All Film Reviews

Ender’s Game (PG-13)

Ender’s Game plays like a Power Point presentation of the novel by Orson Scott Card. That’s not an inherent problem. Power Point presentations can be informative, entertaining, and occasionally are not complete wastes of time. I’m not going to go so far as to say that they can’t be exciting, transformative, and powerful— attributes which […]
The New World (PG-13)

When The New World arrived in 2005, it was met by two types of reviews. Many critics understood it as an epic work of poetic genius, offering glowing praises for the revolutionary storytelling and arresting eye of the film’s writer/director, Terrence Malick. However, more than a few critics and most moviegoers found the film wanting. […]
Last Vegas (PG-13)

In Last Vegas, journeyman director Jon Turteltaub has demonstrated once again his ineffable knack for tapping into the middlebrow sensibility. Here, as in his unadventurous adventure films with Nicolas Cage, his safe combination of A list actors with B list material lulls the audience into the blissfully false impression that the picture they are watching […]
The Mission (PG)

In the first half of the 18th century the Jesuit order, an evangelical and zealous Catholic branch of Franciscan monks, undertook missionary work to the Indian tribes in South American jungles. Impressive by any standard, they unabashedly sacrificed comfort, well-being and their own lives for the sake of preaching the Gospel to the aboriginals. The […]
True Grit (G)

Well, not really women, since True Grit stars a fourteen-year-old girl with John Wayne in his only Academy-Award-winning role. He plays Rooster Cogburn, a name that captures his arrogance and stubbornness. Wayne fulfills our expectations as a bandit-chasing U.S. Marshal but surprises us with his soft side. He calls Mattie (Kim Darby) “little sister”. He shifts between […]
Serving Life (Not Rated)

I go to college. Being taught is what makes up my life, and it would be foul play to act as if this were not the case. I cannot conjure up ideas, postulate moving arguments, or construct a philosophy without it coming from what I am being taught, from what smolders in my bones. Consider […]
Carrie (R)

You can only push someone so far before they break. Based on the Stephen King novel of the same title, Carrie (2013) is a suspenseful and horrific tragedy about a teenage girl who is tortured her entire life by her psychotic mother and relentless peers and ultimately destroys herself and her community with her inherited […]
The Counselor (R)

Ridley Scott doesn’t do feel-good movies. Ridley Scott does movies scored with the sounds of desperate women warbling in Middle Eastern tones. Even when Ridley Scott decides to make a feel-good movie, he still uses Russell Crowe, as if to say, “Not so fast.” Early on in his career, Scott tapped into something profoundly mythic […]
The Fifth Estate (R)

The political thriller has had a life of varying fortunes. In the ’70s, it enjoyed for a brief spell of privileged status at the box office, where Sydney Pollack’s Three Days of the Condor or Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men became two of that decade’s more successful major releases. In more recent times […]
Never Let Me Go (R)

Anybody who picked up a copy of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go after finding it on Time’s list of the best English novels written since 1923 would likely have been baffled after a hundred pages or so. They would have found the Booker Prize winning author had traded out the contemplative, first-person perspective of […]
Gravity (PG-13)

The life of St Christopher unfolds “a hell of a story” for the reader of the 13th century hagiography anthology, the Golden Legend. Also maintained as a significant feast day in the Eastern Orthodox Church calendar, the story of St Christopher was especially near to the hearts of those on pilgrimage to venerate relics or […]
How To Watch A Classic Film: The Wizard of Oz (G)

On my first day of Western Civ 257: Literature of Western Civilization in college, we started on Homer’s Odyssey and the professor claimed the text was “above criticism,” a statement which I found a bit precious. How is anything above criticism? Is Homer now become Holy Writ? The more history books I read, though, the […]
Billy Elliot (R)

Only in the final act of the film does anyone ask Billy Elliot about his dancing. Until he stands before the admissions board for the Royal Ballet School, he is either told to dance or told not to dance. When finally someone asks him, “What does it feel like to dance?” Billy unfolds a rather […]
Jiro Dreams Of Sushi (PG)

A review of Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011), Three Stars (2012), A Matter of Taste: Serving Up Paul Liebrandt (2011) In the beginning, Jiro Ono wistfully asks “What defines deliciousness?” At first, it might seem strange for one of the most distinguished chefs alive to ask such a thing. Would we not expect a world-renowned […]