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 …
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 …
“I’ll be the face of love for you,” Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon) tells a soon-to-be-executed murderer. The idea that a film can transcend (or sidestep) political ideologies has always been questioned, but the intertwining of the moral and the political has certainly been on Read More …
The Southern tradition of Pentecostal preaching focuses on power – primarily on the power of the “Holy Ghost”, the “blood of Jesus”, and the declared “Word of God”. The expression of this power is most often offered up as fiery, exuberant sermons delivered to congregations Read More …
There are stories so painful, so terrifying, so true, that they can only be about children. When they are packaged as such, we call them fairy tales. When they are made for and by adults, we sometimes call them horror films. Edmund Burke once argued Read More …
At the beginning of Paul Schrader’s elegant take on contemporary Christian spirituality in the mode of classic transcendental cinema, a very faint white cross appears in the title card between First and Reformed. As the sun rises over the shot, the cross resolves glimmering on the steeple of Read More …