DVD / Bluray
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A River Runs Through It (PG)
Robert Redford’s A River Runs Through It is set in the early 1900’s “at the junction of great trout rivers in Missoula, Montana” against the backdrop of the Bitterroot Mountains in the northwest of the state. It would be difficult to imagine a more beautiful setting for such a story, and it is to the […]
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Fight Club (R)
Note To Readers: This review contains a frank investigation of a perverse film, and necessarily must describe some of the perverse ideas of the film. Given the lasting import and influence of the film, the editor commends it to readers who are old enough to have seen the film. Younger readers who have not seen […]
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Marie Antoinette (PG-13)
“Are we there yet?” asks Marie sleepily from the backseat of her carriage. Her royal Austrian entourage has just pulled up on the French border for a customs inspection which makes even today’s customs inspections look conservative. It’s a child’s question, and that’s fine. Marie was only fifteen when she departed the Hofburg Palace for […]
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How to Train Your Dragon (PG)
According to ancient British legends, King Alfred wasn’t a big fan of the Vikings. He spent several years of his reign ousting the Danish warriors, who burned monasteries and killed unarmed monks. Good thing the real Vikings didn’t train dragons. The warriors of How to Train Your Dragon, a 2010 animated hit, bear practically no […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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.
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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. […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]