Recently Added
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 »
B+ |
*** |
+1|
Teens & Up
Seaplanes combine Miyazaki’s twin gravity-defying loves of water and sky, flying and floating, as well as his affinity for vintage technology — and the movie’s haphazard, kitchen-sink style suggests that the director just wanted to kick back and have fun with this one. There are aerial dogfights, star-crossed romance, gorgeous scenery, a hat tip Fleischer-style vintage animation, a rip-roaring escape sequence set in Milan, a nightclub where enemies sit at adjacent tables like Rick’s in
Casablanca and the proprietress sings torch songs, and a showdown between the titular hero and an American antagonist that plays like the ultimate Humphrey Bogart / Errol Flynn smackdown that never was.
Read more >
Exactly 70 years ago today, on March 5, 1940, Josef Stalin and the entire Soviet Politburo signed an order to massacre tens of thousands of Polish prisoners of war: officers, mostly reservists; doctors, academics, civil servants, clergymen of all faiths—the cream of the Polish intelligentsia.
Read more >
D |
*½ |
-1|
Teens & Up
The film is actually a joint evisceration not only of Carroll’s
Alice in Wonderland, but also of “Jabberwocky,” with Alice recast as (so help me) a messianic warrior-hero destined to claim the fabled “Vorpal Sword,” don shining armor, and wage an epic battle on the fated “Frabjous Day” against the forces of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter) and the dragon-like Jabberwocky.
Read more >
A- |
***½ |
+1|
Kids & Up
From the Leonardo-like engineering illustrations of the opening credit sequence to the hauntingly surreal final image on the edge of space, Hayao Miyazaki’s
Laputa, or
Castle in the Sky as it’s been dubbed for English-speaking audiences, displays the filmmaker’s visionary brilliance as a shaper of worlds as compellingly as any film he has made.
Read more >
“Read not the
Times, read the eternities,” Thoreau advised. The
2010 Arts & Faith Top 100 Films, just released days ahead of the Academy Awards, won’t make the headlines of the
Times — but if you prefer to scrutinize the eternities, you might want to skip the Oscars and check out the Arts & Faith Top 100.
Read more >
Marking this week’s DVD release of Hayao Miyazaki’s
Ponyo — as well as new special editions of three of Miyazaki’s most family-friendly films,
My Neighbor Totoro,
Kiki’s Delivery Service and
Castle in the Sky), I’ve posted a new article on “
The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki,” written for this month’s issue of
Catholic World Report.
Read more >
Miyazaki’s whole body of work (less one or two sub-par exceptions) offers unduplicated vistas of imaginative wonder and beauty, images of startling power, admirable and likable heroines and heroes, humanely conceived supporting characters, elusively engaging storytelling, wholesome moral themes, and unexpected sly humor. He is the sort of artist whose work doesn’t just entertain audiences, but wins enthusiasts. For those who haven’t yet discovered him, Miyazaki is a taste well worth acquiring.
Read more >
My friend Matt Page, who blogs
Bible Films Blog, has just written an interesting post on
color and color symbolism in Bible films.
Read more >
A recent story in
Variety connects the dots around various real-life and large- and small-screen stories and comes up with a disturbing picture: One way or another, 2009 was a high-profile year for adultery.
Read more >
Too long neglected,
Decent Films Mail returns today with two new columns,
Mailbag #16 and
Mailbag #17. (For the benefit of RSS subscribers, at this writing it looks like the RSS feed hasn’t yet picked up on them. This looks like a glitch; I’ll look into it.)
Read more >
Clint Eastwood,
Avatar,
Hotel Rwanda,
Children of Men, Hayao Miyzaki, Lenten viewing,
The Last Temptation of Christ,
Dogma, Harry Potter and more.
Read more >
“Zorro: The Complete Seasons 1 & 2”,
Up in the Air,
Adam, Dan Brown,
Terminator movies and more.
Read more >
A few weeks ago the
National Catholic Register ran my
2009 year-end piece with my lists of “top ten” and runner-up films. (An
expanded version of the article appeared at Decent Films.) This week, I’d like to catch up with a few other lists from Christian sources worth noting.
Read more >
My
Lenten viewing suggestions prompted a reader to ask: “Would you consider supplementing an English-only list? I love the idea of a Lenten movie night, but I have several children under reading age, and my husband just dislikes reading his movies. LOL. I will have to carve out time on my own during the week to watch the intriguing foreign films you have included.”
Read more >
If so, check out the
Emeth Society, billed as “A Book and Film Society Promoting Catholic Culture in the Diocese of Phoenix.” And if you
don’t live near Phoenix, check out their website anyway, and ask yourself, “How can I get something like this going in
my diocese?”
Read more >
Many Catholics observe Lent with a discipline of withdrawal, in whole or in part, from mass communications media: movies, television, Internet, radio, music, newspapers. This is an admirable discipline … I find it helpful to make a practice of spiritual viewing during Lent, just as many make a practice of spiritual reading. For those inclined to consider this practice, here are six film suggestions for the six weeks of Lent.
