Redeeming Love looks great. It features great locations shot with great cinematography, but that’s about all director D.J. Caruso can do to entice us to keep watching. It’s terrific to see a story unfolding in a non-CGI, true-to-life setting, even if it’s Cape Town standing in for California (but then some of the greatest westerns were filmed in Europe, so there’s that), but while this movie arguably achieves the western look, it fails to conjure up any sort of western feel. The script concerns a Hooker with a Heart of Gold known as Angel, who is so sought after that the local Madame, who calls herself Duchess, holds a daily raffle to determine which lucky slack-jawed gold miners – there is more than one winner per day – get to hold sexual congress with her. This is such a cumbersome arrangement that it actually gets in the way of the plot, so that co-writers Francine Rivers and Caruso Hand Wave it not long after they have introduced it. So-called “dirt farmer” Michael Hosea becomes smitten with Angel, so what does he do to get near her? Does he buy all the numbers in the raffle? Does he have the raffle rigged? No and no; he simply “pays double”. That’s it. Why this hasn’t occurred to at least some of the yokels who form a daily scrum outside the brothel is anybody’s guess. Another good question is where Michael, who is not a miner, finds enough “gold dust” to gain access to Angel on three different occasions. Angel wants nothing to do with Michael owing to a deep-seated hatred and distrust of men, which is established in a series of flashbacks that are so many and so long they could make up an entire, separate movie all by themselves. They are also the reason that Redeeming Love unnecessarily breaks the 120-minute mark. But the oddest part about these flashbacks is that they show Angel escaping a life of compulsory whoredom only to enter a life of voluntary whoredom. Twice. Maybe even thrice, but that last time is once again against her will. In any case, it gets to be quite repetitive after a while. It is only after Angel gets the tar beaten out of her by the Duchess’s lackey Magowan that she relents and agrees to marry Michael – but first he has to pay off her “debt” to the Duchess, and the irony that he literally buys Angel off in order to make an honest woman out of her is lost on Michael and Caruso alike. Redeeming Love’s greatest achievement, other than its photography, is how well it masks its biblical pedigree. According to Wikipedia this is a “Christian Western” based on an homonymous novel by Rivers (unread by me, though it wouldn’t surprise if she had first published it under the pseudonym F.R. Ancine), which in turn is inspired by an obscure Old Testament book – not that you would even guess at any of this by watching the movie, and that’s actually a good thing. It may be long and boring, but at least it’s not overtly preachy.
David Sumner, a mild-mannered academic from the United States, marries Amy, an Englishwoman. In order to escape a hectic stateside lifestyle, David and his wife relocate to the small town in rural Cornwall where Amy was raised. There, David is ostracized by the brutish men of the village, including Amy's old flame, Charlie. Eventually the taunts escalate, and two of the locals rape Amy. This sexual assault awakes a shockingly violent side of David.
Precocious teenager Juliet moves to New Zealand with her family and soon befriends the quiet, brooding Pauline through their shared love of fantasy and literature. This friendship gradually develops into an intense and obsessive bond.
In a small farming valley in Austria in the beginning of the 20th century a tyrannical farmer is found dead, and all the farmhands are relieved to be free of their tyrant. But the farmer was childless, so suddenly they all inherit the farm together. Now conflicts begin, as nobody is the boss and nobody has to obey.
A mysterious story of two magicians whose intense rivalry leads them on a life-long battle for supremacy - full of obsession, deceit and jealousy with dangerous and deadly consequences.
Caye is a young prostitute whose family is unaware of her profession. She meets her striking Dominican neighbour Zulema, an illegal immigrant, after she finds her in the bathroom, badly beaten up. They strike up a close friendship unbeknownst to Caye's xenophobic co-workers.
The true story of the frightening, lonely world of silence and darkness of 7-year-old Helen Keller who, since infancy, has never seen the sky, heard her mother's voice or expressed her innermost feelings. Then Annie Sullivan, a 20-year-old teacher from Boston, arrives. Having just recently regained her own sight, the no-nonsense Annie reaches out to Helen through the power of touch, the only tool they have in common, and leads her bold pupil on a miraculous journey from fear and isolation to happiness and light.
Fifty years into the future, the sun is dying, and Earth is threatened by arctic temperatures. A team of astronauts is sent to revive the Sun — but the mission fails. Seven years later, a new team is sent to finish the mission as mankind’s last hope.
When Isabelle and Theo invite Matthew to stay with them, what begins as a casual friendship ripens into a sensual voyage of discovery and desire in which nothing is off limits and everything is possible.
In Mexico, two teenage boys and an attractive older woman embark on a road trip and learn a thing or two about life, friendship, sex, and each other.
A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.
A lonely telephone operator leading an empty, amoral life finds God – only to have her faith continually tested in ways beyond what she could have imagined.