Arts & Culture

Projects evolve in different ways.

In the case of a partnership between art teacher Mike Mitchell and Dr. Meg Benningfield, it grew from a friendship and a common concern for helping others.

After two years working on a documentary about Pope Francis, the noted German filmmaker Wim Wenders said he is most struck by the pope’s courage.

It’s fixin’ to rain in the “The Hurricane Heist” (Entertainment Studios). This serviceable mash-up of the apocalyptic weather event and crime caper genres is as shallow as a puddle.

Catholics who view the direct-to-video animated film “Batman: Gotham by Gaslight” (Warner Home Video) may take a particular interest in one character, a nun named Sister Leslie (voice of Grey DeLisle).

Journalist Curt Brown has authored a new book on this interesting year in Minnesota history, focusing mainly on individual stories and the communities that were greatly impacted during these hard times.

The book, “Abducted in Iraq,” tells the painful, day-by-day story of those days and of Auxiliary Bishop Sirop Hanna’s survival — his physical survival, to be sure, but the survival too, indeed the flourishing, of his faith under the most senselessly hurtful circumstances.

Moral dilemmas come fast and furious in “Gringo” (STX), a dark, but somehow not cynical, comedy about avarice and its near-instant consequences.

It may be slightly overproduced, but CNN’s new docuseries “Pope: The Most Powerful Man in History” will nonetheless intrigue, edify and challenge viewers.