The Rings of Power: Season 1 at the halfway mark
Four episodes in, the lavish Amazon Prime series is delivering on at least some of its promise, but there’s room for improvement.
A new foray into Middle-Earth: The Rings of Power
A Game of Thrones–ification of Tolkien? More Hobbit trilogy excess? Though not without missteps, Amazon’s ambitious Lord of the Rings prequel series gets off to a fairly promising start.
Too good not to be true: Two movies about the Thailand cave rescue
Perhaps you were glued to the news in 2018 as the world followed the ultimately successful efforts in Thailand to rescue the 12 young boys of a soccer team and their assistant coach from the Tham Luang Nang Non cave who had become trapped by sudden flooding. If you haven’t checked in on the story since then, though, you have no idea.
Love and thunder, signifying nothing? Religion and nihilism in recent Marvel movies
Recent installments in the Marvel Cinematic Universe exacerbate the tension between the franchise’s humanistic ethos and its nihilistic cosmos. Is there still room for God in this universe?
Vivo/Alive: A documentary about Eucharistic adoration returns to theaters for one day only
Vivo remains focused on the experiences of its subjects and their spirituality. It’s not a catechetical or apologetical presentation, but a portrait of five souls and a document, perhaps, of the workings of grace. Vivo is alive.
Why is there no religion in The Lord of the Rings?
If The Lord of the Rings is “fundamentally religious and Catholic,” why are there no religious institutions or rituals?
Lightyear is an anti–space opera for an anti-heroic age
It pains me to say this: If Lightyear is Andy’s Star Wars, what an impoverished childhood Andy had.
Jurassic World Dominion (2022)
The word “dominion” is uttered once in Jurassic World Dominion, in an oblique, irreverent allusion to Genesis 1. “Not only do we lack dominion over nature, we are subordinate to it,” asserts Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in one of his trademark, smugly iconoclastic epigrams. Later in the same speech, though, Malcolm turns with surprising optimism to the power of genetic science to shape the future. Does he really believe this? Is this speech coherent? Is the film itself coherent?
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Top Gun: Maverick is more than a nostalgia sequel or legacyquel; it is almost more than a movie. It is a manifesto and a monument, a defiant time capsule and a swaggering IMAX spectacle without precedent or peer.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
I’m thinking of a moment in the original movie in which Stephen looks skeptically at a deeply corrupted individual nattering about the greater good and retorts, “No. I mean, come on — look at your face.” Nobody says that in the sequel, but they should.
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