Reel Spirituality

The controversial segment of Last Temptation was the end: Jesus passes the cup, steps down from the cross, and goes on with his life. Silence also hinges on a fateful choice.

Silence is in awe of the faithful and seeks a place among them.

While the story line itself is enough to convince us that the Monster is right about Connor, it is the cinematography that makes us feel Connor’s existential impasse.

The film’s unique epilogue serves as a poignant reminder that neither Mia nor Sebastian achieved their dreams without significant sacrifices along the way.

Paterson is not spectacle. It is a poem. It has rhythm and repetition. It is an exercise in the practice of Selah.

Things to Come is a hopeful vision of true empathy, earned and not manufactured.

Performance art, on a stage or captured on film, is one of the most meaningful ways of observing human experience. We need more authentic expressions of real humanity, and Fences is one of a handful of great films to do that in 2016.

There isn’t a true villain in Sing, which forces the conflict in the film to be centralized around each animal’s inner struggle to perform to the best of their ability.

Passengers is WALL•E meets Groundhog Day.

Cameraperson is concerned with innocence and goodness and justice; with the terrible things that assail what is good; with the ways what is good persists in the presence of injustice. Cameraperson searches for what to call that persistence.

Natalie Portman gives a masterful performance in the lead. She has to handle national and personal tragedy, planning a very public funeral and parenting her children through the death of their father.

Collateral Beauty is a fake flower.

Rogue One’s characters aren’t complicated enough to respond to their circumstances as complex human beings.

La La Land is a fun movie that wants more than anything to put a smile on your face. It succeeds.

Director Robert Zemeckis has long known how to craft an entertaining story. He’s at his best when he’s working with real people instead of digitized ones, and while Allied may not be his best film, it certainly shouldn’t be counted among his worst.

Maybe it was the poet, the critic, the sensitive in him that separated him from the movement’s most prominent leaders. But if Peck is to be believed – and I think he is – Baldwin is as true and steady a voice as any.