Drama Films
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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Son of God (PG-13)
Cinematic adaptations of the earthly life of Jesus Christ must all, in a sense, disappoint for one of two reasons. They are either handicapped by a nervous fidelity to the text of the Four Evangelists, and thus lose themselves in a sea of pious tedium, or, moved by a spirit of whimsical heterodoxy, they introduce […]
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Nebraska (R)
Alexander Payne, who is perhaps best known for moving the wine industry with his 2004 film Sideways, is well practiced in the Midwestern art of stoic disappointment. A son of the cornhusker state, Payne uses their quiet turmoil even when his films are set California and Hawaii as was Sideways and The Descendants, respectively.
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Much Ado About Nothing (2012) (PG-13)
“Shakespeare” is a word which likely conjures up an endless string of irrevocably poignant images, though the writer himself was directly responsible for none of them. I think of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and the battle on the beach, wherein Harold Perrineau’s tragically underestimated interpretation of Mercutio claims “A scratch!” after being mortally stabbed. […]
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Labor Day (PG-13)
If the development of an artist’s career did in fact advance logically, Jason Reitman’s next film would be a new version of Peter Pan wryly punctuated by voice-over commentary from an older, slightly worldlier Wendy Darling. All of his major films (excepting 2007’s Juno) have a markedly boyish tone to them, and the nature of […]
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Restless Heart (Not Rated)
I had eagerly anticipated seeing Restless Heart (2013) ever since I read about the film’s inauguration at select theaters and churches throughout the United States last year. Someone is making an entire movie dedicated to one of my favorite faith heroes? Holy cow! Like many other people of Christian persuasion, I cherish the story of Saint Augustine, and […]
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All Is Lost (PG-13)
The majority of the dialogue in J.C. Chandor’s All is Lost comes in the first thirty seconds. The only human character, Our Man (Robert Redford) narrates a letter that he doesn’t send until the final act. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I tried, I think you would all agree that I tried. To be true, to […]
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A Serious Man (R)
Various Christian media outlets championed True Grit as the acme of the Coen brothers work with religious material, although I think A Serious Man renders True Grit as hollow as a flintlock gun barrel. Of all the qualities the film owns which might be discussed, the passage which immediately follows the prologue is of peculiar […]
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Inception (PG-13)
In the same way genealogies provide foundation for expounding upon and explaining the personhood and character of real human beings, so any good author deserves to have any individual work placed into the context and trajectory of their oeuvre. Whether or not Christopher Nolan is a good man, I cannot say, although by this point […]
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Dallas Buyers Club (R)
And you, my father, there on the sad height, Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas, who is known as much for his poetry as his alcoholism, wrote these words for his dying father. […]
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Her (R)
Her, written and directed by Spike Jonze, contains three scenes of strong sexual content, and at least two other scenes with frank sexual language. All the sex is varyingly virtual. The movie uses sex both to demonstrate closeness between characters, and the gaps between them. Taken as whole, however, it’s not clear that Jonze understands […]
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Prisoners (R)
If it is fair to go by numbers, movies about demons are both cheap and easy to make. Depending on how broadly you are willing to define “demon,” I would wager something demonic hits an American theater once a month. The never-ending spate of creepy kid movies which yet issue forth from The Ring’s wake, […]
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Junebug (R)
In Flannery O’Connor’s seminal lecture Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction she uses the expression “Christ-haunted” to describe the South. Since first reading this, I have been haunted by this idea of Christ-hauntedness. She goes on to say that the Southerner “who isn’t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may […]
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Philomena (PG-13)
Stephen Frears is no Oliver Stone or Aaron Sorkin. His latest film, Philomena, like The Queen before it, is blissfully absent of soap box preaching. Given the material Frears is working with, that’s a extraordinary feat, exuding a generosity worthy of the film’s main character, Philomena Lee. Based loosely on the book The Lost Child […]
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The Magnificent Ambersons (G)
Orson Welles’ movies are generally too good to be simply “issue” movies. Citizen Kane is conversant about “the press.” Touch of Evil touches on “corruption.” The Magnificent Ambersons raises the question of “industrialization.” But the movies always invest more deeply in characters and the strangeness of human behavior. Using an “issue” of the day as […]
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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (PG-13)
Two FilmFisher reviewer’s took on the latest Ben Stiller picture and took away comparable, but distinct impressions. Please enjoy both sides. Tom’s take: The lonely individual’s flight from mediocrity has, in our time, provided the motif of many films, most of which fail to rise above mediocrity. The patriarch of the genre is The Man […]
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Out of the Furnace (R)
The revenge drama holds a special place in American cinema. More than any society since pagan Greece we find satisfaction in watching a man achieve his desire over his enemies. The elements of the story are gratifying enough to have grown into a formula. The protagonist (nearly always a man of average temperament and social […]