Today’s confession: I don’t really care much for Rebel Without a Cause. Not hating, it’s just not for me. James Dean’s actual masterwork was released the same year, with Elia Kazan’s East of Eden. It’s a relatively easy film to discuss in this space. Author John Steinbeck designed this film as a retelling of the story of Cain and Abel. Observe how both sons of Adam Trask share the initial of the sons of the biblical Adam. And the story... Read more
I’m not sure what specifically is driving me to write about this film this week. It may just be because I really loved watching Pixar’s ELIO (apparently I was the only one). I guess using adorable aliens as a touchstone for describing how love really can stretch across stars and galaxies, it just works. Anyways, “E.T.” … Spielberg’s 1982 film follows a benevolent alien who is accidentally left behind on Earth and befriended by a ten-year-old boy. To give you... Read more
So, here’s a question: is vengeance ever justified? The Christian outlook has a very clear, “turn the other cheek” mentality that seems to cauterize any discussion on these things, and this can potentially leave followers vulnerable. (This is something we looked out when we discussed Knives Out.) But I also think the nuances between justice, retribution, anger bear some reflection, especially as depicted in something like Emerald Fennell’s 2020 film, Promising Young Woman. We find Cassandra “Cassie” some years after... Read more
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
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