Barbarians in Charge: Robert Joustra on The Dark Knight Rises

Last updated on: July 23, 2012 at 6:42 pm By Jeffrey Overstreet

Robert Joustra, the senior editor of Comment magazine and a contributor to this book, emailed me this morning in response to my review of The Dark Knight Rises. Here are his thoughts... Read more

Diagnosis: A Disappointing Dark Knight

Last updated on: July 24, 2012 at 9:10 am By Jeffrey Overstreet

This weekend I read a lot of reviews of The Dark Knight Rises to see how other people were taking it. Two pieces in particular were especially damning, pretty much nailing the coffin shut on Christopher Nolan's Batman... and maybe on Nolan's ouvre as a whole, for this moviegoer. Read more

Mysteries of the Lost Comments #1

Last updated on: July 21, 2012 at 2:03 pm By Jeffrey Overstreet

In spite of a simple, fair Comments Policy that is available through not one but two links on my blog's home page, sometimes I come across strange variations from those simple guidelines. Today, I received one of them in response to my review of The Dark Knight Rises. Read more

Notes from Gareth Higgins and Scott Derrickson on the Shootings in Colorado…

Last updated on: July 20, 2012 at 9:39 pm By Jeffrey Overstreet

Some thought-provoking reflections on the shootings in Aurora, Colorado, from the Facebook pages of the honorable Gareth Higgins (mastermind of the Wild Goose Festival), and Scott Derrickson, director of Sinister... Read more

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Last updated on: July 25, 2012 at 2:20 pm By Jeffrey Overstreet

Inevitably, answering the summons of the summertime box office, The Dark Knight Rises. And so does the sun. Thus, we finally get to see Batman duking it out with bad guys in broad daylight. But the daylight reveals other things as well, like the vastness of the city, which gives us that much more trepidation about the prospect of seeing it all go up in a mushroom cloud. Oh, did I mention there’s a new threat in Gotham—a gang of terrorists led by a musclebound brute who wants to nuke the city? Read more

From Desert Planet to Ocean Blue… Stanton’s Finding Nemo 2

Last updated on: August 16, 2012 at 2:50 pm By Jeffrey Overstreet

It was bound to happen. Oh, the mixed feelings! Read more

Attention, Fiction Writers: Tell It… Slant!

Last updated on: July 21, 2012 at 5:18 pm By Jeffrey Overstreet

Breaking news from Wipf & Stock Publishers and Gregory Wolfe, author of Beauty Will Save the World, and publisher of Image: There's a new fiction imprint in town! Read more

Batman Begins (2005)

Last updated on: July 21, 2012 at 5:20 pm By Jeffrey Overstreet

Here—with a few small repairs and clarifications—is my original (and very long) review of Batman Begins... Read more

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

Last updated on: September 28, 2012 at 4:48 pm By Jeffrey Overstreet

Benh Zeitlin, a first-time director, arrives in exclamation points. He films this as if he has too busy capturing this vision to watch, or think about, how movies have been made before. So why, then, do I find myself writing this with a sense of sadness and detachment? Read more

Darren Aronofsky’s Noah and the Pending Deluge of Bible-Based Movies

Last updated on: July 21, 2012 at 5:23 pm By Jeffrey Overstreet

I suspect this means that we'll see Aronofsky return to lavish scenes of digitally animated spectacle, something we haven't seen him do since The Fountain. But will the movie be a thought-provoking exploration of the Noah story that shows respect to its source material? Read more