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Category Archive: Film

Hooray for Hollywood - November 09, 2007
Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials (HDM) trilogy truly deserves all the epithets hurled at it, and Christians are gearing up for the December release of the film version of The Golden Compass, the first book in the trilogy. We needn't...

Scenic literalism - September 26, 2007
In his splendid performance history of Shakespeare, David Bevington frequently comments on the "scenic literalism" of film and television. Commenting on a TV production of As You Like It, he laments that the production "tells us where we are in...

Darcy and Elizabeth - August 10, 2007
Ellen Belton points out that in the 1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, "Elizabeth and Darcy (Colin Firth) are hardly ever frames together until well into the second half of the film, and when they are shown in the...

Gambling - December 24, 2006
In his history of American movies (thanks again Ken Myers), David Thomson notes that "there was in the ordinary lifestile of the first moguls a steady habit of gambling." David Selznick, he says, "lost a couple of million dollars in...

Really Lost - September 21, 2006
Last year, we got the first season of Lost on DVD and were instantly hooked. These guys sure know how to hold an audience. But for me the hold is weakening as we begin watching the second seson, as it...

The Island - December 18, 2005
In many ways, The Island is a silly movie: Long, repetitive, boring chase scenes, inexplicable explosions, impossible escapes, gaping holes in the plot, all filmed with MTV quick-cuts and apparently lit with strobe lights. Somewhere on the far side of...

Sky High - December 10, 2005
Sky High focuses on Will Stronghold, son of the greatest superhero duo in history - The Commander and Jetstream, who has some difficulty (but not nearly enough) discovering his powers. Though as much a high school story as a superhero...

Constantine - October 26, 2005
Keanu Reeves seems incapable of playing anything but a Christ figure (remember his supersonic ascension at the end of Matrix 1). In the recent horror film, Constantine, he plays John Constantine (J.C. – get it?), an agnostic, chain-smoking suicide restored...

The Pianist and the Nazis - September 14, 2005
In a 2003 TNR review of Roman Polanski's Oscar-winning film, The Pianist, Michael Oren gives information about Wilm Hosenfeld, the German officer who assists Szpilman: "while scrounging in an abandoned house for food, Szpilman comes face-to-face with a German officer....

Bride and Prejudice - September 12, 2005
This 2004 Indian musical version of the Austen novel is energetic, colorful, distracting fun. At several points, it departs from Austen's novel. Darcy's proposal does not come out of the blue, but at the end of a series of dates...

Hamann's hermeneutic - July 14, 2005
Hamann allegorized a hermeneutical principle of Jer 38: “We all find ourselves in such a swampy prison as the one in which Jeremiah found himself. Old rags served as ropes to pull him out; to them he owed his gratitude...

Jean de Florette - June 18, 2005
Some thoughts on Claude Berri's beautiful and provocative 1986/1987 films Jean de Florette and Manon of the Springs. 1. The story is a reverse Oedipus tale, focusing on how Cesar Soubeyran(Yves Montand) ruins and kills his own son (Jean, played...

The Village - February 10, 2005
I finally watched The Village. Much of it was perfectly silly. The initial explanation of the dead animals littering the village is that a coyote is on the loose, and this theory is put to rest only when it's decided...

Incredibles - November 24, 2004
I'm not the first one to notice, by any means, but let me chime in: The Incredibles is an overt attack on egalitarianism. All the bad guys in the movie want to flatten out the differences between "supers" and everyone...

Tarantino - November 16, 2004
New York Press critic Armond White has offered the most incisive summary of Tarantino's work and influence: "QT made sadism hip and sent it 'round the world." In another piece on Tarantino, White points (less convincingly, but still interestingly) to...

The Passion Once More - April 12, 2004
Tom Aitken reviews The Passion of the Christ in the March 26 issue of the London Times Literary Supplement, and says everything I would want to say about the weaknesses of the film, and more. Aitken goes off track a...

The Passion, Yet Again - March 26, 2004
Here are some slightly repetitive notes for a short talk I gave on The Passion on Friday, March 26. INTRODUCTION I want to discuss a single scene of The Passion, which will lead into both commendation for its strengths and...

The Passion, Again - March 06, 2004
I've read some surprising things in The New Republic: Andrew Sullivan's analysis of the Roman Catholic Church several years ago was very insightful, and Eugene Genovese, reviewing a book on Southern slavery, encouraged TNR's readers to check out the works...

The Passion - February 28, 2004
N.T. Wright has spoiled me. He has given such vivid portrayals of Jesus that I had difficulty getting into and appreciating Gibson's The Passion. The film seemed so context-free that it's hard for me to see how anyone could make...

Movies, Stories, and Redemption - January 30, 2004
"Movies," writes Brian Godawa, a Christian screenwriter, "may be about story, but those stories are finally, centrally, crucially, primarily MOSTLY about redemption." Godawa uses the theologically loaded term "redemption" intentionally, but he recognizes that many contemporary movies present a distinctly...

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