When I saw the list of the 2022 Academy Awards’ Best Picture nominees, I thought, “Which of these movies would be most useful to Mormons?” And the answer I came up with was Tár. Which seemed strange. After all, we had Avatar: The Way of Water, a movie about a family—and Mormons love families! We …
An excerpt from “E.T.: Celluloid Savior” by Marty Nabhan, in the September 1982 Sunstone Review. Consider the following. E.T. is a Christ figure. He is a botanist, a “shepherd of plants” so to speak. His mission is peaceful—he has come to save some of the earth’s endangered organisms. He arrives out of the heavens, heals …
By Randy Astle Randy Astle is a writer and filmmaker in New York City. He has written numerous articles, and is nearly finished with a book on Mormon film. A TRIP TO SALT LAKE CITY Released during the Smoot Senate hearing, A Trip to Salt Lake City (1905) was both the first Mormon fiction …
Reviewed by Stephen Carter The Cokeville Miracle and Freetown are fascinating glimpses into how Mormons approach faith-promoting stories, and how those stories interact with the core message of the gospel. The Cokeville Miracle If you haven’t heard about the Cokeville miracle: in 1986, David and Doris Young (played by Nathan Stevens and Kym Mellen, repectively) …
