Anna and Elsa depict two extremes of socialization: Anna is so open to others that she lets the wrong people in, while Elsa is shutting everyone away because she’s afraid of hurting anyone. In both circumstances, they each put each other and everyone around them in considerable danger. Meeting people and handling issues about loving others is never easy for anyone, and for somebody on the autism spectrum the entire concept of love is practically a foreign concept.

Basically, they often just cannot find a balance between the two extremes of getting out too much and not getting out enough. That includes myself.

​This can get especially confusing when the autistic child is in high school, when fishing for friendships is the ultimate concern of the entire community. Your lifelong best friend from kindergarten finds an interest in the life of drugs, and you two end up drifting apart. You feel a romantic drawing to a girl in the math society, but your social clique forbids interaction with that group. You want to come out as gay, but you’re afraid of all your closest friends turning against you. These are confusing times for anyone. Even more so for the autistic individual.

It’s so frequent that the public image of Christmas forces you to be happy with your family, even though that time often causes all sorts of long-lasting chaos, particularly broken relationships. At that point, you almost wonder, “is it worth the hassle?” Home Alone has clearly become a Christmas favorite for a lot of people because it fantasizes most Americans’ real desire at that time of year: to be alone. While that time away from unneeded chaos is always a good thing, it should never replace communion with others. The Holy Word always voices the importance of community, as Proverbs 18:1 says, “Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment.”
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This movie does affirm by the end that being with family, despite complications, is indeed worth the hassle, but still doesn’t get it all right. First off, nothing about the McAllister’s home suggests a hint of morality, as depicted in the way they bully Kevin and only see their act of coming home ASAP from Paris as an act of necessity, not love. As a result, Kevin is easily spooked by the rest of the neighborhood, particularly Old Man Marley.

200 years ago, African descendants were once treated in the United States like they each were only 3/5 of a person, a reality thankfully now behind us. Although numerous circumstances of hate still happen, from Whites against Blacks and vice-versa, which has triggered many anti-racism organizations including Black Lives Matter. Several films over the last several years have commented on this type of racial strife, including Jordan Peele’s horror satire Get Out, which I shall now discuss to give a Christly perspective on our confusing times.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

One prevalent question the film’s protagonist, Chris Washington, gets asked is, “What is your purpose in life?” The question asked to all of us starts at the opening scene, which shows a Black guy getting kidnapped by a white car at night. The song played from the car sings, “bang, bang, bang, bang, goes the farmer’s gun. Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run, run.” This car and the tune appear again in the climax once Chris tries to escape from the house; and who has the gun? His White girlfriend, Rose! Was it God who saved him from having his brain removed and replaced with a White man’s brain?

No, there is a subtle queue that says God did not come to the rescue.

​You would not want Denzel Washington’s character as a father. You may recall seeing trailers advertising this movie, where he scolds to his son, “What law is there saying I got to like you? Don’t you eat every day? As long as you in my house, you put a sir at the end of it when you talk to me.” Hopefully you never had a father unnervingly speak similar words to you; if it turns out you did, I’m here to help.
 
Children all over live under fathers who are poor role models or express no care to love their children. Any child (and mother) wound find it traumatic, even more so when the child has autism.
 
Everybody’s first impression of adulthood comes from the parents. For girls, the mother must show them how to be a woman. For boys, father must show them how to be a man. In both cases, the father, being the usual household leader, stands as the whole house’s role model. You don’t have to agree, but in most circumstances, that is just how it goes.

I don't think you ever asked this question before, but if you have followed the Oscars lately, you should know that its viewership has reached an all-time low in recent years. With the new "Best Popular Film" category recently announced, it got me back to wondering, what if instead of forcing crowd pleasers into a corner, they actually gave them the same amount of love and attention as the other Oscar bait features? Basically, here is what I had in mind: for each category, half the films nominated are films that made at least $100,000,000 at the Box Office, the other half is whatever else deserves to make it in. That way, deserving films that people have actually seen and heard of get in and they also notice those smaller art house films. Everybody wins! I'll show you what I have in mind with the last two Oscar ceremonies. For your reference:

The real 2017 Academy Award winners.
The real 2016 Academy Award winners.

