of Kings' benefits from a famous cast—Oscar Isaac voices Jesus, while Kenneth Branagh, Uma Thurman, Marc Hamill, Pierce Brosnan and Forest Whitaker also star—but distributor Angel Studios has also employed some of the marketing tactics that made 'Sound of Freedom' a smash. The studio has employed a 'pay-it-forward' program, which it has done for many of its releases, that allows moviegoers to purchase a ticket for those who could not otherwise afford it. The studio also offered free tickets for children attending the movie with an adult for a limited time. Angel Studios co-founder Jordan Harmon told Variety the studio succeeded because 'people haven't been fulfilling this massive of an audience for that long in terms of the animated space.' Though 'The Chosen' is a television series, which are not commonly released in theaters, distributor Fathom Entertainment has found success with faith-based releases, including episodes of the popular show. The distributor released two episodes of the third season of 'The Chosen' in theaters in 2022, grossing $14.6 million, and it grossed $14.8 million in theaters last year after releasing three episodes of its fourth season in theaters. 'The Chosen' has a large viewer base: By the end of 2022, at least 18 million people had watched at least part of one episode, the New York Times reported, and the show's production was crowd-funded by thousands of people. 'The King of Kings' received generally positive reviews and has a 64% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes. Multiple positive reviews described the movie as a 'serviceable' adaptation of a well-known story, while the New York Times review accused the filmmakers of capitalizing on an 'audience who senses a moral obligation to purchase tickets for every single retelling of Jesus's life.' In his interview with Johnson, Harmon alleged the Rotten Tomatoes score used to be as high as 80%, but accused reviewers who 'hate Jesus' and had a 'bad experience with religion' of writing bad reviews. The Rotten Tomatoes audience score is a near-perfect 97%, and it is one of only 128 movies in history to receive the highest-possible A+ score from Cinemascore, which surveys moviegoers. Angel Studios notched its biggest hit to date in theaters in the summer of 2023 when 'Sound of Freedom' shocked the industry by becoming the tenth highest-grossing film of the year at the domestic box office with $184 million in North America and $250 million worldwide. The film was boosted by right-wing influencers and many Republican politicians, including President Donald Trump, who praised it on Truth Social and hosted a screening at his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club. The movie drew scrutiny from critics who noted its star Jim Caviezel had reportedly spoken at events for QAnon, the conspiracy theory that the political and Hollywood elite are actually Satan-worshipping sex traffickers. The film depicted the anti-sex trafficking organization, Operation Underground Railroad, though a Vice investigation found in 2020 the group had exaggerated its role in rescue missions and that law enforcement agencies described their relationships to the group as 'insubstantial.' It Was a Very Good Box Office Weekend for Jesus (IndieWire)
Forbes
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘The King Of Kings' Reviews: How Is Animated Biblical Film Being Received By Critics?
A scene from "The King of Kings." Angel Studios The King of Kings — an animated biblical movie starring the voices of Oscar Isaac, Pierce Brosnan, Uma Thurman and Kenneth Branaugh — is new in theaters. How are critics receiving the film? Produced by Angel Studios and directed by Seong-ho Jang, The King of Kings is inspired by legendary author Charles Dickens' classic novel The Life of Our Lord. Jang co-wrote the screenplay for The King of Kings with Rob Edwards. The official summary for The King of Kings reads, 'A father tells his son the greatest story ever told, and what begins as a bedtime tale becomes a life-changing journey. Through vivid imagination, the boy walks alongside Jesus, witnessing His miracles, facing His trials and understanding His ultimate sacrifice. 'The King of Kings invites us to rediscover the enduring power of hope, love and redemption through the eyes of a child.' The King of Kings' voice cast includes Isaac as Jesus, Brosnan as Pontius Pilate, Branagh as Charles Dickens and Thurman as Catherine Dickens. The voice cast also includes Mark Hamill as King Herrod, Ben Kingsley as High Priest Caiaphas, Forest Whitaker as Peter, Roman Griffith Davis as Walter Dickens and James Arnold Taylor as Melchior/Matthew/Thomas/Phillip/Young Jesus. The King of Kings has received a 68% 'fresh' rating from Rotten Tomatoes critics based on 25 reviews to date. RT's Critics Consensus and Popcornmeter score based on verified user ratings are not yet available. Among the top critics on RT who gave The King of Kings a 'fresh' review is Leslie Felperin of the Guardian, who writes, 'The whole package isn't on a par with the best biblical epics, but it's serviceable enough.' In addition, top critic Linda Marric of HeyUGuys gave The King of Kings a 'fresh' review on RT, writing, 'With a creative narrative structure, a talented voice cast, and a sincere emotional core, it is a film that will resonate with families and faith-based audiences alike.' Top critic Kevin Maher of the Times UK gives The King of Kings a 'rotten' review on RT, writing that the film idisconcerting s 'a faith-based South Korean animation with a top-tier voice cast and a penchant for interrupting pivotal moments from the Bible with nonsense slapstick involving a wacky 19th-century house cat.' Rated PG, The King of Kings plays in Thursday previews before opening in theaters in wide release on Friday.
