October Positivity: Sarah’s Choice (dir by Chad Kapper)

Posted on October 24, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

You can probably just look at the title and guess what is going on with this 2009 faith-based film.

Sarah Collins (Rebecca St. James) is pregnant and she’s thinking about getting an abortion. She doesn’t feel that she’s ready to become a mother. Her quasi-boyfriend works in the same office that she does and, at first, he seems more interested in just hanging out with the boys than actually doing anything that would indicate he would be a good father. Sarah is up for a promotion at work and, as her best friend (Andrea Logan White) is quick to point out, the bosses aren’t going to promote a woman who might put her family before her job.

On the other hand, Sarah keeps having visions of herself in the future, married and with a daughter who loves her. Sarah’s sister-in-law (Staci Keanan) talks about how much she loves being a mother. A local minister (Dick Van Patten) gently suggests that God might be trying to tell Sarah something. Sarah realizes that her best friend is hardly an unbiased observer when it comes to Sarah’s choice. Plus, the film takes place during the Christmas season. There’s happiness and joy everywhere!

As you probably guessed, this is an anti-abortion movie. That said, as far as faith-based anti-abortion movies go, it’s actually a bit more fair-minded than one might expect. Sarah struggles with her decision and the film is at least willing to take Sarah’s concerns seriously, as opposed to just portraying her as being either selfish or immature (which is the usual path that most anti-abortion films take). One character expresses regret for her own past abortion but, again, the film treats the character fairly. It may not seem like much but compared to something like Allison’s Choice, which featured Jesus Christ showing up and then breaking into tears while standing in an abortion clinic, Sarah’s Choice is downright moderate in its storytelling.

The truth of the matter is that there really aren’t that many subtle films made about abortion, on either side of the debate. Yes, pro-life films tend to be heavy-handed and too quick to villainize those who feel differently. But the same can be said of most pro-abortion films as well. Abortion is one of those issues that tends to bring out the extremists on both sides. When you see a film like Sarah’s Choice — a film in which no one is accused of committing murder and no one attempts to bomb anyone else — it’s almost a relief, even if you don’t agree with the film’s overall message.

Rebecca St. James gives a sympathetic performance as Sarah and Andrea Logan White brings so much-needed nuance to the role of her best friend. Dick Van Patten, with his friendly manner and nonjudgmental attitude, is the ideal counselor. Sarah’s Choice is not a film that is going to win any converts and I imagine that people who are far more politically-minded than me will find a lot to get annoyed about with this movie. I think that, overall, it’s well-acted and well-made. It’s a movie not a manifesto.

October Positivity: Faith Of Our Fathers (dir by Carey Scott)

Posted on October 13, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

2015’s Faith Of Our Fathers tells the story of a road trip to Washington, D.C.

John (Kevin Downes) and Wayne (David A.R. White) might not seem to have much in common. John is uptight and neurotic, on the verge of getting married but feeling like he has to do one final thing while his fiancée (Candace Cameron Bure) plans their wedding. Wayne is a proud redneck, someone who lives in a trailer and enjoys picking fights. When John first shows up at the trailer, Wayne shoots a shotgun at him. When John refuses to leave, Wayne eventually allows him into the trailer and the two of them talk.

They are linked by their fathers, who both served and bonded in Vietnam. Through flashbacks, we see how John’s father (Sean McGowan) found strength from his religious faith and how Wayne’s father (Scott Whyte, who viewers of a certain age will recognize from City Guys) eventually set aside his cynicism. Wayne is in possession of the letters that his father wrote home from Vietnam and John, feeling a need to know who his father was, wants to read those letters. Wayne agrees to show John the letters if he drives Wayne to Washington D.C. so that they can visit the Vietnam War memorial.

Along the way, the two of them bicker, bond, and have adventures. This is a road film, which means that it has to take a while for John and Wayne to stop arguing with each other and start to open up about their pasts and their views on the modern world. They meet a wide variety of people while on their trip, some of whom are trustworthy and many of whom are not. They also meet Mansfield (Stephen Baldwin), who served in Vietnam with their fathers and who offers up some details about what happened to the men while they were serving in the military.

Unfortunately, the film itself doesn’t really work. It has all of the flaws that one typically associates with a faith-based filmmaking. The budget is noticeably low, something that especially becomes an issue during the Vietnam flashbacks. The dialogue is often didactic. Downes and White are familiar faces when it comes to faith-based films and they’ve both given good performances in other films but they both feel miscast here. As played by Downes, John is a bit too neurotic to be believable (or particularly sympathetic) while White’s earnest and, at times, goofy style of performing feels wrong for a character who is supposed to be into random fights and beer. For someone whose career has largely become about appearing in faith-based films, Stephen Baldwin seems rather detached throughout Faith of our Fathers. In the flashbacks, he’s one of the least convincing commanding officers that I’ve ever seen in a war film. In the modern scenes, he just seems bored. If I’m being hard on Baldwin, it’s because I’ve seen him give really good performances in other films. Knowing that he could be giving a good performance makes his bad performances all the more frustrating.