Read more >
This weekend, the release of
The Wolfman made me think of highlighting my
2003 essay on horror and the macabre, originally written for the re-release of Ridley Scott’s
Alien. At first I thought I would take the occasion to make a few cosmetic changes, but as I began pulling threads here and there, I kept thinking of ways to improve the piece, until I wound up doing quite a bit more work expanding the piece than I originally intended. (The story of my life…)
Read more >
Horror represents a field many Christians approach with trepidation, and rightly so. The horror shelves of bookstores and video stores are very largely a wasteland of mindless, tasteless trash; indeed, there may be no other genre as disproportionately overrun with junk. Yet the grotesque, the macabre, and the frightful have an abiding place in human imagination and culture — a place that Christian sensibility has historically not seen fit to reject or condemn, at least entirely.
Read more >
B- |
**½ |
-1|
Teens & Up
Harry Potter meets
Clash of the Titans in
Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, the first installment of Rick Riordan’s fantasy pentalogy, directed by Chris Columbus (
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets). The target audience for
Percy Jackson & The Olympians has never seen
Clash of the Titans, of course (I mean the original
Clash of the Titans, of course, not the coming remake). That they have seen Harry Potter goes without saying.
Read more >
C- |
** |
-2|
Adults*
The Wolfman retells the classic werewolf story, but has little to add besides volume and gore. Jump moments pile up to the point that you stop jumping and merely feel annoyed at the obvious, heavy-handed manipulation. Alone in the dark in his ancestral home, Lawrence Talbot seems to hear a creepy whisper, but it turns out he’s just remembering something from his youth. Then a minute later it happens again. Later on there’s a gotcha dream, with a menacing figure rising from the shadows and leaping at Lawrence in his bed — but then he wakes up. Or so it seems, but then it happens again — but it’s a dream again. It’s like a haunted house where they never stop jumping out and saying “Boo!”
Read more >
“Spectacular Spider-Man” is perhaps the most exciting entertainment for family audiences to come from the small screen in a very long time. I’ve been watching it on DVD with my kids, and with this week’s release of Vols 6 and 7 nearly completing the show’s two-season run to date, it’s apparent that the show just keeps getting better and better.
Read more >
Last week I blogged about my upcoming Catholic Answers Live appearance — but I wrote the wrong day. It’s
Thursday, 2/11, not Friday, 2/12, from 7pm–8pm EST / 4pm–5pm PST. Sorry for the confusion!
Read more >
B+ |
*** |
+1|
Adults
Toward the end, the two storylines almost converge as Julie’s blog comes to Julia’s attention — and Julia’s reported response leaves Powell in tears. How that twist strikes you make depend in part on which storyline you have felt closer to, on whose movie it is for you. Either way, there’s something for everyone, and if there’s a couple of brief bedroom scenes, for once they involve happily married couples.
Read more >
A- |
***½ |
-1+2|
Adults
Crazy Heart’s turning point becomes a moment of clarity not only for Bad, but for Jean as well. It’s a film that is more hopeful and redemptive than its characters have a right to be, but along with hope is awareness of potentially irrevocable consequences.
Read more >
The last really solid Hollywood take on the traditional Robin Hood mythos (not counting the Kevin Costner folly, because, well, it doesn’t count) was
over 70 years ago, and is essentially the only one in its class (unless you want to
go back to the silent era). A revisionist take on Robin Hood would be one thing if the traditionally heroic Robin Hood could be taken for granted as a cultural reference point. What have we come to if we can
only view a legendary icon like Robin Hood through skeptical, revisionist lenses?
Read more >
Regular readers know that one of the critical voices I cite most often is my friend Peter T. Chattaway. For a ripping example of why Peter is so quotable, check out his
brilliant blog post on Legion, now in theaters.
Read more >
A+ |
**** |
+0|
Kids & Up
Shaun the Sheep: A Woolly Good Time, the latest one-disc Region 1 collection of Shaun's adventures, debuts on DVD on February 8.
Read more >
Last year’s Academy Awards were not the least-watched Oscars in history—that was the previous year—but they were widely perceived as contributing to the ongoing apathy of viewers by snubbing popular and critical favorites like
The Dark Knight and
WALL-E while honoring a roster of films (
Benjamin Button,
Frost/Nixon,
The Reader,
Milk,
Doubt) aptly characterized by A. O. Scott’s phrase “hermetically sealed melodrama[s] of received thinking.” (By contrast, Scott called
The Dark Knight and
WALL-E “contrasting allegories pitched at the anxieties of the moment,” “populist entertainments of summertime” that incited the “interesting movie debates of 2008.”)
Read more >
Silent star Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. is still the silver screen’s
ultimate swashbuckling Zorro. Tyrone Powers
ideally embodies the sly subterfuge of a man of iron turning on a dime from foppish languor to finely double-edged banter to masked derring-do. But Guy Williams, hero of Walt Disney’s popular 1950s television series, is the most beloved Zorro of all time.
Read more >
A |
**** |
+2|
Teens & Up
Luminous, exquisitely acted and not without a sense of humor, Jane Campion’s
Bright Star contemplates how this graceful, stylish, ignorant, sharp-tongued girl ensnared, and was ensnared by, a struggling young Romantic poet with no income and no critical acclaim.
Read more >
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 »
