Fresh and Exciting

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I think this is a pretty good telling of the nativity story. The good things about the movie is not only does it make you realize how violent a time it was, but how unjust. People had no "civil rights"... King Herod did exactly as he pleased... guards coming into your house at night and killing your sons... it must have been horrifying.Oscar Isaac was great as Joseph, who was very loving towards Mary... he took on the role of father to Jesus once he got over the initial shock of Mary's condition. That having been said, there were a few things I was not happy with.I wish Keisha Castle-Hughes had spoken up more... I mean, her voice is hard to hear and her accent was a bit hard to understand. Also, he did not portray Mary in the way I've always imagined her. I thought she would be a bit more lively... that she'd have a happier air about her, but I guess that is up for debate.I wish there had been more of a look into how life was at that time. And I would have love to know how old Elizabeth was when she had John, but I don't guess we'll ever know that for sure.

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.

Having recently seen and watched the BBC 2010 adaptation of THE NATIVITY, I was eager to find out how this Hollywood production value compared. It turns out to be even better, thanks to exceptional production values and a real resonance in terms of storytelling that brings both the era and the characters to life.The filmmakers don't go so far as to have the characters speaking in their original languages like Mel Gibson did for PASSION OF THE Christ, but everything else looks and feels great, particularly Oscar Isaac's and Keisha Castle-Hughes's very human Joseph and Mary. The backdrops and scenery are both lavish, with delicately-balanced humour and support from acting heavyweights like Ciaran Hinds.Altogether it's a touching, moving viewing experience and one that should appeal to Christian viewers everywhere, refreshingly free of the interplanetary nonsense that marred the BBC version (where I kept expecting Professor Brian Cox to pop up and explain the science behind the alignments of the planets or some such).