Deep Focus

Brehm Film

Brehm Film brings together filmmakers and film-viewers, Christian leaders and laity, scholars and students for dialogue between our culture's primary stories and the Christian faith.

kutter and scorsese
kutter and scorsese
Brehm Film

Brehm Film brings together filmmakers and film-viewers, Christian leaders and laity, scholars and students for dialogue between our culture's primary stories and the Christian faith.

Brehm Film

Brehm Film brings together filmmakers and film-viewers, Christian leaders and laity, scholars and students for dialogue between our culture's primary stories and the Christian faith.

kutter and scorsese
Latest Review
Showing Up poster

Showing Up

We may like to imagine the life of an artist as lived in the clouds, responsible only to the winds of their artistic process, caught in the ebb and flow of inspiration. Showing Up disabuses us of that idea almost instantly.

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Conversations With Filmmakers
MInari Crew

Minari | A Conversation with Lee Isaac Chung and Harry Yoon

Director Lee Isaac Chung and Editor Harry Yoon speak with filmmaker Eugene Suen about the making of the award winning film Minari

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Steve James

City So Real | A Conversation with Steve James

Fuller Professor of Theology and Culture, Kutter Callaway spoke with Director Steve James about his five-part docuseries, City So Real

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Latest Review
Showing Up poster

Showing Up

We may like to imagine the life of an artist as lived in the clouds, responsible only to the winds of their artistic process, caught in the ebb and flow of inspiration. Showing Up disabuses us of that idea almost instantly.

+ Listen

Recent Reviews

How to Blow Up a Pipeline poster

How to Blow Up A Pipeline

The young people in How to Blow Up a Pipeline have their faces “set like flint” to the task ahead of them as well. They aren’t going to turn over tables in the synagogue… well, actually they kind of are.

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Mario Bros Movie poster

The Super Mario Bros. Movie

The Super Mario Bros Movie is a rollicking riff on one of video games’ longest running franchise (running, left to right across the screen, jumping occasionally).

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Brendan Fraser in The Whale poster

The Whale

The Whale perpetuates stigmas and encourages objectification. Specifically, having an actor who is not fat wear layers of makeup perpetuated our societal pettiness of seeing fat people as a spectacle.

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Avatar the Way of Water poster

Avatar: The Way of Water

Avatar: The Way of Water insists that deep, emotional connection between things with breath and blood in them is more powerful and important than any technological ambition or achievement. That’s an admirable message.

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the fabelmans

The Fabelmans

Watching The Fabelmans is like sitting at the feet of an accomplished raconteur. I wanted to live in this film. I never wanted it to end.

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Wakanda Forever poster

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

When Black Panther: Wakanda Forever isn’t being a Marvel movie, it’s a lot of fun.

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Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Physical beauty is but one aspect of beauty, the glint of a greater glory. People are beautiful because they are complex and ineffable, endlessly fascinating creations of the eternal God.

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Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio Poster

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

This is not Disney’s film. It is a much darker, weirder tale, rough with knots and splinters, but glowing with boyish mischief.

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The Banshees of Inisherin

What a knotty tale this is! You never feel resolution, only sadness and longing and bewilderment.

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Black Adam Poster

Black Adam

You didn’t come here for a lesson. You came here to watch the Rock make things go boom.

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Raymond and Ray poster

Raymond & Ray

We keep telling this story because we long for our relationships with out parents to be right.

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Hocus Pocus 2 poster

Hocus Pocus 2

Hocus Pocus 2 does that thing that Disney has been doing for the last decade or so and tries to offer its villains a measure of redemption.

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Blonde poster

Blonde

Blonde is an aesthetically provocative deconstruction of our culture’s conceptions of Marilyn Monroe, of society’s willingness to sacrifice people on the alter of celebrity and consumerism.

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Top Gun poster

Top Gun: Maverick

Top Gun: Maverick isn’t a movie. It’s music. It’s the kind of story sung by ancient Greek poets who beseech the Muses for inspiration.

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chip n dale

Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers

The original cartoon, Chip ’n Dale Rescue Rangers, was itself a reboot/reimagining of a couple of classic Disney characters. Why not do it again?

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Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is another variation on the multiverse concept echoing through our blockbusters of late.

