I try to avoid controversial matters when I can on this site, including the question of when it is appropriate to start listening to Christmas music. But I will say that on my calendar, Christmas starts whenever I finally give Michael Curtiz’ 1954 musical, White Christmas, its seasonal viewing. I classify this as my favorite Christmas movie (I refuse to peg It’s a Wonderful Life down as such) and as one of my favorite classical musicals. The drama is rich... Read more
I’m not really a winter person, which makes the coming months something of an ordeal for me. I tend to cope by immersing myself in summer-themed films, and the film that probably best embodies this is (well, probably Jaws, but a close second would be) Nat Faxon and Jim Rash’s The Way, Way Back. The story sees Duncan, an insecure teenager, vacationing with his mom for the summer with her boyfriend, Trent, at his beach house. Even though he’s... Read more
A few weeks back when I talked about Scream, I mentioned that self-aware movies are generally a harder sell for me. I acknowledged Scream was a rare exception, but I also casually mentioned Disney’s 2007 pastiche fairy-tale, Enchanted, without clarifying that said film definitely falls into the category of “meta” done responsibly. And as the long-awaited sequel hits streaming this week, I guess now is as good a time as any to reflect on why Enchanted is so aptly named.... Read more
It’s a miracle that a movie like Scream ever landed on my list of favorite movies. It’s not only a horror film (I’m more of a musical guy myself), it’s also a self-aware horror film. Scream belongs to a special class of film that overtly comments on the genre to which it belongs. (Scream is to slasher films what Enchanted is to Disney fairy tales.) These movies aren’t impossible to do well, but more often than not, their incessant winking at... Read more
I remember an experience I had in 9th grade P.E. This was the rare class I had with my best friend since kindergarten. But as fate would have it, this was also a class I shared with a longtime tormentor, the kind of person who’s always there when you drop your books in the hall and never misses the chance to announce it to the world, or the kind that always has special nicknames for you and the life-sustaining but... Read more
As we move from the blockbuster season toward that time when all the auteur pieces and Oscar hopefuls bleed into cinemas, I’ve already identified a few films I’m really excited to see. Chief among them being Martin McDonagh’s new film, The Banshees of Inisherin, which reunites the director with Collin Farrel and Brendan Gleeson, who made lightning in McDonagh’s 2008 film, In Bruges. Critic Tasha Robinson put it best when she described the film in her review: “When it’s funny, it’s... Read more
JA Bayona’s 2012 epic dramatizes the experience of the real-life Belón family (named the Bennet family in this film) as they were caught in the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. Maria and her oldest son, Lucas, are swept away from Henry, the father, as well as the two youngest, Simon and Thomas. In a movie like this, the tension obviously floats on whether or not this loving family is going to find each other by the end, but it’s... Read more
In the years leading up to Christ’s birth, the intellectuals of the day anticipated the coming of the Son of God who would free them from their chains. The savior they anticipated was an angelic warrior king who would rain fire on the Romans and break their chains with an awesome display of might. This is one of the reasons why the Pharisees and Sadducees of the day missed it when he came as a humble carpenter, wandering among the... Read more
A few weeks ago, we looked at “A Face in the Crowd” as an exploration of false prophets and how they work. Today, we’re going to take a more sympathetic look at prophets, or at least people who operate in a prophetic capacity. The scientists in Netflix original “Don’t Look Up,” for example, are charged with a mission of biblical proportions to warn the world of imminent destruction, only to find that their message isn’t appealing enough to compete with... Read more
When we talked about Chicago, I noted how that film displays the allure of sin as something empowering and freeing. Likewise, when we talked about A Face in the Crowd, I mentioned how false prophets use rhetoric of liberation to sell their counterfeit gospel. I guess you could say that there’s something similar at work in Baz Lurhman’s 2001 masterpiece, Moulin Rouge. This jukebox musical sells something like manufactured emancipation, but the film also offers a glimpse of what it... Read more
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