Cabrini celebrates human dignity and solidarity; the saint remains an enigma
What kind of world do we want, and what will we do to achieve it? Those are the questions with which Alejandro Monteverdi’s Cabrini leaves us at the end of its 140 minutes. The questions land harder after the story we’ve seen.
Dune: Part Two exceeds expectations in every way — except humanity
There’s something bracing about a blockbuster epic in 2024 that doesn’t care what you think of it, that is primarily concerned with being the best possible version of itself.
Dune and The Lord of the Rings
In my reviews of Dune: Part One and now Dune: Part Two (filed and pending publication; stay tuned!) I’ve written a bit comparing and contrasting Dune with Star Wars. Here I’d like to consider Star Wars in relation to The Lord of the Rings and J.R.R. Tolkien’s larger legendarium.
Ethan Hunt’s second act and Tom Cruise’s third: The unending impossible mission
What the Mission: Impossible series discovers in this moment is this: Imperfect stunts can be more thrilling than perfect ones, and an unflappable superman who always knows exactly what to do and does it perfectly is less exciting than a fallible, vulnerable action hero — one who can be caught by surprise, who hesitates and has misgivings, who is forced to improvise, sometimes miscalculating and even getting hurt.
Indiana Jones movies and Raiders of the Lost Ark: Why the original still stands alone
Eight years earlier, The Exorcist offered a gut-wrenching morality tale about, among other things, the spiritual dangers of messing around with Ouija boards and demons. The climax of Raiders offers a complementary warning about trifling with the no less terrible power of the holy.
The Lourdes Effect: The Miracle Club director Thaddeus O’Sullivan on Irish trauma and miracles
Laura Linney stars in an Irish comedy set in 1967 about a group of women confronting their past on a pilgrimage to Lourdes. The director talks about the trauma that Irish movies set in this timeframe tend deal with, and what he calls the “Lourdes Effect.”
An Elemental misstep: Does Pixar still need — or benefit from — anthropomorphic fantasy?
What if the four elements had feelings? Pixar filmmaker Peter Sohn’s gentle, compassionate storytelling may have something to offer family audiences … if he can break away from what has become a rut in Pixar thinking.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is an incomplete triumph
What I can tell you at this point about Across the Spider-Verse is that I want to see it about ten more times.
A deep dive: The Little Mermaid then and now
There’s something profoundly melancholy about Disney returning, in its present state of creative exhaustion and corporate decadence, to The Little Mermaid — the nucleus from which the entire Disney renaissance exploded, in a way along with everything that has followed.
Science fiction and transcendence: 2001: A Space Odyssey and the elusiveness of awe
Released 55 years ago, Stanley Kubrick’s iconic masterpiece — honored on the 1995 Vatican film list — has often been likened to “a religious experience.” Why do some of its successors capture this better than others?
Recent
Home Video
Copyright © 2000–2025 Steven D. Greydanus. All rights reserved.