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All Saints | 2017 | PG | - 1.3.2
A paper salesman (John Corbett) becomes an Episcopalian priest and accepts an assignment to close a Tennessee church. After he sees the dwindling congregation accept 15 Karen refugee families from Burma and work with them to farm the property, he helps the church to become self-supporting. Also with Nelson Lee, Cara Buono, Barry Corbin and Gregory Allan Williams. Directed by Steve Gomer. Several lines of dialogue are spoken in Karenic with English subtitles and a hymn is sung without translation. [1:48]
SEX/NUDITY 1 - A woman is shown wearing a dress with a V-neckline that reveals cleavage. An image of Christ shows him hanging on the cross, covered only around the lower stomach and groin area with a cloth.
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VIOLENCE/GORE 3 - We see a headline about the genocide of the Karen people in Burma, with a photo of a man with one leg and a child crying violently.
► Three sheriffs try to take away a young refugee child who was standing near a road at a church and the other refugees shout; a pastor appears and a sheriff punches him hard in the forehead drawing some blood and the sheriffs leave without the child.
► We hear that a Karen soldier with a broken collar bone and broken wrist helped three other men escape a POW camp and that the man led a large group of refugees through the jungle for five years and out of confinement from a prison camp. We hear that whole Karen families died in the war, including many children; but survivors of all ages screamed in the night in the prison camp. A man says that the Karen youth began to steal and that some boys and girls were raped, but the Christian church hut was a refuge that brought the refugees together in community. We hear that a man's son died in the genocide and that in America, his wife left him. Three teen boys are sent home from school and we hear that when bullies bothered them, they used kickboxing on them (we do not see this).
► A large thunderstorm system approaches a farm of four fields as people begin harvesting; they continue into the loud, stormy night, with help from dozens of volunteers and car headlights as hard rain beats down most of the cornfield and much of the squash washes away in a flood as men shout as they push a stuck tractor and a trailer full of tomatoes out of deep mud. A busload of sour-leaf rots in the heat inside a bus when the bus is impounded for parking tickets.
► People work in the hot sun to clean farm fields after a heavy storm destroyed most of the crops. A man waters four fields by hand with a barrel of water and a hand pump, leaving his hands red and scraped (there's no bleeding); when the pump breaks the man beats the barrel angrily with the broken metal handle. Refugees work farm fields from sunrise to 9:00 AM and then work 12 hour shifts in a manufacturing plant.
► A husband and his wife argue briefly. A man and his young son argue briefly. Two men argue in a pickup truck and one man tells the other to get out, leaving him by the side of the road. Two men argue about a church. An elderly man mumbles, shouts at others, and stomps around a church and fields; another man says that the man's wife recently died and he is a Vietnam War veteran. A man speaks at a business banquet, is cut off by another man, and berates the people for not caring about refuges in their town. A man shouts and ejects two real estate men from his church. A man stands outside during a storm and he tells his wife that God spoke to him to make a farm. A man says that he sold his farm, because he could no longer stand to be cruel to migrant workers, making them work 12 hours or more a day.
► A photo on a wall in a home shows a man in his military uniform, holding an M16-A1 rifle. In a school office scene, we hear a woman shouting off-screen that someone should know better. An elderly man displays a large red scar on his lower shin from a bullet wound in Vietnam.
LANGUAGE 2 - 1 scatological term, 1 anatomical term, 4 mild obscenities, name-calling (crazy, weird, stupid, old man, old cranks, errand boy, huckster, clunker, junker, con man in a collar, cowardly, the Lone Preacher, fortune cookie from on high), exclamations (hot dog, shut your pie hole), 15 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh Lord, Oh God, God Spoke To Me, Dear Friends In Christ, Glory Be, we are all one family in Jesus Christ, God please don't do this, I'm just doing God's will, God's hand is at work in our fields, four hymns, one benediction prayer).
SUBSTANCE USE - Glasses of wine are seen at all the tables at a banquet and one man and one woman sip from their glasses.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - Faith, accepting a calling, accepting diverse religions and cultures, hearing the voice of God, serving in the mission field, standing by one's convictions, following through, asking for help, genocide, survival, refugees, helping others, mentoring, difficulties of farming, hard work, dedication, closing small churches, community, fellowship, sacrifice, friendship, respect, trust.
MESSAGE - Building a diverse and accepting community is one of the major roles of the Christian church.
CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
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