The festering of grief and the frightening ways such grief manifests itself is at the heart of The Babadook, director Jennifer Kent’s horror film about the relationship between a mother and her son. Amelia (Essie Davis) has never really accepted her husband’s death, which occurred Read More …
The Lego Movie took critics and audiences by surprise not only by elevating itself beyond a massive commercial but by the thematic depths it plumbed and its ability to blend humor with serious strands of thought through the centuries. The film navigates the nuances of Read More …
In 2011, voters at Arts & Faith updated its list of Top 100 “Spiritually Significant” films. This was the fifth iteration of the list. It excluded short films and limited the list to no more than three films by the same director. This list included Read More …
Noah is the filmic mashup between a Narnia-esque fantasy, a Shakespearean family drama, and a gritty biblical morality tale, all rolled into an epic cinematic experience. This is not your Sunday-school Noah, with happy flannel-graph animals gathered on a boat beneath a rainbow. Filmmaker Darren Aronofsky Read More …
“Ideals are peaceful. History is violent,” explains one soldier in Fury, which shows the intense collaboration required among soldiers during combat, as well as the physical and psychological toll war takes on those who fight it. Principles give way to rationalizations amid repeated kill-or-be-killed engagements, Read More …
In Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, adapted from a Daphne du Maurier short story, an English couple (Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie) grieves over the accidental drowning death of their daughter. At their new home in Venice, a series of uncanny and portentous circumstances unfolds as Read More …
In 2012, readers at the Arts & Faith website voted on their Top 25 (Spiritually Significant) Road Films. The list and appreciations were originally published at Image Journal (which owned the A&F site at the time). To read an appreciation of one of the films, Read More …
It is conventional wisdom in art criticism that the best comedy and the best musicals are laced with sadness. We speak of art as escape, yet we are typically bored or unmoved by pure farce or purse spectacle. That’s part of what makes The Young Read More …
The first thing to understand about The Muppet Christmas Carol is that it is—as Ethan Warren brilliantly argues in a classic thinkpiece at Bright Wall/Dark Room—the best adaptation of Dickens’ classic short story. The second thing to understand is that the film is a product of a serendipitous Read More …
