Dr Paul Allen

The definite article (“the”) is a bold choice for the title of Matt Reeves’s new film about Gotham’s fabled caped crusader. A more appropriate title for The Batman would perhaps be A Batman because this latest reboot of the lucrative franchise is just one of many iterations of the comic book world. To declare Robert Pattinson’s version the Batman is to boldly go all-in on this rendering of the familiar story, pitting it against other renderings—Christopher Nolan’s so-serious Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012), Tim Burton’s and Joel Schumacher’s campy versions in the 80s and 90s, and Ben Affleck’s Batman in the DC Extended Universe films (2016–2021)—to vie for supremacy in cinema lore. Yet this boldness is what I loved most about The Batman. By going all-in on reenvisioning the world of Gotham—and its many colorful characters, textures, and subplots—Reeves captures why franchise reboots are attractive. Even if our memories of previous Gothams are still fresh, there are something captivatin...

  Author: Tim Challies. Is it fact or fiction? That is the question everyone asks when they first encounter Jonathan Cahn’s book  The Harbinger . The answer is both, I guess—a little from column a and a little from column b. How about this:  The Harbinger  is meant to be fact presented in the form of a novel; in reality it is an unfortunate mixture of truth and error presented in the form of a script. Still with me? What is demonstrably factual is that  The Harbinger  is a phenomenon. It has held steady for forty weeks on the  New York Times  list of bestsellers, selling over 700,000 copies through fifteen reprints. At the time I write this, Amazon ranks it #2 on their list of Christian fiction and #7 on their list of Christian theology . The book had largely escaped my view until the past few weeks when I received a series of emails from people wondering what it was all about. I finally caved and read it. Consider this more of ...