FILM REVIEW
Super 8 (PG-13) combines the elements of a coming-of-age story with the suspense of a monster movie but is really about making movies. Set in 1979, it follows four 12-year-old boys (and a 14-year-old girl) as they make a zombie movie using a Super 8 camera. While they’re filming, a train wreck brings the U.S. Air Force to their small town to search for an escaped alien. The story is affecting, and the young actors are excellent. The story of their relationships is more engaging than the monster plot, which ultimately is predictable.—Gordon Houser
BOOK REVIEWS
Worship and Mission After Christendom by Alan Kreider and Eleanor Kreider (Herald Press, 2011, $19.99) argues that while Christendom, which combines church and state, separated worship and mission, the two must be combined. Drawing on studies of mission, liturgy, Christian history, the Bible and the experience of the global church, the Kreiders call on us to integrate worship and mission with all of life, to encounter God and let “God’s character and purposes shape us.”—gh
Nonresistance to Justice; the Transformation of Mennonite Church Peace Rhetoric 1908-2008 by Ervin Stutzman (Herald Press, 2011, $39.99) is neither a history lesson nor a theological treatise. Trained as a rhetorician, Stutzman examines the rhetoric in official church statements and what writers in Gospel Herald and The Mennonite have said about pacifism over 100 years. After charting the shift from “quiet-in-the-land” nonresistance to nonviolent peace activism for justice, Stutzman concludes with a call for Mennonites to extend grace to our enemies, just as God has extended grace to us.—Everett J. Thomas
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