"Heaven is for Real" (2014)

After Easter's shrill Sunday-school project God's Not Dead, this latest spot of cinevangelism at least sports a theatrical heft: sometime Mel Gibson collaborator Randall Wallace directs, and ever-steady Greg Kinnear stars as real-life Wesleyan pastor/firefighter Todd Burpo, whose four-year-old son emerged from appendicitis surgery claiming proofs of the afterlife.

Wallace permits some debate as to what this tale represents – miracle? horror show? evidence of declining anaesthesiology standards? – yet that titular conclusion depends entirely on faith: what's on screen peters out with a "God-knows" shrug before passing off a Lithuanian child's painting as a photofit of Jesus. It looks a lot like Andrew "Lonely Boy" Gold.

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