“You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Laurence Fishbourne’s Morpheus poses these iconic options Read More …
In 2022, I wrote that Dune takes the prompt of Luke 4:5-6 where the devil tempts Jesus and imagines a scenario in which a young prince might accept the devil’s temptation rather than reject it. This description is even more true of Dune: Part Two, Denis Villeneuve’s magnificent Read More …
“The way we work, changing destiny and all…we’re more like clergy than cops.” Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film Minority Report explores a future where “Precrime” technology (enabled by psychics with precognitive powers) allows law enforcement to arrest individuals before they commit crimes. John Anderton (Tom Cruise) Read More …
“I still don’t understand the play.” So muses Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) multiple times through Wes Anderson’s story of a televised production of a fictitious play about death, grief, acting, “brainiac” children, alien invasion, military oversight, first romances, seasoned affairs, art, and storytelling itself. Prior Read More …
The year of Colin Farrell began with this gentle science-fiction film about a family dealing with the breakdown of its robot, a sort of artificial big brother (the titular Yang, played by Justin H. Min) who was acquired by the parents to give their adopted Read More …
“God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31 NRSV) The joy of the natural world and creation rings through James Cameron’s sequel to Avatar, the biggest movie of all time. As a science-fiction epic, Avatar: The Way of Water takes a Read More …
Perhaps the great dystopian satire of the cinema, Brazil reveals the foolishness and absurdity of its Brave New World with a dark wit and a robust humor. Jonathan Pryce plays the hapless Sam Lowry as a comic variation on Kafka’s Josef K. As in The Trial (the 1962 Orson Welles adaptation Read More …
Existential awe and wonder before the sublime are not common notes in a Hollywood cartoon, but Andrew Stanton’s WALL-E defies expectations and easy categorization: a post-apocalyptic slapstick comedy; a lyrical sci-fi love story and a savage Swiftian satire. Incipit vita nova, Dante wrote upon glimpsing Beatrice: “Here begins 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 …
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 …