Articles
Top 10 Movie Dads
Picking the top 10 movie dads was both easier and harder than picking the top 10 movie moms. Easier, because there were more candidates to choose from — and harder for the same reason!
Top 10 Movie Moms
When I set out to make a list of great movie moms in honor of Mother’s Day, I knew it wouldn’t be easy — but I soon found it even harder than I thought. Let’s face it: Great mothers are in short supply in the movies.
How I Believe in Roger Ebert
Just over a month before his death on Easter Thursday, Roger Ebert wrote a blog post titled “How I Am a Roman Catholic” — a follow-up of sorts to a 2009 post called “How I Believe in God.”
Overlooked Family Fare
It’s spring break, or summer vacation, and the grandkids are visiting. Or you’re looking for a DVD for a birthday present. You want three things: a) something worthwhile (not junk); b) something they’ll enjoy (not just high-minded or educational fare); and, crucially, c) something they haven’t already seen to death.
Religious Vision: Les Misérables and Anna Karenina
Have today’s movies lost religion? Not necessarily — but sometimes it helps to know where to look. For instance, mainstream films are more likely to include sympathetic depictions of religious faith in period pieces than in stories set in the present day.
2012: The year in reviews
A masterpiece on the importance of fatherhood, from filmmakers honored by the Vatican, is among the year’s best films.
Against Capra’s Critics: In Defense of It’s a Wonderful Life
Perhaps the most beloved of Christmas movies, Frank Capra’s sleeper classic It’s a Wonderful Life has inevitably become a target of seasonal, iconoclastic culture-warmongering.
In Praise of Pixar Short Films
One of the more striking marks of Pixar’s innovative stature and impact on the world of Hollywood animation has been their pioneering revival of the long-neglected animated short film prior to the feature (at least prior to animated features) as an industry staple.
Ghosts of the Abyss: The Other James Cameron Titanic Film
If you see only one James Cameron-directed movie about the Titanic — and you should — see the one that doesn’t star Kate and Leo.
Mirror Mirror and Fairy-tale Revisionism
I do take issue, though, with Hollywood’s current obsession with “dark,” “gritty,” “edgy” fare threatening to crush any sense of wonder and fantasy. What a joy, then, that Tarsem Singh’s Mirror Mirror offers a gorgeous, fantastic fairy-tale world bursting with extravagant imagination and splendor.
Fortnight of Films: 14 Films for the Fortnight for Freedom
In support of the Fortnight for Freedom, the National Catholic Register and Decent Films are pleased to present a selection of 14 films, chosen by me, all in some way engaging themes of religious liberty, moral conscience and commitment faith in the face of pressure and persecution have been reflected in cinema.
The Secret World of Studio Ghibli
It’s still one of the better-kept secrets of family entertainment that the most imaginatively daring and influential animation house in the world isn’t Pixar, but Japan’s Studio Ghibli, best known for co-founder and animation virtuoso Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki is revered in animation circles, but Ghibli films haven’t yet become the phenomenon in the States that they are in Japan and around the globe.
Jane Goodall on Chimpanzees, Language and the Soul
Disneynature’s Chimpanzee, the latest family-friendly nature documentary from Earth directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, depicts a surprising twist in the early life of a young chimpanzee nicknamed “Oscar” living in the Taï Forest in the Ivory Coast. Dr. Jane Goodall, the world’s foremost expert in chimpanzees, has seen the film, and discussed it with me via phone a couple of days ago.
The 2012 Academy Award Nominees
I like lists better than awards, so I look forward to the Academy Award nominations more than the Oscars ceremony itself. The process of whittling down countless contenders to a handful of nominees is more interesting than the process of picking one nominee as the winner — and this year is no exception.
2011: The year in reviews
2011 was a good year for film, and particularly for depictions of faith in film — but not in the Hollywood mainstream on either count.
Looney Tunes: An Appreciation
I don’t remember the first time I encountered Charlie Chaplin or the Marx Brothers, or the first time I saw Casablanca, but whenever it was, I came to them with some inkling of what lay in store thanks to Looney Tunes.
A house divided: A domestic family-film metaphor
Like Dorothy’s house, uprooted in fairy-tale response to her running away, physical domiciles in one family film after another are displaced, torn asunder, and undergo fantastic, traumatic crises and transformations in visionary mirroring of the upheaval in the characters’ lives.
Machine Gun Preacher: Sam Childers Talks About His Biopic, His Life and His Work in Sudan
In 1998, a former gang biker named Sam Childers joined a church mission trip to the Sudan to help repair huts damaged in the Second Sudanese Civil War. Most of the people on that trip finished their charitable labors and left Africa behind, but Sam didn’t — not completely.
Hollywood Adjustment?
The Adjustment Bureau and Hereafter are among a remarkable number of recent and upcoming Hollywood films in some way invoking themes of spirituality, religion or belief. 2010 was particularly rife with such Hollywood religiosity, quantitatively if not necessarily qualitatively.
Citizen Kane, André Bazin and the “Holy Moment”
Everyone knows that Citizen Kane — celebrating its 70th anniversary with this week’s 3-disc Blu-ray debut — enjoys a bulletproof reputation as The Greatest Movie Ever Made … What isn’t so generally known is that the film’s prominent place in so many film classes — and for that matter, the fact that there are film classes in the first place — has a lot to do with the work of a revolutionary Catholic film critic and theorist, André Bazin, whose critical theories were shaped by the same tradition of Christian personalist philosophy that informed the writings of Pope John Paul II.
Recent
- Crisis of meaning, part 3: What lies beyond the Spider-Verse?
- Crisis of meaning, part 2: The lie at the end of the MCU multiverse
- Crisis of Meaning on Infinite Earths, part 1: The multiverse and superhero movies
- Two things I wish George Miller had done differently in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- Furiosa tells the story of a world (almost) without hope
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