Entertainment

“I’ve spent half my life working with the criminal justice system and I’ve seen lives devastated by violence,” says Van Jones in the introduction of his new CNN program. Entitled The Redemption Project with Van Jones, the documentary series focuses on the pain and potential of victim-offender dialogues.

The story of La Llorona — which means the Weeping Woman — is a simple but effective Mexican folk tale. There are multiple versions of this story but in one of the best-known ones, a mother becomes so desolate and psychotic after discovering her husband’s infidelity that she drowns her own children.

Hitting theaters a few days before Easter, the new drama Breakthrough tells the story of a miraculous event. In 2015, a 14-year-old boy fell through the frozen façade of a Missouri lake and nearly lost everything. When he was pulled out of the ice and brought to the hospital, few people thought he would recover.

Since the amazing success of The Passion of the Christ in 2004, Hollywood has become more open to offering faith-based features. 

Clint Eastwood’s recent film The Mule is as low-key as its title character. The drama, which arrives on Blu-Ray and DVD today, tells a character-driven story about an older man who becomes a drug mule. With Eastwood also serving as the star, the story methodically unfolds with few embellishes along the way.

Director Tim Burton is well-known for his ability to create unique landscapes in his cinematic creations. He created such a landscape in Batman and its sequel Batman Returns. His new film reunites two of the stars from the latter picture and brings them into a world of its own.

One of the most unique elements of the new History channel program Jesus: His Life is that the title character isn’t the main character in each of the episodes. Instead, the eight-episode program about Jesus is, as noted by the narrator, “told through the eyes of the people who knew him best.”

Last week, American Idol launched its seventeenth season. Featuring host Ryan Seacrest and the judging panel of Lionel Richie, Katy Perry and Luke Bryan.

In the 1991 film Silence of the Lambs, FBI agent Clarice Starling famously visited the imprisoned cannibal Hannibal Lecter in an attempt to learn more about a criminal on the loose. The concept was that Lecter, a psychiatrist-turned-criminal, could help profile and help capture an elusive psychopath.