All Film Reviews

Psycho (R)

Only one horror story has ever been written and it is Oedipus the Tyrant by Sophocles. Freud had the story wrong, although he was closer than Rene Girard. Peter Leithart’s account of Oedipus in Heroes of the City of Man is one of the more penetrating I have ever read and the one I prefer […]
The Quiet Ones (PG-13)

More than other genres, horror movies invite us to pay attention to filmmaking itself. We watch the edges of the frame, tense up along with the music, and hold our breath for the slightest footfall or door creak. As a quick exercise, spend some time watching trailers on the iTunes movie trailers page . You will […]
Edge of Tomorrow (PG-13)

“I always say, ‘If I could start my marriage over, I would do this or that differently.’ But I’m flattering myself. My marriage starts over every day, and there are things I don’t do differently. Everything starts over every day.” I said something to this effect at confession several months ago. I often feel as […]
To the Wonder (Not Rated)

It begins at the Wonder, La Merveille, Mont-Saint-Michel in France to be exact, with Neil and Marina at an early edge of love, leap or let go is the question. She cavorts along the coast as the tide swells and he, as implacable as the sea, follows; whether entranced or temporarily entrapped in her orbit […]
All About Eve (Not Rated)

All About Eve opens with an award – the Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achivement, addressed to Miss Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), placed squarely in the center of the frame. Describing the ceremony, Addison DeWitt (an unforgettably sardonic George Sanders, elsewhere described as a “venomous fishwife”) dryly announces, “Minor awards are for such as the […]
Million Dollar Arm (PG)

Whenever a movie is sold as a “feel good” movie (inevitably the “feel good movie of the year”) I feel my heart grow cold despite the assured “heartwarming” results. It’s even worse when it’s based on a true story. Often this sort of fare is as savory as the organic pellets soaked overnight to be […]
Short Term 12 (R)

It’s very easy to be dismissive of a movie like Short Term 12. It’s an indie drama that tells a story about troubled teenagers, which is the sort of film that draws adoring critics like ants to a watermelon rind. The fact that Short Term 12 rises above melodrama at all is almost a miracle in itself, but […]
For All Mankind (Not Rated)

Given the political significance of the American space program, one might be excused for raising a skeptical eye at the notion the Apollo 11 ascended to Luna herself “for all mankind.” However, director Al Reinert seems to have had little interest in politics after reviewing more than six million feet of film shot by astronauts […]
Godzilla (PG-13)

By this point, further cries and moanings over the seemingly endless procession of reboots and remakes of too many franchise pictures must themselves begin to have the air of reboots and remakes, but I beg your forbearance nonetheless as I add just a few more paragraphs of reproof. Godzilla, starring Ken Watanabe, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and […]
Joe (R)

Joe Bageant tried to summarize rural Southern life with his book title, Deer Hunting with Jesus. With his new movie Joe, David Gordon Green presents the South’s Goth image, one that might be described with a title such as Deer Hunting, but Jesus Couldn’t Make It This Weekend. All of the classical tropes of a […]
Dr. Strangelove (Not Rated)

Perhaps we can laugh louder now, knowing that the contingency the movie presents never happened, but responding to Dr. Strangelove correctly means walking away from it with a dose of humility. This is not easy; as the movie suggests, humility is a virtue which people who rise to leadership positions often lack; but look what happens when it is absent.
Marathon Man (R)

In the acting community, John Schlesinger’s Marathon Man is known as the source of a conversation between Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman that supposedly occurred behind the scenes. Hoffman, the story goes, was explaining how he’d stayed up for three days straight in order to best convey his character’s exhaustion. Olivier then quipped “Why don’t […]
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 […]