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The Northman Poster

The Northman

We see what we have the eyes of faith to see. The Northman lets us see with viking eyes for a couple of hours. I see, and I shudder.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once

Everything Everywhere All at Once asks a question that is easy for us to answer: What is the meaning of life?

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The Worst Person in the World

This is Oslo; This is Gotham

The Worst Person in the World and The Batman cry for new narratives, for new ways of reaching maturity that don’t depend on childrearing and violence.

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kimi poster

Kimi

Kimi is a taught, ninety-minute thriller. It is machine-like in its precision, and any humanity you feel is just you seeing your reflection as you stare into its chrome-plated surface.

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playing with sharks poster

Playing With Sharks

What if the entire population of a given place was made up of artists? Marfa, Texas is a place where you can find out.

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land poster

Land

Land is an unhurried look at grief, isolation, and how a full (and therefore healing) experience of lament often requires the bonds of community.

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pauli murray oster

My Name Is Pauli Murray

The documentary My Name Is Pauli Murray introduces us to the activist and spiritual leader the world forgot.

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summer of soul poster

Summer of Soul

Through footage that has never been seen before—and that sat in a basement for 50 years—this documentary gives visibility to the healing and radicalizing gift the festival brought to the neighborhoods of Harlem.

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street gang poster

Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street

It’s honestly kind of surprising this documentary hasn’t been made before

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coda poster

CODA

CODA is a film you can gather a family or small group around. It could provide a conversation starter and beginning guide to understanding disability and opening the doors of the church to everyone.

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bad hair poster

Bad Hair

The real demon in Bad Hair the normative standard of white beauty. When you scream, whether you realize it or not, you’re screaming at the horrors of white supremacy.The real demon in Bad Hair is the normative standard of white beauty. When you scream, whether you realize it or not,… Read more »

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Palm Springs Poster

Palm Springs

If you’ve got to be trapped in the same day for all eternity, you at least want to be able to lounge in an infinity pool, right?

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50 First Dates Poster

50 First Dates

50 First Dates manages to say something novel about this “meaningless, meaningless life” we life we live, as time-loop movies make so abundantly clear.

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Scott Derrickson

In the Room with Scott Derrickson

Scott Derrickson, director and screenwriter of The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Doctor Strange, has a conversation about storytelling, the horror genre, and the creative process.

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Uncut Gems

Uncut Gems

Uncut Gems is electric,If you can tap into it quickly, you can ride the current right up until it arcs off the screen and into your skull, at which point you can either let it continue through your body warming your every cell or you can switch off and just… Read more »

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Bombshell poster

Bombshell

Bombshell is a good look at the inner workings of abusive power in workplaces and the women who have been asked to present more than just their resumes in order to qualify for a job.

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Ford v Ferrari poster

Ford v Ferarri

Ford v Ferarri is a story of how a team of underdog idealists prevailed working within the stifling climate of an immense corporation. It’s a story about what it costs an idealist to work within an institution.

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A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood poster

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

Marielle Heller has previously made movies about thoroughly unlikeable people and dared audiences to sympathize with them. Here, she dares us to believe kindness of this sort is possible.

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Parasite Poster

Parasite

Parasite, Bong’s latest, is no exception. It is the most fun I’ve had at the movies all year. Bong excels at taking his narratives in unexpected directions and shifting tone rapidly along the way.

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God in the Movies (tile)

God in the Movies – Clips for Discussion

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irishman poster

The Irishman

A common trope of faith and film writing is that the cinema is a “sacred space.” In Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, the theater becomes a confessional.

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lighthouse poster

The Lighthouse

Robert Eggers is back with The Lighthouse, another unsettling time warp into the dark recesses of American folklore.

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strange-negotiations-poster

Strange Negotiations: Music As Transgression

In this way, the film manages to stay focused on the particularities of Bazan’s story, but it does so by setting this one man’s personal journey against the backdrop of a series of broader shifts.

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joker poster

Joker

To watch Joker is to stare the sickness in the face. The film is a disturbing experience. We are not used to spending time with these kinds of characters anywhere, even at the movies.

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Fuller Studio plus

FULLER studio is pleased to partner with Brehm Film for this series. The reviews, articles, and other content in this series is entirely the work of Brehm Film.