This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

I left the Catholic faith when I was twelve. This brilliant film brought it all back. Once a Catholic priest called me a heretic when I asked him who made God. How amazing it was to see it all come back. Brilliant.

The construction of this film perfectly demonstrated the integration of form and content with its division into chapters reflecting the stations of the cross.The use of single shot sequences attempted to complete this structure with a fly on the wall technique reflecting the realist script/acting style. A recording of the effects on a young girl of religious extremism. Where I found a shortfall in the film was in the use of such extreme belief in modern Europe.No doubt there are many such believers,whether Christian,Muslim,Jewish or any other religion. But it is in the ordinary, everyday influence of the church that ,it seems to me, most influence is seen and bypassed in drama because it is not so viable for dramatic usage in film/television. For example, the values taught in schools and reinforced in mainstream media as norms for being a "good" or "successful" member of society can have severe effects on young people,and throughout life. For mainstream writers/media the ordinary is a no go area.And yet it is here that millions and millions of people live in a world inhabited by, and constructed out of , religious belief. My criticism of this film,then, is that it suffered the fate of the story teller..be it soap opera on the Telly or film for the pictures....."make it dramatic...go for the extreme...the real world is too mundane".

I find it hard to understand the positive reviews attributed this film. The themes religious fanaticism, paraphrases of Jesus' sufferings are interesting - as always. A movie with one camera position is daring, and requires... something else, which I'm afraid this film doesn't offer. It's film wasted on a story - perhaps as a play it would work much better. Roy Andersson knows this when he adds small diversities to each new position of his camera, but in this case there's no play with tension, no surprises. And yes, I do know of 'Via dolorosa' - there's no comedy there, and no one expects it here. The actors do well, although, they cannot save the story. From the first scene, one already knows how it will end, how it's gonna get there, and there are no surprises, except from the negative. If this was music, it would have no verses, no chorus... perhaps no sound - it's minimalism at its worst. I do enjoy the works of Dreyer, Bergman, Trier, and Andersson - not this - there's only religion linking Brüggemann with the other directors. Had I not been seated in the middle of an almost full theater, I would have walked out on this. This has to be my worst movie experience in... 20 years.

This movie will make your blood absolutely boil. If ever you needed proof that organized religion is a destructive, delusive, maniacal force that brings misery to people's lives, this movie is it.Almost anything I might say here about the movie would be something of a spoiler... You just need to see it, from the beginning, and let the story make its simple, compelling case.This movie is almost kind of a modern, real-life, thinking-man's CARRIE-- (the Stephen King story). It is sly, smooth, seamless, cool and compelling in tone and style.Filmically, this movie carries on in the recent tradition of German films like REQUIEM (2006, dir. Hans Christian Schmid) and PARADISE:FAITH (dir. Ulrich Seidl, 2012) which deeply question the value of Christian brainwash in modern society, especially a society like Germany's, with its devotion to science. Essentially, these three movies show how religion... makes people batshit crazy, and makes them do cruel, mindless, absurd things.If you're not foaming at the mouth by the end of this picture-- with indignant rage-- check your pulse. Some have blithely blathered that this movie is a religious tale of a girl's sainthood. That's SO not what this movie is saying; the director wanted to light a torch under your backside, pure 'n' simple.