Gathered friends, listen again to our legend, of the Bionicle. In a time, before time, the Great Spirit, Mata Nui, fell from the heavens, carrying we, the ones called the Matoran. We were separate, and without purpose, so the Great Spirit illuminated us with the three virtues: Unity, Duty, and Destiny!
– Turaga Vakama, Bionicle: Mask of Light

As the father of two boys, I have just finished watching the four Bionicle movies with them. A strange experience to say the least; the Bionicle movies describe a world of heroic, living machines possessing a bizarre blended theology of polytheism and Eastern philosophy. Since I sat through all four, (some more than once) Goozlepipe presents the first of a four-part review.

When I was a child LEGOs were brightly colored, nearly indestructible plastic blocks that you could use to build anything your wanted… as long as it was roughly rectangular. But times have changed. Sleek and stylized, LEGO’s Bionicle (“biological” + “chronicle”) is a line of toys marketed primarily to 6 – 16 year-old boys.

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Popularity: 4%

As one of the holiest times in Christendom approaches, families like ours often struggle with balancing the commercialization and secularism in popular culture with the true reason for the season. To help others, we have assembled our list of Christian Christmas movies.

Our list focuses on those movie with strong Christian values. For that reason, perennial Christmas favorites like It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), A Christmas Story (1983), or Miracle on 34th Street (1947) are not included.

A Christmas to Remember (1978) – A city-bred grandson moves to his grandparents’ farm during the Great Depression and grows up enough under their tough care to help his grandfather deliver a surprise gift on Christmas Eve to their community church with the help of a phantom stranger.

Bethlehem Year Zero (2004) – A novel approach to the Nativity presenting Jesus’ birth as television reporters and analysts might have covered it, had the medium existed in King Herod’s time. The field correspondents and studio pundits discuss the economic and political ramifications on society and speculate about the meaning of the Messiah’s appearance in their milieu.

Christmas Child: A Max Lucado Story (2004) – An updating of Max Lucado’s book “A Christmas Cross”, this film is about a successful Chicago journalist, whose marriage is at a breaking point as he is about to celebrate both his 40th birthday and Christmas; he is sent away during the Holidays to Texas for a story, and there reflects on his life and its meaning.
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Popularity: 3%

I am a great tracker. My pack sent me on a special mission, all by myself. Have you seen a bird? I am going to find one, and I am on the scent. I am a great tracker; did I mention that?

Release: 2009
Runtime: 1 hour, 36 min
Genre: Family, Animation, Comedy, Adventure
Language: English
MPAA Rating: PG
Starring: Edward Asner, Christopher Plummer, Jordan Nagai, Bob Peterson, John Ratzenberger

Amazon Link: Pixar’s UP

SYNOPSIS: Young Carl Fredrickson meets an adventure-minded girl named Ellie. Both dream of moving to Paradise Falls, an isolated plateau in South America. Seventy years later, Ellie has died and Carl is determined to fulfill their dreams of moving to Paradise Falls. When Carl inadvertently hits a construction worker, he is sentenced to a retirement home. But before they can take him away, he and his house fly away, along with a stowaway: an eight-year-old boy named Russell. Together, they embark in an adventure, encountering talking dogs, and a lost hero turned villain, and a rare bird named Kevin.

Up to this point, I have enjoyed Pixar’s movies, with the exception of the revulsion-inducing, vermin-infested “Ratatouille.” Even “Cars,” which was a bit too NASCAR for me, had a great story and fabulous characters. “Up,” unfortunately, does not meet Pixar’s previously high standards for storytelling.

Up’s uninteresting story of the old widower and his stowaway is technically competent with moments of visual inspiration: Carl’s balloons are like translucent gumballs, sunlight shines through them midflight and suffuses a little girl’s room with color. But heavy-handed sentimentality and a goofy, uninteresting script trump those artistic points. (more…)

Popularity: 6%

“Tales of typically normal excitable youngsters going on epic adventures that lifted the heart stirred the soul and haunted our dreams. But it was the palpable sense of adventure that really convinced, giving us youngsters an achievable sense of daydream adventure” — Oliver Pfeiffer
For those who were young in the 1980s, the decade’s movies hold a special place in their hearts. CGI was just coming into its own on the silver screen and fantasy adventures were a staple for children and teenagers alike.

Oliver Pfeiffer takes us back to those halcyon days with his list of the “Top 10 Cult Classic 80s Fantasy Adventure Flicks.” We’ve added IMDb plot summaries as well as a bonus list of movies we thought deserved recognition as well.

1. The Goonies (1985): A young teenager named Mikey Walsh finds an old treasure map in his father’s attic. Hoping to save their homes from demolition, Mikey and his friends Data Wang, Chunk Cohen, and Mouth Devereaux runs off on a big quest to find the secret stash One-Eyed Willie.
2. Return to Oz (1985): Dorothy Gale has recently come back to Kansas from the land of Oz is now almost back to perfect health since the incident of the tornado, only she cannot get that wonderful place out of her head. She talks frequently about it and cannot get any sleep at night. Her Aunt Em worries about her health/well-being. Thinking that her niece is suffering delusional depression and acute insomnia, she decides to take Dorothy to see a special doctor in another town. While the doctor tries to treat little Dorothy with electro-shock treatment and take away those nasty dreams from her head, Dorothy is rescued by a mysterious girl who leads her back to the land of oz for a new adventure.
3. Labyrinth (1986): Grown angry about the fact that she must watch over her little brother Toby, Sarah (Jennifer Connely) wishes the child to the goblins. They translate this careless statement into action: The Goblin-King Jareth (David Bowie) announces that soon Toby will mutate into a goblin. There is only one hope: Sarah has to find the way to Jareth’s castle – through a dangerous labyrinth – where she will find strange creatures.Young Sherlock Holmes (1985): Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson meet as boys in an English Boarding school. Holmes is known for his deductive ability even as a youth, amazing his classmates with his abilities. When they discover a plot to murder a series of British business men by an Egyptian cult, they move to stop it.
4. Explorers (1985): Ben Crandall, an alien-obsessed kid, dreams one night of a circuit board. Drawing out the circuit, he and his friends Wolfgang and Darren set it up, and discover they have been given the basis for a starship. Setting off in the ThunderRoad, as they name their ship, they find the aliens Ben hopes they would find… but are they what they seem?
5. The Lost Boys (1987): Financial troubles force a recent divorcee and her teenage sons Mike and Sam to settle down with her father in the California town of Santa Carla. At first, Sam laughs off rumours he hears about vampires who inhabit the small town. But after Mike meets a beautiful girl at the local amusement park, he begins to exhibit the classic signs of vampirism. Fearing for his own safety, Sam recruits two young vampire hunters to save his brother by finding and destroying the head vampire. (more…)

Popularity: 100%