When adolescents Sam and Suzy (Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward) run away from their homes to scout the trails of New Penzance Island, they are actually running toward a world full of joy and wonder where they are understood and loved, a desire expressed through Read More …
Chaplin intoxicates us from the very first scene. As the silent era passes, he graces the human voice with soap bubbles, whistles, and the most poignant title cards ever screened. He lets the touch of a hand work the miracle that technology cannot. And he Read More …
A seemingly perfect paradise is created for the home of insurance salesman Truman Burbank, who unknowingly serves as the protagonist for an elaborate television production broadcasting his life to the world. Truman (Jim Carrey) serves as the ordinary guy—the “true man”—navigating the world presented to Read More …
Widely ranked among Hollywood’s greatest spiritual parables, Groundhog Day has been claimed by existentialists, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, and Christians of all communions. Projection? In specifics, perhaps; in evocative power, no. A comic fantasy conceit—a single day Bill Murray keeps reliving—occasions sharply funny soundings in helplessness, power, consequences, Read More …
Andrew Bujalski’s affecting Support the Girls is one of the more raw, honest, and insightful cinematic depictions of the American food industry and its underlying ideologies. The story centers on a day in the life of restaurant manager Lisa (Regina Hall) as she tries to manage and Read More …
Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is a timid, lonely man that suffers from fits of rage, stemming from being the only son in a family that had seven other daughters. One strange day brings a broken harmonium, a caring woman, and a nefarious band of phone-sex Read More …
In his new book, Generous Justice, Tim Keller has just controversially suggested that if you are not taking an active part in helping the poor, then you are not taking your Christianity seriously. Indeed, you are something of a hypocrite. Sullivan’s Travels is the story of a young, Read More …
The more particular you make your story, the more universal it becomes, or so they say. And Norman Jewison’s adaptation of Fiddler on the Roof (1971), one of the longest-running musicals in Broadway history, is certainly a case in point. On the surface, it is a story 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 …
This dark comedy from Joel & Ethan Coen is a distillation of some of the duo’s most potent themes. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is our Job figure, a physics professor in suburban Minneapolis who finds his life falling apart both personally and professionally. The principle Read More …