Rating: 
Summary: beautifully done
Review: This is a gorgeous film telling a great story -- Jesus' alternative life had he not chosen sacrifice. No doubt theologians will quibble, but as a film the story is told very effectively. My film quibbles: The film is too long -- or perhaps it is too slow moving in places. You choose. Women in the film are blank slates -- empty stereotypes. But perhaps that was the point. Harvey Keitel as Judas sounds like he is from the Bronx. If he had lost the accent I could have bought into his burly, likeable Judas more. Other than that... a lovely piece of film making. Dafoe is better at Jesus than he is at the Green Goblin.
Rating:
Summary: An Apochryphal Christ
Review: This is a fine movie that will give you much to think about. That this account is not based on the Gospels is stated openly at the beginning. While most of the events portrayed will be familiar to Bible readers, there is enough "extra" material to make this Jesus purely a work of fiction. Certainly this would be a tough to swallow for a post-rationalist world, and its Christians. By that I mean that drawing symbolism out of "canonically accepted" symbolism may a)seem like a waste of time, or b) be downright blasphemous. Without going on and on (like some) though, the film will likely be compelling and time well spent for those whose minds can have it both ways. Perhaps most rewarding to me were: 1) Dafoe's stirring performance; 2) a very believable debate among Christ's disciples about who he really was; 3)what seems to be to truest, most brutal depiction of Jesus' crucifixion I can imagine. I sensed how alone he was as he faced his and our ultimate suffering. The DVD offers a valuable discussion of archeological insight into crucifixion, among other special features.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I was very much lookign forward to seeing this movie. I love Martin Scorsese's work, and I am a devoted Christian. The idea that such an eminent director could produce a movie on my favorite topic was incredibly exciting. The more of this movie that I saw however, the more disappointed I became. It seems that Scorsese, although he trained to be a priest for nearly a year, did not have adequate Biblical knowledge to present a Jesus who was both fully human and fully divine. The doctrine of the divinity of Christ is a very straightforward one that seems to have been ignored in the making of this movie. The fact that Jesus was human means simply that He could sympathize with our pain and struggles. It does NOT mean that he succumbed to temptation, or fantasized about sinful behavior, or had anything but deepest love and devotion for His Father. This movie depicts His intense desire for Mary Magdalene (which is NOWHERE in the Bible), His desire to make the Father hate Him, his command to Judas to betray Him (which is ALSO not in the Bible, Judas is described in the Gospel of Luke as being possessed by Satan before he betrayed Jesus), the list goes on and on. Although the cinematography was gorgeous, the lack of attention to Biblical detail was so disturbing as to completelly distract from the visual beauty of the movie. A very disappointing movie.
Rating: 
Summary: Jesus was a man...the son of MAN.
Review: Jesus said he was the son of MAN. Scorcese's masterpiece challenges our concept of Christ and the perversion of his name and life that has been perpetrated for centuries by the Churches that use his name.
Rating: 
Summary: The Last Temptation of Christ
Review: This is a mockery of Jesus Christ, my Lord and Saviour. This movie is totally off base of the Scriptures.
Rating:
Summary: Not too interesting
Review: Although this movie is highly acclaimed, I did not think too much of it. The quality of the DVD itself is fine. I never really got into the story. I felt like the film was a really low budget film shot with a professional camera and there are several lapses in "good" acting that tend to have a negative effect on the scene. I felt the messages that were trying to be conveyed were not executed well and could have been done better if it was shown in the story in a different way. Also I found the movie fairly boring and long.
Rating:
Summary: Ignorance is NOT bliss...
Review: Although the film has offended many in its 'human' depiction of Jesus, its overall outcome and message is in accordance with the symbolic nature of Christ in the Christian religion. So why the film has accumulated so much 'bad press' is a mystery to me. However, there are many laurels to this very personal film from the modernist master, Martin Scorsese. For one, the film showcases some great performances (if you can get past their slight Brookln accents), particularly that of Willem Dafoe, who plays Jesus (note: the part was originally offered to Robert DeNiro). Although Dafoe, at times, overplays the subtleties and mystique of Jesus, he still turns in a wonderful performance, particularly the prayer on the mountain scene, before he is captured. The cinematography is excellent. Scorsese modeled a lot of his shots after ancient biblical paintings, and the cinematographer catches the right tones and colors, bringing a certain authenticity to the film. Consider the slow motion scene where Jesus is carrying the cross through throngs of pig-like faces. And the directing speaks for itself. Scorsese is perhaps the greatest living director of our time, and here, it is him at his most personal. As a film, it succeeds in many, if not all aspects. As a commentary on Christ, it gives a 'possible,' and I stress "possible," explanation to a question I've always wondered about; Why is there such a large gap in Jesus's life? I mean, he is born, and then he's already grown up healing people and performing miracles. There's like twenty-years missing. But I guess the writers of the bible just thought that those years weren't important. The film has offended those whose ideas about God and man it does not reflect. But then again, at the time, so did Jesus...
