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Passengers [video] POST

Passengers [video]

Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence in space. How bad could it be?

 Loving [video] POST

Loving [video] (2016)

So much better and more satisfying than the courtroom drama it could have been.

 Arrival [video] POST

Arrival [video]

I try never to spoil anything, but honestly, just skip this video and go see it. I mean, then come back and watch the video, of course.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them [video] POST

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them [video] (2016)

It’s the Star Wars prequels for Harry Potter. Actually, it made me wish I was watching Doctor Strange again.

John Paul the Great professor defends <em>Rogue One</em> POST

John Paul the Great professor defends Rogue One

Thomas P. Harmon, professor of theology and culture at John Paul the Great Catholic University, has written a thoughtful essay for Catholic World Report responding to my critique of the moral murkiness of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

What we lose when <em>Star Wars</em> goes to the Dark Side ARTICLE

What we lose when Star Wars goes to the Dark Side

Even features come with trade-offs, and the Marvelization of Star Wars is no exception. This might not be as clear in The Force Awakens — about as pure a work of nostalgia and homage as can possibly be contrived short of a shot-for-shot remake — as it is in Rogue One, where the Marvel-style engineering is more obvious.

 Passengers REVIEW

Passengers (2016)

If you had to cast two Hollywood actors to watch being all by themselves in a luxury starliner on a doomed 90-year voyage to a planet they will never live to see, you might just pick Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. In a way, that’s the problem with Passengers, or where the problems begin.

 Silence REVIEW

Silence (2016)

When 17th-century Japanese authorities in the time of the Tokugawa shogunate found it necessary to send the colonial powers of Europe packing and their European Jesus with them, they didn’t just shatter the missionaries’ bodies. They shattered their narrative.

 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story REVIEW

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

All this raises a question: When is a Star Wars movie not a Star Wars movie?

 Spirited Away REVIEW

Spirited Away (2001)

No film in Miyazaki’s oeuvre haunts me like Spirited Away. One reason is the evocation of a seemingly impenetrable, incalculable world with rhythms and rituals that seem all the more opaque and unnerving because they are routine and transparent to those that are of that world.