“Salesman”: The American Dream and the Hollow Man
Released 50 years ago this year, the subject matter of the now-classic Salesman (1969), at first glance at least, seems unlikely to make great cinema. […]
“The Act of Killing”: Unquiet Graves and Troubled Consciences
A few years back, a film, The Act of Killing (2012), ran at a London cinema for 52 weeks. Such a run is unusual for any film: even more so for a documentary feature about Indonesia. The film’s subject matter revolves around one man, Anwar Congo, who is convivial, charming even, and with real [...]
Curses and Magic in the “Night of the Demon”
Like the best horror tales, the “Night of the Demon” came back from the “dead.” This was as a result of a late-night slot for cult movies on British television in the late 1980s. Continuing to this day, the film has attracted ever-increasing praise from critics and found an ever-more appreciative audience. It seems [...]
“Stalker”: The Search for Faith Amidst Desolation
Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Stalker is about a man who leads others, however obliquely, and despite obstacles, both external and internal, to faith. Faith is faith. Without it, man is deprived of any spiritual roots. He is like a blind man. Just more than thirty years ago, on 26 April 1986, a nuclear disaster occurred at the Chernobyl Nuclear [...]
Did John Paul II Change the Course of Irish History?
Did the speech made by Pope John Paul II at Drogheda during his visit to Ireland in 1979 change the course of Irish history? This is the contention of a new documentary John Paul II in Ireland: A Plea for Peace, written and directed by David Naglieri. The originality of the film’s premise lies [...]
Dirty Harry: The Rage of the Anti-Hero
In December 1971, Dirty Harry appeared on movie screens. Starring the then rising movie star, Clint Eastwood, the film proved as controversial as it was successful at the box office. […]
The Long Shadows Cast by “Nightmare Alley”
Just as the Second World War ended, the 1946 novel Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham became a bestseller. Perhaps more than any other, the noir genre fitted the mood of Post–war America. It was a nation that had not yet emerged blinking into the Technicolor 1950s of Eisenhower and later prosperity. It was [...]
Alfred Hitchcock’s “The 39 Steps”: A Coded Message?
The 39 Steps is one of five films that Alfred Hitchcock made in England about espionage in the mid-to-late 1930s. These films capture the growing threat felt in Britain from foreign powers. In their scenarios the nation's security was nowhere more threatened than by spies hiding in plain sight... The Thirty-Nine Steps. A novel. Then a film: The 39 Steps. In the end, that [...]
Mel Gibson, “Hacksaw Ridge,” & the Real Hollywood Counter-Culture
In Hacksaw Ridge, Mel Gibson continues to present an alternative world-view to filmgoers. It is one at odds with almost all that emanates from Hollywood, but, nevertheless, is one that finds a welcome reception in the real world, where family and marriage, patriotism and courage, faith and self-sacrifice still form part of the daily lives [...]
The Wages of Sin: Jean-Pierre Melville’s Doomed Universe
In Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Doulos, it is as if there is an existential darkness present throughout. In this world, no matter how cunning the schemes or how fail-safe the get-away plans are, for all concerned there is a retribution coming. In Melville’s cinematic universe the wages of sin are always death… Recently, at London’s British Film [...]
“Grizzly Man”: Longing for Eden
The human and animal worlds are distinct, and relations between them are as much affected by Original Sin as all else in the universe. No amount of wishful thinking, no matter how well-intentioned or deluded, is going to change this… In the last decades there has been a romanticization of nature and man’s place [...]
Ireland’s Brave New World
Ireland has chosen between life and death. Death it shall have. The fallacy that a liberal abortion regime solves anything will soon become apparent to Irish citizens… Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned… [...]
All the Devils Are Here: Britain’s Culture of Death
So brazenly was Britain’s Culture of Death on display recently that the scales dropped from the eyes of any who wished to see. Many do not want to see, though, and look away as life support machines are turned off, and the full force of the law is used to prevent the sick moving to a [...]
“The Silver Tassie”: Ireland and the Great War
Sean O’Casey’s play “The Silver Tassie” will grow in significance in the years ahead because it is a mirror that is now being held up to modern Ireland—a country which, like the crippled hero of the piece, can no longer cope with platitudes and half-truths, but which has also lost faith in its former [...]