As Western Civilization proceeds from "dawn to decadence," here are five movies that may help viewers ponder what went wrong and what they should do at "the end of all things." 1. The Mosquito Coast (1986) Allie Fox (Harrison Ford in one of his best performances) is an eccentric inventor who is disgusted by the crassness [...]
"The Chosen" is one of the few examples of television that really serves a higher purpose. Far beyond “entertainment,” it can enhance our traversal of Jesus’ life through liturgy and prayer. “We expect from TV consequences of the greatest importance for an increasingly dazzling exposition of the Truth.” [1] —Pope Pius XII (first televised Easter [...]
Strikingly traditional and patriotic, "Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero" is truly a film for all ages. It is at first surprising that it was a box-office flop when it premiered in 2018, in the 100th anniversary year of the end of the Great War it depicts, despite generally positive reviews by critics and moviegoers. But [...]
Tolkien succeeds in portraying the goodness of the Shire, of Rivendell, of Gondor, of Rohan in compelling, tangible ways. The most remarkable aspect of Tolkien’s vision is his ability to make the good desirable. Near the end of The Return of the King movie, while Frodo and Sam are making the arduous climb up Mount [...]
“Memoriae Tuae” Martis nec gladius, belli nec ignis impiger Vivum momentum unquam memoriae tuae consumet Nor Mars his sword nor war’s quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory* Patrick Doyle wrote "Memoriae Tuae" as part of his score for the animated film, Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero, a 2018 computer-animated adventure film [...]
In valor, there is hope—namely, the hope that our virtue may be fully complete. It is as men of valor that we will be all we can be. In valor, there is hope. —Tacitus When it played in the movie theaters, the terrific movie Act of Valor (2012) earned notoriety for two reasons. First [...]
The mystery of Christ’s death and resurrection lends itself to, perhaps even demands, pictorial realization like no other story. To prove that the Easter spirit hasn’t left the silver screen, here are two more recent entries you may have missed. Movie-watching may not be as common a pastime at Easter as on other holidays, but [...]
I enjoyed Peter Jackson’s film version of "The Lord of the Rings" and accept that a film adaptation is just that: an adaptation. However, my objection to the film rests at a more fundamental level: I object because filmic versions of fantasy fiction serve to abolish the imagination. Most Imaginative Conservative readers are fans of [...]
Like the Greek tragic heroes of Oedipus and Prometheus, J. Robert Oppenheimer used his almost superhuman intellect and ability to achieve something that led not only to his own suffering, but also to the suffering of others. Americans today would do well to heed the lessons passed down from the Greek tragedians about the reckless [...]
Incarnating the truth in art is the supreme test for a writer with convictions, and this problem is the real heart of the tension between entertainment and literature. I had a friend in England I’ll call Rosemary. She had always wanted to be a writer, so she honed her craft and eventually got a contract [...]
The protagonist of the film “Groundhog Day” discovers that what makes life worth living is not immediate gratification, or moral autonomy, or flippant cynicism, or self-deification, but rather encountering those things that give meaning and purpose to our lives. Today, we are experiencing nothing less than a renaissance of classical education throughout the United States, [...]
Ridley Scott’s film is a vast oversimplification of a complex historical reality. Therein lies the danger. Like a mind-altering drug, the film provides a convenient shortcut that saves the audience the time and trouble of thinking for themselves. Filmgoers, of course, need not become experts in Napoleonic history. But Scott might have done more to [...]
The film "Maestro" is certainly well-made and well-acted, with Bradley Cooper (who also directed) carrying off a spot-on impersonation of Leonard Bernstein. But at its core is an emptiness that no mere artifice can fill. Writers for the movies, I have found, don’t seem to know how to deal with the arts as a dramatic [...]
Perhaps the new "Hunger Games" film's success is due as much to its realism about human nature as it is to the fact that it’s a familiar product whose origins lie in the time before the full conquering of Hollywood by wokeness. The movie critic John Podhoretz once recalled a woman coming out of a [...]