Once Again, TGC’s “Best Movies” of 2023 is Filled With Sex, Foul Language, and Blasphemy

It should go without saying that The Gospel Coalition (TGC) has absolutely nothing to do with the gospel or any other biblical teaching or exhortation. The Gospel Coalition is nothing more than an outlet for the carnal consumption of worldly influence into the Church by compromised Evangelicals who are bound together by their propensity toward embracing the culture. It is, in fact, The Gospel-less Coalition.

As with previous years, Brett McCracken, a prominent author at The Gospel Coalition has released his “Best Movies” of the year list for 2023, and just like previous years, it’s filled with sex, violence, foul language, and blasphemy. First up is McCracken’s recommendation of the movie, Killers of the Flower Moon.

According to Common Sense Media, Killers of the Flower Moon is filled with violence and blasphemy, presenting an unsettling cinematic experience steeped in vulgar language and gratuitous brutality. The film’s rampant use of profanities, including incessant “----” and “----,” and even taking the Lord’s name in vain, coupled with racial slurs, tarnishes the dialogue and diminishes its historical significance. Its depiction of violence—marked by guns, shootings, and bloodied corpses—is excessive, making this movie a perfect fit for the carnal-minded TGC world-lover.

Next up is McCracken’s recommendation of the movie Past Lives. According to Common Sense Media, Past Lives delves into a romantic narrative yet is marred by inappropriate elements. The film includes scenes of smoking and drinking, along with occasional strong language such as “bitch,” “s–t,” and uses of “f–k.”

And finally, McCracken’s “honorable mention” of The Holdovers, as reviewed by Common Sense Media, is an indecent portrayal of debauchery, laden with a barrage of profanities such as “-----,” “----head,” “nut punch,” and “----.” This film not only normalizes but glorifies crude language, heavy drinking, smoking, drug use among teenagers, and pornography, along with needless sexual references and explicit content. The use of such crassness, especially in a setting involving a teacher, is irresponsible and deeply concerning and has no place in the lives of Christian audiences. This film is a glaring example of the decline in morality in entertainment.

While I didn’t review every single movie on McCracken’s list, I’m sure there’s much more there. McCracken has been known to promote the worst of the worst, including homosexual sex scenes, even claiming that they have helped him become better at evangelism after watching them. But his list for 2023 pretty much fits the bill of what was to be expected.

Wow. That’s a pretty dyspeptic take from Disntr/The Dissenter. Do you follow The Dissenter? Or TGC?

I don’t follow either closely but I used a couple of Brett McCracken reviews from TGC’s annual list a year or two ago when I posted my own top ten list for that year. I got some reactions in which a couple of freepers strongly endorsed that group. I’ve never heard of The Dissenter before now.

Anyhow, before wading into any discussion of The Dissenter’s comments on McCracken’s movie recommendations, I will note that The Dissenter offers NO recommendations for good conservative or Christian movies. That’s usually a red flag for me. Don’t just ankle-bite other people; stand up for something you think is good.

Note that The Dissenter’s piece is compiled by “staff” and seems to rely entirely on Common Sense Media’s ratings and reviews. I don’t follow Common Sense Media closely but I am aware of the site and have posted a few reviews there. The site’s purpose is to provide parental guidance on the suitability of a given movie for children, and of what age. It will flag a movie (at varying alert levels) as scary if someone dies. Or if someone is seriously ill. It will flag a movie for ANY use of profanity, including an incidental “hell” or “damn” or for ANY smoking or drinking, including adults drinking in any setting, even if the setting is entirely appropriate and no one is inebriated. A toast at a wedding reception? Buddies having a beer? A bride and groom kissing at their wedding counts as sexual content (although the alert level will be very low). Common Sense Media flags such things as an advisory for parents who may be picking movies for six year olds, although Common Sense Media doesn’t necessarily give a film a low rating for an appropriate kiss or responsible drinking; it will suggest an appropriate age range for children’s viewing.

So: The Dissenter should have mentioned that Common Sense Media — which rates films on a one (low) to five (high) scale — gave Past Lives and The Holdovers four-star ratings. It gave Killers of the Flower Moon a five-star rating and called it a “masterful American epic about greed, violence, and racism.”

It seems obvious to me that no one at The Dissenter has actually watched the movies that it is denouncing. And it is in fact misrepresenting its own source.

I haven’t seen Killers of the Flower Moon and was disinclined to do so. But this mention prompted me to check Common Sense Media, whose five-star rating took me by surprise. I may check it out by and by, out of curiosity.

Both Past Lives and The Holdovers are on my top ten conservative movie list for 2023, which is a work in progress; I don’t have ten picks yet. They are adult dramas that deal with very serious issues in an intelligent, serious way. Neither involves sex or nudity. The main characters behave with great consideration and with moral responsibility for others. Both movies valorize virtuous conduct.

I can only conclude that The Dissenter’s staff does not have a glimmer of an idea of what they are talking about. I would speculate that they have some ongoing beef with TGC or Brett McCracken and are swerving far out of their lane to pick a fight.

I am born again on this question: I try really hard not to dump on movies I’ve not seen.

P.S. Since The Dissenter is especially emphatic in its denunciation of The Holdovers, I will risk a spoiler. The vulgar language recounted by The Dissenter is indeed in the film, where it is presented as contemptible. The young men who use this kind of language in the film are smug, entitled, arrogant, and generally unpleasant products of very affluent families. They are students at an elite, all-boys boarding school in the northeast, probably Massachusetts although it could be in the southern tier of New Hampshire or Vermont. (I don’t recall if the movie definitively establishes this, but there is a consequential excursion to Boston.) It is a period piece; the war in Vietnam is still doing on, and a recent graduate had been killed in the previous year. The movie does NOT normalize or approve of such language; quite the reverse.

It is Christmas break. Most of the students head home or, given their families’ affluence, off to expensive travels with their parents. A handful have nowhere to go. These are “the holdovers.” A teacher is deputized to ride herd during the break. One of the holdovers is an older teenage boy dealing with some extremely serious personal and family issues (severe mental illness, institutionalization, divorce, deep depression). The teacher has his own buried issues, but he is a stoic, soldiering on in a life that had been unjustly derailed. Given that this is a movie, the two will start as antagonists. Over two weeks, they will discover each other through a series of incidents. They will bond. The boy makes enormous progress. And at the end, the teacher will sacrifice job and career to protect the student; he becomes a heroically self-sacrificing father surrogate ... which is a missing element in both their lives.

The Dissenter’s staff doesn’t have a clue what it is talking about.

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