The Assassin is a difficult film to summarize, but not because the plot is unclear. Characters constantly fill each other in on where exactly they stand. Roughly, the movie concerns an assassin (Shu Qi) who, having failed in an assignment, is sent to kill her cousin, Read More …
What do you worship? Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog never asks this question explicitly, but it does examine it through its provocative riff on the Western. For cowboy Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch), it’s clear what he worships: manhood. He’s fashioned himself as the ultimate masculine Read More …
In 2017, when IMAGE Journal still owned and operated the Arts & Faith website, its film issue came with a photo from David Lowery’s A Ghost Story on the cover. Like The Green Knight, that film polarized Arts & Faith members. Lowery’s quiet films are Read More …
The walls are immense. We quiver just to look at them. When we imagine scaling their heights, we tremble all the more because we know that to fall from them would be our death. This is us, the audience, at the start of Asghar Farhadi’s Read More …
The first time I wrote about Annette I compared it to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Mulholland Drive. I still think that is one of the most apt comparisons to describe Leos Carax’s hypnotic and meta musical. In my appreciation of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Read More …
Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of West Side Story begins with what looks like a shot from the director’s 1998 film Saving Private Ryan. The camera hovers over a crumbling city, swooping past a wrecking ball as it haunts the remains of a once bustling neighborhood. Eventually, Read More …
In Luke 4:5-6, the devil tempts Jesus by showing “him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment in time” and tells him, “To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give Read More …
When a radical act of mercy and forgiveness serves as the climax of a film, the love it has for all its characters is apparent. When that act references Babette’s Feast, Chef, and Ratatouille, the love extends not only to the characters but to our Read More …
Timbuktu is one of several films using the legal system of a religion, and specifically the courtroom, as a space to test our assumptions about that religion and its adherents. Similar to that of Kiarostami’s Close-Up or the Elkabetzes’ Gett, the centerpiece of Timbuktu is a series of court scenes and Read More …
John Michael McDonagh says that Calvary is the second in a trilogy starring Brendan Gleeson as an embodiment of contemporary Ireland, which is delightful for me, because the first two have each been my favorite films in their year of release. The earlier The Guard was a perfectly realized Read More …