DecentFilms.com

Post: Not Film Related: Speak Up on Health Care and Life

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:32:39 EST

I won’t make a habit of this, I promise.

Post: Joseph of Nazareth: The Man Closest to Christ

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 07:33:33 EST

I don’t often discover a new angle on a biblical text from a Bible movie, but Joseph of Nazareth suggests an attractive approach I had never before considered to a deceptively knotty passage in St. Matthew’s Gospel, namely, the passage in Matthew 1 in which Mary has been found to be with child by the Holy Spirit, and Joseph resolves to “divorce her quietly.”

Review: The Lovely Bones (2009)

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 04:14:56 EST

Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones paints an unconvincingly ham-fisted, sometimes ridiculous picture of what happens when someone dies. No, I’m not talking about the film’s attempt to portray the afterlife with kaleidoscopic montages of trippy concept art. I’m willing to give the film the benefit of the doubt, there.

Post: Three Phases of Pixar History

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:49:43 EST

Peter Chattaway has just posted some thoughts he’s previously shared elsewhere regarding the shape of Pixar’s body of work to date, and I’ve long thought it’s a brilliant theory.

Post: The End of Fairy-tale Princesses?

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 18:37:56 EST

Yesterday I wrote about the possible effects of the box-office success of Alice in Wonderland on fairy-tale revisionism in family films to come. The flip side is the box-office disappointment of Disney’s The Princess and the Frog, which hit DVD shelves yesterday.

Post: Fathers For Good

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:24:46 EST

This week Knights of Columbus website Fathers for Good has a short interview with me in their Newsworthy Dads feature.

Post: Coming at You: More 3D, Fairy-tale Revisionism

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:17:55 EST

It’s a straw in the wind: As the recently restored 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz comes out on Blu-ray today, Warner Bros is giving renewed attention to a pair of new Oz projects in early development, now likelier than ever to come to fruition. The reason: Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland.

Post: Green Zone: “Kinnear Lied, People Died”

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:53:55 EST

In my last post on Green Zone, I wrote that while I was reasonably pleased with my review, I was sure that “if I were a savvier political thinker it would be a better review.” Now, posting at Arts & Faith, Peter Chattaway has thoughts that would never have occurred to me, darn it.

Post: Green Zone and Torture

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 08:04:42 EST

Regular readers know that I usually steer clear of politically themed movies. I’m the same in real life; political discussions usually shut me down, simply because I feel I have nothing to say, and on the rare occasions that I do I often wind up regretting it.

Review: Green Zone (2010)

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:04:31 EST

It’s tidy, comforting revisionism, like sending Rambo back into Vietnam so we can win this time. Instead of a morass in which the search for WMDs simply peters out, we get the closure of a smoking gun, a scapegoat whom Miller can buttonhole with righteous fury like Harrison Ford lacing into the president at the end of Clear and Present Danger.

Review: Porco Rosso (1992)

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:50:24 EST

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.

Post: Katyn: Poland’s Dark Night

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:13:03 EST

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.

Review: Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 21:20:45 EST

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.

Review: Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986)

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:15:33 EST

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.

Post: The 2010 Arts & Faith Top 100

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:22:51 EST

“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.

Post: Miyazaki Week at Decent Films!

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:22:32 EST

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.

Article: The Worlds of Hayao Miyazaki

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:09:18 EST

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.

Post: Bible Films Blog: Color and Symbolism in Bible Films

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:53:57 EST

My friend Matt Page, who blogs Bible Films Blog, has just written an interesting post on color and color symbolism in Bible films.

Post: 2009: Year of Onscreen & Offscreen Infidelity?

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:12:48 EST

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.

Post: The Return of Decent Films Mail

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 07:11:03 EST

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.)