Psycho and Guilt Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece, Psycho, is another one of those films that you simply cannot have spoiled. Do yourself a favor and check it out (it’s on Netflix as of this publishing), and then come right back here. This twisted horror movie follows Marion Crane on the run after embezzling $40,000 from her boss. She does this hoping she can settle the debts of her boyfriend so they can finally get married, but she is quickly beset... Read more
I feel like half of what I do on this film blog is confess about movies that I haven’t actually seen, so I might as well be honest and say … I have only seen one of Sean Connery’s James Bond movies. One. It’s not that I consider myself above them, I just haven’t really gotten around to them. But I do have respect for Sean Connery’s work. Case in point: Finding Forrester. This movie could be understood as... Read more
The Goodbye Girl is one of my favorite movies in that it does something I wish more movies would do: it makes you really irritated with its main characters. Coming a few weeks off discussing Scarlet O’Hara, one of my favorite film characters, I am compelled to again reflect on how validating it is to see people onscreen who don’t know how to navigate this world any more gracefully than the rest of us. If they can land somewhere nice,... Read more
Denis Villeneuve’s 2013 film, Prisoners, is somewhat unique among the movies discussed on this blog. The aim with this site is to track religious and spiritual themes that may be subtextual, but this film literally starts with Hugh Jackman reciting The Lord’s Prayer. In-universe, this is because he and his son are hunting. But we also catch onto the idea that asking the Lord to deliver them from evil perhaps has some bearing on things that are to come. This... Read more
Let me say up front with this piece that … deriving truth from artifice is the bedrock of what we do here at Sublime Cinema. There are good things, even divine things, to be discovered in texts that were not necessarily holy by design. That is true of every film we discuss here, and that is absolutely true of a film like Gone with the Wind, a story which romanticizes a movement that fought to preserve the “right” to own... Read more
While I do try to write for an interfaith audience, I’ll acknowledge up and front that my own Christian history does color everything that I write here. But today’s film marks a unique opportunity to speak a little more directly to other religious traditions. The titular character in François Dupeyron’s Monsieur Ibrahim is a Turkish, Muslim shopkeeper who becomes very important in the life of Moses “Momo,” a young kid living in 1960s France. The first time we see 16-year-old Momo,... Read more
Here’s a question to mull over this Christmas season: when we talk of Christ and his ultimate gift, who is the gift for? When does Christ’s hand of mercy really reveal itself? Certainly, I think that when Christ instructs us in Matthew 25: 40, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me,” he was referring to people who might say, “I’m not worth it. If you really... Read more
The aim of this site is to help film lovers better discern the glimmers of divinity and goodness in the films that inform our culture and our individual souls. This is, admittedly, a little difficult at times given just how rotten Hollywood can be at what often feels like a foundational level. Hollywood itself isn’t particularly shy about this and even gets in on this sometimes by offering little confessionals, films exploring the rancidness of the Hollywood machine. Of course,... Read more
It sometimes surprises people who know me to learn that I spent a season working with boys with behavioral disabilities, kids with tons of potential who were facing significant crossroads. So I have some context for the relationship between Matt Damon and Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting. Don’t give me too much credit, though. I wish I could say I was as good at my job as Robin Williams was at his. Gus Van Sant’s 1997 film, Good Will... Read more
Sorry for not specifying in the title, I was trying to keep the length somewhat manageable, but this piece will only be looking at the first film in the series, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. Please forgive me, I know how much everyone loves the sequels … The question at the center of this film is a person’s capacity for treachery and what happens when someone breaks free of formality. From the moment Elizabeth finds... Read more
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