Older Films

Defect & Exile: The Hunt For Red October

I revisited The Hunt For Red October recently and found it a far different film than I remembered. I saw this one in the theater when I was nine and revisited it more than a dozen times in my teens, though I had not seen it in a decade when I started it a few nights ago. […]
American Sniper: The Shot Heard Round the World

When it comes to making heroes from rogues and outcasts, Americans (and Texans in particular) are incredible alchemists. William Travis was a debtor, Jim Bowie a slaver and James Bonham a convict, but that is not what any of them are remembered for. And, despite their faults, the world has found incredible use for such […]
Red Hook Summer

“We live in a world of should-not-be.” Spike Lee’s Red Hook Summer (2012) is the story of Silas “Flik” Royale, a thirteen-year-old African-American boy from Atlanta who is sent to live with his “old school” preacher grandfather Bishop Enoch in the Brooklyn projects for the summer. Although we don’t really know the reasoning behind this […]
Where the Wild Things Are: Put Off All Your Beast

“Inside all of us is a Wild Thing,” goes the tagline to Spike Jonze’s 2009 film Where the Wild Things Are, based on the popular children’s book by Maurice Sendak and Max is the wildest of the wild, son and younger brother in a broken family. Jonze with co-adapter Dave Eggers craft a touching film […]
Children of Men: Rachel Weeping In The 21st Century

A little less than a decade back, the greatest Christmas movie of all time came and went with disappointingly little fanfare— I say “disappointingly little” despite the fact two dozen top American film critics put it in their top ten lists at the end of the year. A few of their reviews dabbled in the […]
Ride Like Lightning, Crash Like Thunder: The Place Beyond the Pines

“He’s my son and I should be around him. I wasn’t around my dad and look at the… way I turned out.” The film opens with the speaker, Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling), shirtless and bedecked with a tattoo scheme in which White Chocolate likely served as inspiration. He paces about a small utility room twirling and […]
Dumb And Dumber: Angel Beasts In The House Of Mirth

Let me start by getting myself into a little trouble. I think the best comedy is offensive. I think comedy is, by definition, a kind of offense. Occasionally, people say to me, “I know of this really funny comedian. He’s not dirty at all. Very clean, but very funny.” I have yet to find this […]
Barefoot in Church: Ragamuffin

Most Christians who grew up in the 90s or before know Rich Mullins as the musician who wrote “Awesome God,” but his life was much darker than his most popular song would suggest. Mullins was an ascetic, even a rebel. He trashed phone booths and drank and went barefoot in church. He may have even smoked […]
A Simple Plan

“The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist,” writes Baudelaire. It is the greatest trick of modernity, beginning with the Enlightenment, as well. And, if the various modern social projects from capitalism to communism had anything in common, it was their motivation to convince all of us that […]
Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas

Having spent the last several days reading reviews of Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas, and now sitting down to write my own take, I am reminded of the 2000 presidential election in which both Bush and Gore hired teams of lawyers to sue one another over the results before the votes were even cast. Saving Christmas […]
Ace in the Hole

When Chuck Tatum rolls into Albuquerque, his busted car is being towed to a mechanic, but he is nonetheless behind the wheel, casually reading a newspaper. A bemused, smug expression Tatum wears suggests he is enjoying the ride. I could get used to this. Something is broken, but that brokenness has made his life a little […]
The Mosquito Coast: The Origins of Totalitarianism

Quite a few more people have seen Peter Weir’s Witness than his The Mosquito Coast. Perhaps, this is because watching a movie about the charms of tradition is easier than watching one about the terrors of modernity. But both are messages that we need to hear. After all, being wise as a serpent is as much an injunction as being innocent as a dove.
12 Angry Men

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.” The opening shot of 12 Angry Men lingers on an inscription that reads, “Administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good.” This would seem to imply Men is a story primarily about justice. In fact, it is about mercy, or rather, that peculiarly American […]
Belle

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen-era dramas attract large and devoted audiences. Add to the mix a real-life heroine who is the daughter of a British aristocrat and African slave, and the potential for tear-jerking, romantic moments grows exponentially. If only Belle, directed by Ghanaian Amma Asante, had a clever script or […]
Braveheart

When Steven Spielberg brought audiences Jaws in 1974, the ripples carried through decades of film. It is a defining point in the development of the world of movies. The term “blockbuster” was coined; gore on the screen was pushed to new levels; a fear of sharks settled deep in the bones of Americans. As influential […]
Falling Down

I used to live about three miles from where I worked, which is close enough, although twelve stoplights separated the front door of my house from the front door of my place of business. On the wrong afternoon drive home, the fact that Cain’s first great project after slaying his brother was to build a […]
North by Northwest

North by Northwest is the first of its kind. Released in 1959, it is the story of advertising executive Robert Thornhill (Grant) being mistaken for one George Kaplin by a powerful crime lord. Within the first 15 minutes Thornhill is kidnapped, questioned, blackmailed, forced to drink an entire bottle of bourbon, and placed drunk in […]
Pulp Fiction

Nobody ever goes to the bathroom in movies. As strange as amateur comedians seem to find this, it’s entirely reasonable from a storytelling perspective. It may not be completely realistic, but good stories seldom are. Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is probably the most famous exception to cinematic convention on toilet usage, with no fewer than […]
The Big Lebowski

Part One. Glance around academia.edu and you’ll find a few articles on the Coen brothers most popular film with titles like “’This Aggression Will Not Stand’: Myth, War and Ethics in The Big Lebowski,” as well as “The Big Lebowski, ritual and (imposed) narratives of the self.” In the last three years, over a hundred […]
Network

It has been 38 years since Howard Beale shouted “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” at a television camera. The mood comes and goes, but America is still mad as hell, though it is not quite sure what it is unwilling to take—rising crime, unemployment, government healthcare, government shut […]