Although, I won't cover these categories for obvious reasons:

• Best Foreign Language Film
• Best Documentary Feature
• Best Documentary Short
• Best Animated Short
• Best Live Action Short

Just full disclosure, nothing official here, just what ideally would like to see if the nominees were more filled with movies that the general public have actually seen. Others have said it before and now I'll say it: there shouldn't be such a disconnect between the old folks at Hollywood and the general public, the Oscars should not be a big ego-stroking session, but raised awareness about the art of filmmaking, and helping people to see these works that talk about issues that are truly important. Most importantly, I think that with what I have laid out here, it's evidence that there's no real excuse for popular movies to be overlooked by the academy, they can be almost as good as some of the finer films recognized by the academy, sometimes even much better. 

Black Panther
Best Picture
Best Popular Film

What do these three have in common? The latest changes the Academy has made, with the inclusion of a 25th category: Best Popular Film. What does that mean? Well, to be honest, nobody knows, not even the Academy themselves! They're still working out the details...

Another significant change they made includes condensing the ceremony to a much stricter 3 hour run time, which means the winners of the smaller categories will only be able to have their speeches condensed into a shorter montage run during commercial break, kind of like how the Tony Awards works.

If you've been on social media a lot since yesterday, I'm sure you saw that the response has been overwhelmingly negative. As in, I have not seen even one person who's happy about these changes. At first, I didn't really care much about the Best Popular Film category, but after thinking about it more, and hearing other people's reactions, I do have some things to say.

It is a celebration of what makes animals different, thus, a celebration of what makes us people different. We all know good and clear that Zootopia is a very child-friendly allegory to racism and prejudice in America, but how is this feature from a Christian perspective?
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The main thing I can tell you is that it does get some things wrong about the Bible’s teachings. The key thing to address is how this movie depicts a future where mammals have grown into the world’s dominant species, suggesting evolution and the death of man, which goes against God’s promise. Now, obviously, that’s a no brainer considering this is coming from such a secular company, but it’s using theories of evolution as our means of existentialism, and thus, our standard on how to love each other. While this isn’t an inherently bad message, the mindset of the message is wrong.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

Click here to read my review of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.

​It’s no secret that kids are easily rattled. At age two, kids are afraid of being left alone. At age five, kids are afraid of what’s under the bed. At age eight, kids are afraid of their first day of school. At age twelve, kids are afraid of getting zits on their face. So there’s nothing more unsettling in the media when a film marketed towards kids features intentionally frightening images. It’s a complex study of psychology: children’s minds are developed in a certain way by how old they are, and it means they are more easily frightened by those who are older. This movie in particular probably necessitated the more unsettling images, but in the way that it was marketed, the two clash disastrously with one another.
 
I myself remember getting scared of popping balloons, ventriloquist dummies and marionette puppets, but for some reason it took a lot to get me rattled by something I saw on TV (not even the pink elephants in Dumbo scared me- and that’s coming from me as a four-year-old). But in the case of other kids with autism, there are plenty of things that could scare them easily, and these fears are far more sensitive than kids without autism.

Click here to read my review of The Angry Birds Movie.
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The original iPhone game was harmless and straightforward, but this movie, with the added power of narrative storytelling, teaches a dangerous message that says anger is proper motivation to accomplish goals. While it may be true in some respects, the way this movie explains it suggests that disrespecting others is okay in the process, as long as you follow your impulse.

It’s true especially today in our millennial culture of mobile devices and streaming options on-the-go, but I know of several parents who are not good at surveying what their kids watch, and how little they know about the media they are taking in. I even knew of a couple who let their six-year-old daughter watch the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie alone, a PG-13 movie which opens with hundreds of people getting hanged—not appropriate stuff for little girls to be watching.

While all parents must be cautious as to what they let their kids watch, there is an even greater threat to wrong morals getting picked up by kids with autism.