Category: Film Reviews/Hollywood
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...
Don Draper is an Ad, Man
Mad Men, one of the best television shows in history, will always be known as “more than just a show about advertising,” in the same way Friday Night Lights is “more than just a show about football.” And yet Mad...
Noah: A Theological-Aesthetic Rorschach Test
Last week saw the premiere of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah, and with it a (predictable) storm of controversy from the evangelical community. Reviews have ranged from predictably critical to outright disdain to hostile readings, and from strongly (though not unreservedly) positive...
Lost At Sea, in Space, in the Cloud
Two of my favorite films of recent months, Gravity and All is Lost, have more than a few things in common. Both are basically one-man or one-woman shows about individuals trying to survive in an incomprehensibly vast wilderness. Gravity finds...
Body Politics in the Films of Steve McQueen
With his new film 12 Years a Slave earning rave reviews and Oscar buzz, British filmmaker Steve McQueen–whose background is in fine art and experimental filmmaking–is poised to become a darling of this year’s awards season. Accolades are pouring in...
Romeo and Juliet (2013 film) Review
Professor Lyle Smith of Biola University once said in a class that Romeo and Juliet almost get it right. Most fans or critics fall off their respective sides of blind devotion to the story or disenchanted skepticism that such love...