New York Times
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘The King of Kings' Review: A Remaking of the Christ
'The King of Kings' is an animated film about the life of Jesus as narrated by Charles Dickens to his child and cat, which is not quite as Mad Libs-adjacent as it sounds. Dickens did, in fact, write a little book called 'The Life of Our Lord,' a retelling of the very familiar story that he read aloud to his children every year. It wasn't published until 1934, after the last of Dickens's children had died, on its author's orders. You can read it if you like — it's freely available on the Internet Archive — and see that Dickens is, more or less, faithful to the Bible, albeit emphasizing Jesus as great moral teacher in language appropriate for English children in the mid-19th century. 'I am very anxious that you should know something about the History of Jesus Christ,' it begins. 'For everybody ought to know about Him. No one ever lived who was so good, so kind, so gentle, and so sorry for all people who did wrong, or were in any way ill or miserable, as He was.' Dickens's book feels very Victorian, in that its Jesus is mostly just a really good guy, and it ends with a little sermon about what Christianity is really about: 'to do good, always even to those who do evil to us,' to 'be gentle, merciful and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our hearts, and never make a boast of them,' and so on. Basically, to be Christian is to try to be kind and decent to all and thus hope that God will save us. 'The King of Kings' opts for a different approach. Directed by Jang Seong-ho, best known for his pioneering visual effects work in Korean cinema, and distributed by the rising Christian movie superstar Angel Studios, the movie paints Jesus as a man who called everyone around him to test the 'power of faith' — faith in God, presumably, though that remains largely unspecified. At times I found myself thinking of the more generic faith that practitioners of positive thinking and manifestation call us to. You can really read whatever you want into it, even though the movie makes clear that faith in God's power is what it probably means. The tale begins with Ebenezer Scrooge staggering toward his own tombstone, which turns out to be in the mind of Charles Dickens (voiced by Kenneth Branagh) as he's in the middle of delivering a dramatic reading of 'A Christmas Carol' to a rapt audience. (I cannot decide if this device is merely a safeguard for audience members who don't know who Dickens is without the Scrooge trigger, or has some larger significance.) A cat interrupts Dickens's performance, to his consternation. It's the devious family cat (modeled very much on the contemporary block-headed cats of the 'Pets' franchise), who's wreaking havoc backstage where Dickens's wife, Catherine (Uma Thurman), and three adorable unruly children are waiting for him to finish up. One of those children, Walter (Roman Griffin Davis), is obsessed with King Arthur, and when Dickens arrives home that night, Catherine announces that Walter is hanging out in his study, waiting for his father to tell him the story of the king of all kings, who's way cooler than Arthur even though he never slew a dragon. You guessed it! That's Jesus. Hence the retelling begins, voiced by an impressive array of Hollywood talent: Oscar Isaac voices the Christ himself, but there's also the apostle Peter (Forest Whitaker), Pontius Pilate (Pierce Brosnan), King Herod (Mark Hamill) and High Priest Caiaphas (Ben Kingsley). It's baffled me for a long time why animated films pony up to nab name-brand voice talent — surely kids don't need Chris Pratt's credit to convince them to see 'The Lego Movie' or 'Garfield' or 'Onward' — but in this case it makes box office sense. These names lend a certain credibility to the project, the feeling that this isn't just a random Christian movie but something legit, with major talent behind it, the kind of movie that might lure even the not-so-faithful into the theater around the Easter season. Cards on the table: As a Christian myself, I feel some natural ceiling to how frustrated I can possibly get at a movie that, after all, does a reverent and workmanlike job telling the story at the center of my own faith tradition. (It gets the timing of the Magi arriving from the east at that manger in Bethlehem wrong, but it's hardly the first retelling of the story to do so.) But also, as a Christian — and as a movie critic — I would like to say this loudly, with my whole chest: This movie doesn't need to exist. I have grown weary of people telling me they think Hollywood has 'run out of ideas' in an age of reboots and remakes — a sentiment I agree with, by the way — when movies like this one are made, often with the aim of pleasing those exact complainers. Charles Dickens provides nobody's idea of a new perspective on Jesus's life. Nothing happens that hasn't happened before. This isn't 'The Chosen,' the hit show that was also distributed by Angel Studios in its early seasons, with its fresh perspective on the many characters in the story. It's just the same story: every beat expected, every moment predetermined. There are dozens of films about the life of Jesus, a narrative filmmakers set about retelling almost as soon as the film camera was invented. They all still exist. (Oscar Isaac is even in another one.) You can still rent any of them. Heck, a theater can even show them, and sell tickets to it, and probably make a tidy profit doing so. My frustration stems with my feeling, merited or otherwise, that this movie is a grab for potential patrons' pockets. It feels calibrated purely to capitalize on an audience who senses a moral obligation to purchase tickets for every single retelling of Jesus's life. This impression was not dissuaded by the film's post-resurrection exhortation, featuring a reel of cute little children saying how much they liked the movie and asking you to take out your phone and scan the QR code to buy a ticket for someone else to see the film. All I can say is this: When the third or fourth child asked me to pull out my phone and buy a ticket, I found myself thinking of a scene from earlier in the movie, one familiar to Bible readers. In it, Jesus shows up to the temple in Jerusalem and discovers many vendors bilking the faithful out of their money. Irate, he overturns tables, declaring that these vendors have made his father's house — that is, the house of God — into a den of thieves. I don't think there's thievery going on here, to be perfectly clear. These movies profit because people give up their cash willingly. But I wish fervently that those who want to tell Bible stories for the faithful would avail themselves of the many other options: the parables, the prophets, the revelations. The many stories that go untold, for reasons I can only imagine.
