Perhaps we should be grateful to John Williams and Howard Shore for showing us that we can still use the tonal language to create music that resonates in the hearts of ordinary people. Perhaps we should be suspicious of those musical censors who leap to dismiss whatever is spontaneously likeable as cliché, and whatever touches [...]
Throughout the film “The Thin Red Line,” Private Witt seems to be in the midst of his own form of contemplative prayer in the environment of war. After all his compassionate searching, he, surrounded by the enemy, lays down his life for his friends and falls into a blissful gaze. I find Private Witt’s character [...]
Uberto Pasolini’s “Still Life” is a haunting, original, and moving tribute to human worth and self-sacrificial love at the street level. It is a beautiful, quiet film that packs an emotional and philosophical punch far beyond its weight. Always on the lookout for a film that is better than the formulaic, ideologically-driven entertainment that is [...]
James Gray’s 2019 film “Ad Astra” is science fiction at its best: a window not into technology and life in the future, but a reflection on what is enduring in human life. And it is the brokenness of humans, particularly of men whose fathers are absent, that is the true story here. Every man has [...]
Sam Mendes’ appropriation of baptismal imagery allows the film “1917” to achieve the rare feat of portraying the First World War in terms of hope and rebirth rather than merely of pity and death. As we watch the protagonist Schofield’s journey, we recall that we have been buried and raised with Christ. I was surprised [...]
At the end of the film, Farinelli’s smile meant peace. It was the peace of a man who loved, of a man who had accepted his fate, of a man who had a future, of a man who was no longer the judge and standard—despite having suffered unjustly. It was the peace of a man [...]
Director Greta Gerwig’s film “Little Women” ends as Louisa May Alcott’s novel does, with a family-centered fall festival at Plumfield. Perhaps unintentionally, Ms. Gerwig captures the spirit of Alcott’s beautiful ending to her novel. Not only has she married off the heroine, but she has shown marriage to be far more than an economic arrangement. [...]
During the last fifty years we have seen the cities of America crumble into race riots time and again. The problem of racism is solved by the way of the cross, by the way of the ordinary person who, filled with transcendent insight, sees a problem, owns it, then rolls up his sleeves to do [...]
The following is the speech of Terence Mann (played by James Earl Jones) from the film Field of Dreams. Ray, people will come, Ray. They'll come to Iowa for reasons they can't even fathom. They'll turn up your driveway, not knowing for sure why they're doing it. They'll arrive at your door as innocent as [...]
Is Star Wars more than an entertaining space opera meant to relax us after the daily grind of post-industrialized life? To answer that question, we must consider the possibility of depth in cinema—that cinema is itself the vehicle for our post-technological mythology, manifesting our deepest fears as well as our subconscious and unconscious struggles. While [...]
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. […]
In 1939, John Ford released Stagecoach, a learned and perceptive cinematic work of art that not only introduced John Wayne as a major player in Hollywood but one that also made the western something more than a mere backdrop for pulp-ish adventure stories. Indeed, the movie shows that the western can serve as the perfect [...]
What are women? Despite my daily presence to my daughters’ lives, their sisterhood remains an enigma. A complex emotional bond exists among the seven of them, a self-enclosed feminine world that I can see and understand, but never truly enter. “Little Women” reminded me of that. What are women, anyway? I’m confused. Recent events, not to mention what I’m [...]
Martin Scorsese is a master filmmaker. Believing a film can be an art form on a level with music, dance, and literature, the one-time seminarian director wrestles with themes of free will and the unforeseen consequences of sin in his latest work, “The Irishman.” Martin Scorsese recently criticized Hollywood’s current cash cow—the comic book superhero [...]