The Passion of the Christ (2004) (Blu Ray) - 7/10

Even though The Passion of the Christ is an incedibly hard movie to watch, you have to give respect to Mel Gibson for putting something together that's really never been shown on screen quite like this before. Following the last hours of Jesus and his followers, this movie is a brutal and realistic experience that surely deserves it's controversy. I saw that this had been released on Blu Ray a couple weeks ago so I figured I would try to get through it again with the brand new HD transfer and listen to the director/theologian commentary to try and learn something in the process. It's interesting to hear people talk about these incidents like it's just another part of the history books and I found it fascinating in how much people know about this subject to the point where they're analyzing eye contact, body movements, and allegories to other books of the bible which kind of made it confusing but relevant to Easter nonetheless. The main thing I got out of this commentary and intellectual discussion was the fact that Mel Gibson wanted to stay so true to what the bible depicts that he ultimately makes the audience suffer like Jesus does in the film to try and make us pay respect to his sacrifice. I agree that people need to see the true side of these events but I sometimes think kids need to have it painter in a lighter picture to really want to go to church and stuff when they are young. This movie is a great part of history in the fact that we have the technology and production design to pull this off yet I find it hard to recommend or even look forward to watching this again.