In Pursuit of the Perfect Family Movie

I love watching a good movie. And I’m hardly the only one among my fellow Latter-day Saints.

In the thirteen articles of faith, there are many beliefs attributed to Latter-day Saints, but only one behavior, “If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report, or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.”

We are seekers—specifically seekers of the good and beautiful.

In our social conversation, no cultural product is discussed more than the movie. It’s self-contained, small enough to be accessible, but long enough to develop a theme. It’s replicable, so it can be discussed broadly. And it integrates more types of art than perhaps any other single cultural product.

What makes a film praiseworthy, virtuous, and lovely? In probing different films, I’m certainly not making final judgments on them. I value all of the films I discuss below.

I started my search by focusing on seven principles that were a distinctly Latter-day Saint answer to the question of what makes a movie good—a sort of thirteenth article of faith criticism.

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