10. I already know the hills have eyes… and they scare me. 

9. Talking Turtles kind of weird me out.

8. When Adam Sandler changes his hairstyle, you can’t help but want to know what’s going on.

7. We’ve had Adam and Drew, Liv and Ben, Adam and Marisa, Liv and Viggo, Adam and Kate, Liv and Casey… but never Adam and Liv.

6. I really wanted to like Mike Binder’s The Upside of Anger, but I just couldn’t do it. Lose some estrogen, tone down the drama, put in an actual upside, and Binder’s Reign could very well wrap up his spot-on ability to capture deep emotion and create unique turns of plot in a movie that easily gets my thumbs up.

5. Sandler, Cheadle, Jada, and Liv. Sandler may be the big box office draw, but it is the entire cast of this movie that makes me excited. They are all talented. They are all unique. And when I picture them together, I see an interesting and powerful chemistry of character and emotion that could make Reign a movie that is not a single tear or smile short of authentic.  


Too often we think of people as either victims or saviors.

4. Too often we think of people as either victims or saviors. Reign promises to break that image. Cheadle’s Alan may be a ray of hope. Sandler’s Charlie may be a mess. But even the preview shows that both have something valuable to offer the other. And I believe the same will be true of the merging talents of Sandler and Cheadle.
   
3. Sandler may have never made it in drama before, but Reign may very well be his turning point. Punch-Drunk Love made his serious side a bit too bizarre. Spanglish took his character for too many nonsensical turns to be relatable. But placing Sandler in a role defined by tragic events with which we are all familiar and almost pointing to his well-known image as a the man he might have been before tragedy struck, Reign could be the perfect combination of character, background, and story to make people see Sandler as an actor who makes drama real.

2. We live in a world of both extreme wealth and profound loss. And Reign is not afraid to step up to the plate and reveal the despair of both. Loss may make us want to die. But that does not mean possession makes us want to live. As Reign’s Charlie and Alan seek meaning from both sides of the divide, I am interested to see what kind of answers they will show us.


But Reign tells us to “Let in the unexpected.”

1. Life has taught us to fear the unexpected—9/11. Hurricane Katrina. Tsunami, 2004. But Reign tells us to instead “Let in the unexpected.” We live lives based on the idea that any and every good part of life must be reached by careful planning, effort, and execution. But Reign promises to show us that, sometimes, the best paths that life may have for us begin as unexpectedly as running into an old friend on a street corner. In this life, there are certainly things that are beyond our control. And I am excited to see how Reign will portray the reality of these forces in our lives, for better or for worse… and what that may mean to us today.