All Film Reviews

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (PG)

In The Odyssey, Homer tells the story of the great Wanderer, Odysseus, crossing the nations and oceans of the Mediterranean to the small island of Ithaca, his own kingdom. Having fought for Helen, Odysseus spends the next decade scattered across the Greek islands. Towards the end of his journey he comes to the island of […]
Inside Llewyn Davis (R)

“Hang me, oh, hang me,” sings Llewyn Davis mournfully in the opening scene of Joel and Ethan Coen’s newest film, Inside Llewyn Davis. It’s an appropriately melancholy choice, slyly setting up the film’s abundant use of gallows humor and the travails a hapless protagonist will face. Inside Llewyn Davis follows a week in the life of its struggling […]
God’s Not Dead (PG)

Novelist and career film reviewer, Graham Greene, insisted that any decent critic requires two things to get along in their work: “material for his analysis—for comparison and instruction—and a mind which, however sympathetic, is not prone to quick enthusiasms.“ Many a film, though, has resisted Greene’s ideal critic and opted instead for courting the already […]
Draft Day (PG-13)

His career has had its ups and downs (i.e. Waterworld), but since 1988, with the release of Bull Durham, Kevin Costner has been the dean of the American sports movie. Whether he is building a baseball diamond in the middle of a cornfield (Field of Dreams) or making the most remarkable hole-in-twelve at the US […]
Wall-E (G)

In an inverse Eden, a land laid waste, one works alone tending the trash. There are none like him in all the earth, inquisitive, playful and most drawn to those mysterious, dancing bipedal creatures who lost earth and left it to go wandering the vast wilderness of space. Humans have been driven from the earth […]
The Grand Budapest Hotel (R)

With special thanks to Jon Paul Pope, who talked this film over with me, helped draw out my own ideas, and whose own ideas are variously represented here. In Ecclesiastes, Solomon says, Do not say, “Why were the old days better than these?” For it is not wise to ask such questions. These may or […]
The Seven Year Itch (Not Rated)

Richard Sherman bears his name like a terrible question. Is he a sure man? The Seven Year Itch is the story of Dick walking that question like a tightrope, suspended over a chasm of infidelity and madness, two sad fates more often intertwined in reality than modern fiction is comfortable representing. The film begins with […]
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (PG-13)

Purity is a hard sell, particularly to Hollywood. Its very presence shines a light on lesser qualities, it is a rude virtue, the byword of arrogance, and, to take Hollywood’s view, guilty of the chief sin of being dull. Our cultural revolt against the Puritans as stodgy, strict, morose and over scrupulous is not due […]
Shane (Not Rated)

Early in Shane, George Stevens’s classic western, the camera takes up the point of view of a boy named Joey (Brandon DeWilde); while trying to set his sight on a buck, he catches a glimpse of an approaching rider. Neither the perspective nor the focus of the film changes much after this. While it might […]
Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (PG-13)

During the theatrical run of Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, Dodge had an extensive promotional campaign featuring Will Ferrell’s Ron Burgundy character. In the TV spots, he never actually identified himself as Ron Burgundy or reported any news or interacted with any other characters from either Anchorman film. He just wore a loud suit and […]
The Constant Gardener (R)

The name Teresa, or Therese, is common in the recent history of the church. It’s most recognizable bearer is perhaps Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who founded the Missionaries of Charity. This Catholic Congregation, like its founder, is dedicated to the free care of HIV/AIDS suffers, tuberculosis patients, the mentally ill, abandoned children, lepers, refugees, etc. […]
What If… (PG)

In Nancy Meyers’ What Women Want, Mel Gibson played a male chauvinist who was miraculously granted the ability to hear the thoughts of women as though those thoughts were being expressed verbally. Gibson was Nick Marshall, ad exec and lady killer, who never gave a second thought to what women wanted, but took what he […]
Mr. Peabody and Sherman (PG)

Walking into the multiplex, I looked forward to Rob Minkoff’s Mr. Peabody and Sherman with an anticipation I usually do not feel for animated cartoons. Mr. Peabody’s Improbable History, the source material for this new release, stands high among the best animated series of all time and has been unjustly neglected by those who profess […]
Catching Fire (PG-13)

On the one hand you have Athanasius contra mundum, and on the other hand, Fifty million Elvis fans can’t be wrong. I’ll confess equal sympathies for both dictums. The Truth is a Man, a single Man, and He does not depend on massive crowds to give Him cultural validity. His cult is the genesis of […]
The Truman Show (PG)

Apocalyptically speaking, falling stars signal the end of the age, a coming political revolution, for the celestial lights represent rulers. The fall of one star foretells the rising of another and we have just such an omen in an early scene of The Truman Show: a halogen light with “Sirius (9 Canis Major)” written on it […]
Hours (PG-13)

Low-budget, independent films require a few important things to engross an audience. Since they do not have the budget of a blockbuster, they rely heavily on the script and the actors. In theory, Hours should have had both. In practice, it had neither. Our story opens on a soon-to-be father and mother entering a hospital […]
300: Rise Of An Empire (R)

Some days call for dumb movies. Every now and then, on a late night or a quiet Saturday afternoon, there’s reason enough to watch something that will advance your psyche in no way. I admit it. I’d even go so far as to allow Zack Snyder’s 300 (the 2006 one) to be such. Maybe. It […]
Noah (PG-13)

What follows is a conversation between Joshua Gibbs and myself on the work of Darren Aronofsky, culminating in a lengthy discussion of Noah, the director’s most recent work. Of course, this conversation is not exhaustive. Most of his films are here discussed in generalities, individual works are mentioned to highlight commonalities in his catalog. We […]
American Hustle (R)

It is possible to walk away from David O. Russell’s American Hustle with an unchallenged, unalloyed understanding of the word “American”— the quantity of leisure suits and Jersey accents alone put to rest any doubts about which America we’re dealing with. The same can’t be said of that other word, “hustle.” There is too much […]
How I Live Now (R)

When I was still quite young, no more than ten or eleven, little excited my soul more than the sound of a fire alarm going off at school. We would exit the building quickly and stand in the parking lot, surveying the school. Someone would claim they saw smoke, and we would all say we […]