Hoover’s files are full of recordings and correspondences of a sexually scandalous nature. To Hoover, it seems that the most dreadful secrets to keep are those of sexual malfeasance. Hoover felt oppressed by American society because of his sexuality, so he used sexuality to oppress the avatars of his oppressor. Hoover wielded the weapon he knew best, the very weapon wielded against him…
At times, it would seem that there are simply no words to describe what music is doing with us, for us, and perhaps even to us. For, in the context of filmgoing, music is not simply meaningful; it is also powerful. It is somehow capable of accessing the inner recesses of our basic humanity. A telling example of film music’s mysterious, meaning-making capacity is found in Paul Thomas Anderson’s most recent film, There Will Be Blood…
In 1996, I was a blonde haired, blue eyed, Northern California daughter of a banker father and a stay at home mother. Mike, my boyfriend and star football player and I, a dancer with my high school squad, set out on a typical Saturday evening date-night. Not telling my parents goodbye, I hurried out of the house and into Mike’s Mustang. Our movie started in 15 minutes…
What might both the French and American church learn from a children’s movie?
There may be no artistic medium that more directly engages story than film. And among the film genres, none move their chips more fully onto story than documentary films…
The Dark Knight helped me understand the sacrifice of Jesus in a new way, and allowed me to wrap my head around it in a manner that became more real…
In just about every seminary across the country, there is the similar recognition that unless we adopt new measures and new metrics, unless we change the way we go about projecting our endeavors, we will no longer be effective in serving the church. We might not even long be in business. The same sense of a changing scenario holds true for those running hospitals. Even the very best stand-alone hospital knows that within ten years, it will be out of business if it doesn’t reinvent its business model. Does the same go for the church? I think it does…
I think of the too many people I have lost in my life to one form of cancer or another. These are the names I hold in my hand when I shake my fist at the heavens. Their names are the questions that fuel my doubts of God’s goodness and activity in the world. When I think of the ones I’ve lost though, I also think of the ones who stood resolutely beside them through their illness to and beyond the point of death…
Higher Ground is full of characters building to moments of revelation, and the film is about the build-up more than it is about the revelatory moments. In this, Higher Ground is monumentally better than almost all other films I’ve seen concerned with the complexities of the Christian life…
Straight’s family was initially concerned that their father would be turned into a laughingstock by the movie, particularly when they learned that the film would be directed by the edgy, four-time Academy Award nominee David Lynch. But they had no need to fear…
Most clergy representatives on film are not suave mainline clerics, beloved Irish-American priests, or wan and thin play-it-safe rabbis. Today, with the rise of presumably Protestant born-again studs, manipulators of people, and takers of the law into their own hands types, we see images of law-breakers with macho swagger…
I do not doubt that there is a complicated psychosis beneath Drive’s stylized exterior, but that veneer proves all but impenetrable. Like its hero, Drive reveals nothing of what it is about. The film simply moves and asks its audience to respond…
There are movies that make me feel good about who I am. I see my country/race/gender/religion represented on screen, and I think to myself, this is good. I am proud to be a… whatever is being represented on screen. Machine Gun Preacher is not one of those movies…
“Chick flicks don’t have to suck!” boasts the movie poster for the 2011 film Bridemaids. Somehow the hype about the film seemed to be condensed to shock about its surprising, actual hilarity. Its actual hilarity is surprising, of course, for two reasons: the film’s genre and the writers’ gender…
But like all road movies, Up is more about the relationship that develops, than the adventures on the road. The two lead characters meet up with packs of dogs, dangerous cliffs and frightening weather, not to mention an embittered explorer, Charles Muntz, who chases after them. But adrenalin is not the heart of the movie. Rather, Up is about love and friendship.
The Debt, perhaps, makes the truth seem like a slave driver or a burden too great to bear. Ought we instead to strip the truth of its power and side with Atonement and the idea that the truth is made in the telling, in the fiction not the fact?
For the first hour and forty-five minutes of the film, I hated Hilly with passion, and then I realized the sadness and desperation of her own life. Hilly does not sit enthroned atop a gleaming pyramid. She reigns over a dung heap…
Good sci-fi explores current issues in fantastic situations. The original Planet of the Apes is so good partly because it was so pertinent to its time. The 1960s were the decade of African American civil rights and the perils of nuclear proliferation. The original film tackled both these issues using talking apes. Today, we live in an Era of Rights. Everything from marriage to…
I did find myself sympathetic to the movie’s villain at one point when he declares to Captain America that he has seen the future, and it is “a world without flags.” I believe in that future too, though I expect…