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: One of the finest movies ever made. A brillaint rendering of the novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Not really as much offensive as bad
Review: Within the first five minutes of watching this film I realized that I would have a difficult time dialoguing with this movie about the person of Jesus. This is not because it shocked me, or was in any way frustrating, rather I realized that this movie was not even about Jesus. In an almost Arthurian way, the main cast of characters, some essential framework of events, and a taste of an approximate locale were reformed into a story all its own, not even meaning to point us to a further understanding of Jesus the man. Rather, as the introduction states, this is a movie, not about Jesus, but about the author, and about those in history who have struggled incessantly with their inner spirit. I feel I gained some insight into the mind of Nikos Kazantzakis, possibly Martin Scorcese, and maybe most of all the Messianic pretenders who abounded during the 2nd Temple Period and have arisen now and again even to our day (i.e. David Koresh), but not necessarily about Jesus.
The Last Temptation of Christ is a movie about struggle, namely the internal struggle of trying to balance our spiritual selves with our physical selves, the "incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh." From the very beginning there is conflict, both external in the Palestine of the Roman era, and internal in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. This dual struggle is thrown at us in the first scene when we see Jesus the carpenter making crosses for the crucifixion of fellow Jews. Jesus is clearly a man overwhelmed by this conflict. He is driven by fear, fear of the Romans and fear of what he feels God is doing inside of him. This conflict drives a wedge between him and those around him, driving him to seek consolation and answers away from his home and in the wilderness.
It has been said that the various 'lives' of Jesus written or filmed over the last couple of hundred years have tended to tell us more about the author or director than about the actual person of Jesus. Even outside of Christianity, Jesus has resonated in a powerful way in the hearts and minds of those who encounter him. The difficulty arises in that we do not know what to do with him He is a personality which we do not have models of understanding with which to compare, and who we find familiar, but not very much like ourselves. In response to this, some have sought understanding by remaking Jesus in their own image, giving him the inner struggles, temptations, and other oddities which they themselves are dealing with, and in doing so possibly hope to universalize this man which we can almost, but not quite, understand.
One of the most interesting questions that does arise in this movie concerns the self-awareness of Jesus. The Jesus of the movie is at first visibly unable to cope with life. His inner struggle has reached a breaking point and drives him to further knowledge and understanding. It is during his quest that he discovers who he is, God and Messiah, and with this newfound knowledge seeks to engage the world, though not quite sure of the best method for doing so. It is the common struggle of trying to understand how God is leading in life, and dealing with the sacrifices that this sometimes entails. Although the answer the movie provides seems more representative of the story of Joan of Arc more than Jesus, this is an interesting question, and essentially one which we are not privy to the real answer of when Jesus became aware (if he was not always aware) of his divinity. In the movie this struggle is represented as being analogous to our own battle to understand our duel nature. Yet I do feel that the inner life of Jesus was in fact vitally different than our own. From my reading of the Jesus narratives what is striking is not his inner struggle, but rather his inner unity. Rather than being an archetype for the struggle we all deal with, Jesus is a model of what a person is like when their physical and spiritual selves are truly united. Scorcese tries to show us a man who is truly human, but rather misses the mark and shows us one more example of what it is to be less than human.
Seemingly, one of the goals of the movie was to seek to portray Jesus as a man, emphasizing the universal qualities of his humanity. In this it failed. The Jesus of the movie was not a real person, in a real era, speaking real words. He was an example of what some people feel a religious person should be, and in this way was very reminiscent of the Infancy Gospels, and other apocryphal tales of the life of Jesus which have been produced since his days on earth. Indeed, the movie showed a real lack of true engagement with who Jesus was and is.
Once one moves behind the elements which were intentionally meant to be shocking and controversial, one realizes how vacuous the story and characters were. This was in fact just a plain bad movie, that should have been dismissed not protested. The Jesus of the movie was not God, nor was he even really human, but rather a grotesque attempt at both. It followed the trend of seeking to bring a hero down to our level rather than portraying the truly heroic. My thought to the end was that this was a Jesus who needed to get to know the true Jesus, and hear the full Gospel message. He was a character that evoked pity rather than the awe and reverence which would characterize a leader who had the effect on the world that Jesus did in fact have. The Jesus of the Gospels was a man to whom we aspire to be like, a man who could have truly led a conquest of the Roman Empire had that been a goal. He was a leader par excellence, whose glory was in that he did not yield to who humanity wanted him to be, but rather called humanity to where he knew they needed to be. The Last Temptation of Christ is an example of what happens when someone just plain misses the point, not only about Christ, but also about himself and all humanity.
Rating:
Summary: Well, at least the score is good ...
Review: I have seen this movie twice and I don't recommend it. I know that it's a work of fiction, as stated at the beginning of the movie, but how can you tell lies about the one (Christ) who says that he is the way, the truth and the life? This movie is filled with many theological errors. The acting is average and the sex and nudity shown doesn't go with the story of Jesus of Nazareth. The author of The Last Temptation of Christ, Nikos Kazantzakis, was charged with heresy when his book was published in the 1950s. I find it hard to believe that director Martin Scorsese didn't know that this film based on the Kazantzakis novel would be charged as blasphemous as well. That defies common sense. The score by Peter Gabriel is the only thing that is good about the movie. With this being said, I recommend that you buy the score by Gabriel entitled, "Passion". If you are searching for an acurate depiction about the life, death and resurrection of Christ, I recommend that you buy the Jesus of Nazareth mini-series that is now available on DVD through Amazon.com.
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