How Movies Helped Save My Soul: Finding Spiritual Fingerprints in Culturally Significant Films

This book, writes Tony Campolo in the foreword, ""calls us to go to the movies to hear and see sermons."" Higgins, an Irish Gen X-er, could be the textbook case of a postmodern young Christian, writing about movies in order to both explain his own idiosyncrasies and encourage others in the faith. In true post-modern fashion, Higgins insists that he is not providing a ""right"" interpretation of any of the films (well, except one or two), but offers the book as the opening shot in a volley-like dialogue. Seventeen chapters are arranged thematically around concepts like fear, justice, power, ""anti-heroes"" and war--popular po-mo topics. (And there's a last-but-not-least factor: The Matrix scores its own closing chapter.) The writing is sassy, confessional and just darn funny; while some readers may be put off by Higgins's tone of studied casualness, others will find his irreverence a welcome change. Also, the sheer breadth of the movies covered here is nothing short of amazing--it's rare for a Christian book to have Disney films jockeying for space next to Quentin Tarantino and Stanley Kubrick. Bravo.