Apocalypto opens Friday

I saw The Passion of the Christ uncut on a Philippine Air flight from Vancouver to Manila, and then borrowed it from Netflix a couple years later and watched it again. Overall, I agree with The Dazzling Urbanite's assessment:

If this film had washed ashore into art houses, directed by an unknown italian director, the reviews would be rapturous.

I am one of the four or five people on Earth who hated Braveheart, and I dislike intensely the Lethal Weapon franchise. But Gibson has acted well in some good films, and love it or hate it his Passion is not without arresting moments of aesthetic genius, primitive theology and less-than-subtle anti-Semitism aside. One just has to wade through the snuff-film elements to find those brilliant moments.

I'm interested in seeing Gibson's Apocalypto as well, and this review from the New York Times makes me want to see it even more.

Yes, Gibson's personal behavior is puzzling and distasteful (and pitiable to a degree), and his reactionary Catholicism I find personally repugnant. But I don't avoid David Lynch's films because Lynch is a raving right-winger, just as I don't ditch my old Public Enemy CDs because Flava Flav has degenerated from a gifted hip-hop innovator into some awful reality show caricature. One must separate the product from the one who fashions it. If we denied ourselves all the art, music, and books created by distasteful human beings, I'm afraid there would be little left to savor.