The following is a review of the 2024 film Heretic. The review contains light spoilers, but the heavy ones are placed in the endnotes so as to not ruin the film. (You can also listen to the Sunstone Podcast review of Heretic here: Spotify, Apple, Sunstone.) A preamble: Dear Father in Heaven, thank you for …
The LDS Church’s mammoth audiovisual infrastructure stems largely from the early efforts of one man. James E. Talmage. Ninety years after his death, Elder James E. Talmage of the Quorum of the Twelve is primarily remembered as an intellectual defender of his faith and the author of several lengthy theological books like The Articles of …
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) …