I will say this, though. Faith of Our Fathers takes a stand for supporting our veterans, both when they’re serving and after they’ve come home. I appreciated that. All too often, we seem to hold the unpopular wars against those who served, as if the mistakes of those in command are somehow their fault. That happened with Vietnam and it’s happening right now with Iraq and Afghanistan. No one should ever be forgotten or deserted by their own country.

Film Review: Left Behind: The Movie (dir by Vic Sarin)

Posted on August 27, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

As I watched the 2000 film Left Behind: The Movie (not to be confused with the remake starring Nicolas Cage), I found myself thinking about names.

For instance, if your name is Rayford Steele, you really probably don’t have any choice but to become a pilot and maybe star in a low-budget action movie. I mean, let’s just be honest. People with names like Rayford Steele don’t end up working the night shift at 7-11. In Left Behind, Rayford Steele is played by Bad Johnson and Johnson has just the right look to play a character named Rayford Steele. He’s handsome in a somewhat old-fashioned, Gary Cooperish sort of way.

And yes, Rayford is a pilot. He had a wife who resents the fact that Rayford is always flying off and abandoning his family. She goes to church and she worries that he’s not a believer. Rayford, meanwhile, is having an affair with flight attendant Hattie Dunham (Chelsea Noble). That affair, however, may have to soon come to an end because Hattie has a new job with the UN. Poor Hattie. Nothing good ever comes from working at the UN!

Just as anyone named Rayford Steele would have to become a pilot, I imagine that anyone named Buck Williams would have to become a globe-trotting journalist. We’re told that Buck is one of the most famous and successful journalists in the world. Someone even mentions that Buck is so brave that he would have reported from Hiroshima while the first atomic bomb was being dropped. (I assume that would have been a fairly short broadcast.) Unfortunately, it’s a bit of a struggle to buy Buck Williams as a crusading journalist because he’s played by Kirk Cameron. Buck is described as being tough and cynical. There’s absolutely nothing tough about Kirk Cameron. At his best, he projects an earnest blandness. At his worst, he reminds you that he’s the guy who, years after starring in this film, would claim that a conspiracy of atheists was responsible for Saving Christmas receiving bad reviews.

Finally, if your name is Nicolae Carpathia, you’re pretty much destined to grow up to be very wealthy and also very evil. You’re not going to end up living in the suburbs, mowing your own lawn and complaining about property taxes. No, with a name like Nicolae Carpathia, you’re destined to end up using your position at the UN to take over the world. When you declare that your goal is to lead the world into “seven years of peace,” everyone knows that you’re planning on doing the exact opposite.

Or, at the very least, everyone should know. As played by Gordon Currie, Nicolae Carpathia is obviously evil from the minute he first appears. (Even if you didn’t know his name, you would think he was evil just from the way he smirks.) However, in the world of Left Behind, almost everyone loves Nicolae Carpathia. When thousands of people mysteriously vanish, all at the same time, Carpathia is the person to whom humanity turns their tear-brimmed eyes. The viewers know that it’s the Rapture and Rayford Steele and Buck Williams come to realize that it was the Rapture but Carpathia sees it as an opportunity to lead humanity into a …. dare I say it? …. new world order.

Left Behind is an odd film. For the most part, it’s a fairly ludicrous film, a low-budget and excessively preachy attempt to create a religious epic on a Wal-Mart budget. Kirk Cameron is miscast as a journalist and the film’s special effects are so obviously cheap that one can’t help but feel the filmmakers got a bit too ambitious for their own good. (Just check out the scene at the start of the film when Buck Williams reports while “bombs” explode all around him.) With a running time of one hour and 40 minutes, the film drags a bit and the characters are often frustratingly dense. (Even non-evangelicals have, at the very least, heard that there’s a thing called the Rapture.) And yet, occasionally, there will be moments when the film actually comes close to working. Brad Johnson, for instance, gives about as good a performance as anyone could as Rayford Steele. The scene where Carpathia manipulates a subordinate into committing suicide may not be terrible original but it’s still surprisingly effective.

Despite the fact that the film itself barely made a profit, Left Behind would go on to spawn two sequels. We’ll look at the first, Tribulation Force, in 15 minutes. Hope to see you then!