Category: Film Reviews/Hollywood
Movie Review: A Wrinkle in Time
I’m fairly sure that the first time I ever ran into any of the words in the Bible in print was in the pages of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. It’s the first of many occasions in the book...
The Politics of the Last Jedi
The following includes spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. In Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Right Hand Man,” the song in Hamilton that introduces the story’s protagonist to Gen. George Washington, he first tells the story of Hamilton’s daring theft of British cannons before...
Cells Interlinked: The Quest for Humanity in Blade Runner 2049
By Jeremiah Webster and Zach Boyd Lamenting modern cinema is easy. Optimus Prime never really dies. Second rate superheroes, revived against their will, become a name. CGI bristles, indulges in the excess of “because we can, that’s why.” Nothing explodes...
Sex in Movies: Was John Piper Right All Along?
So Kevin Spacey is in the news this week for what increasingly appears to be a Weinstein- or Cosby-level history of sexual abuse. In Spacey’s case, however, his typical target was allegedly young boys he met through his work as...
“Silence,” Martyrdom, and the Call to Die
In her review of Martin Scorsese’s new film “Silence,” Alissa Wilkinson wrote,
Why We Should Jettison the “Strong Female Character”
The trailer for the latest Star Wars movie, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, was released last week. Following the success of the revival of the franchise in last year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, anticipation is unsurprisingly at a...
“The Seer” Gets Wendell Berry Exactly Right.
I think most readers of Wendell Berry, “The Seer” director Laura Dunn included, start with Berry’s non-fiction. They pick up The Unsettling of America or The Art of the Commonplace and go from there. That’s not how I came to Berry. I...
An Interview with Laura Dunn, Director of “The Seer”
Tomorrow I hope to publish a brief review of Laura Dunn’s new film “The Seer.” It’s a unique film and a hard one to pin down because while it is a portrait of Wendell Berry, Berry himself is never actually...
The Monastic Calling of the Force in Star Wars
I’m happy to run this guest piece by Dylan Pahman of the Acton Institute. You can follow him on Twitter @DylanPahman. In his recent essay at Public Discourse, “The Family and the Force,” my colleague at the Acton Institute Jordan...
On the Chestertonianism of Star Wars
One of the most striking things about the new Star Wars film, The Force Awakens, is how old the film sometimes feels. Part of the oldness is because the story itself feels more like a remake of A New Hope than a genuine...