Reel Spirituality

The Handmaiden posits the act of sex as the highest form of knowledge.

Nocturnal Animals is about a woman who reads into a book written by her ex-husband.

Moana is about the importance of Polynesian stories. It even opens with a Polynesian story being told.

For the most part, Lonergan’s story is an excellent character study.

Eddie Redmayne plays Newt Scamander as the kind of person who has been socially-awkward his whole life. My wife, an elementary school teacher, noted the way he avoids eye contact and shuffles around as if he’s in a world of his own. It reminded her of some of her students with special needs.

So, why make a fictional story about an Iraq war hero? Based on the film, there are two answers to that question.

The happy ending in The Edge of Seventeen felt appropriate because of the hope that it offers to teens who might identify with much of what Nadine went through; it can help them to see that things can get better.

For theologically-minded viewers, Doctor Strange’s purgatorial time-loop death pokes at fertile theological ground, but what kind of atonement theology is on display here?

Arrival plays its cards close to the chest, waiting until its third act to show its hand. Much like Villaneuve’s Sicario, the final act of the movie takes the audience in an unexpected. It would truly be a shame to spoil it.

Even though Loving is a true, unassuming story, Nichols makes a brilliant, dramatic connection. At the beginning, the Lovings have to travel north to D.C. to have a civil wedding. The judge tells them that marriage is the backbone of our culture…

In moments, a curious cinematic poetry emerges amongst the film’s historical lesson, as if all of this “real story” about St. Nick is a kind of window onto a deeper truth about the world at large.

It’s the materialism that Strange espouses at the beginning of the film that is subsequently and repeatedly critiqued throughout it. As the Stoic librarian, Wong, explains, “The Avengers protect the world from physical dangers. We safeguard it against more mystical threats.”

Hacksaw Ridge is about the good results that follow people who display strength of conviction whether those people are holding a gun or not.

You can either perceive Chiron’s journey as a fraught attempt to assert his gay identity in his community, or, as a story that suggests, as an assertion that his attempt to decide who he wants to be on his own is not enough for him to establish his self.