Film
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June 9-16, 2014
Nothing’s ever black and white, including black-and-white. Ida, the revelatory feature film by the Polish-born, Oxford-educated Pawel Pawlikowski, is shot in the kind of gloriously lamp black/lead white/smoke gray palette that suggests Ansel Adams, classic Hollywood publicity stills and the Weegee crime-photo catalogue of noir-era New York, as well as Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “The Gospel According to Matthew,” and the “The Sweet Smell of Success”—movies, respectively, about...
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April 28-May 5, 2014
Is it blasphemous to say that the problem with Noah is the story? That it may not be substantial enough to float a star-driven, effects-laden, $125-million movie? Or that director Darren Aronofsky’s attempt to hang flesh, blood, human logic and nautical mechanics on a tale that takes up barely 2,500 metaphorical words of biblical text turns out to have been a crazier idea than collecting two of every species on a very big boat and waiting for the flood—a...
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One delightful and certainly unintended consequence of Divergent—the fantasy novel by Veronica Roth, its sequels and the movies they are beginning to spawn—may be an improvement in teenage America’s vocabulary. In book form, Divergent was followed by Insurgent and Allegiant; the dystopic society in which the action takes place is divided into lofty sounding factions reflecting each citizen’s dominant trait: Dauntless (the brave); Abegnation (the self-less...
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I once had a homiletics professor who said not to worry too much if it appears that members of the congregation are daydreaming during your homily. A homily, he pointed out, is not an act of persuasion. You’re not up there trying to prove some point. (Or if you are, God help the people.) A good homily is meant to break open the Word, that is, to draw people into a space where God is close and can speak to them directly. Once they’re there, your mission is accomplished (even if you still have...
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Is it blasphemous to say that the problem with “Noah” is the story? That it may not be substantial enough to float a star-driven, effects-laden, $125-million movie? Or that director Darren Aronofsky’s attempt to hang flesh, blood, human logic and nautical mechanics on a tale that barely takes up 2,500 metaphorical words of biblical text turns out to have been a crazier idea than collecting two of every species on a very big boat and waiting for the Flood?
A Flood, by the way, that...
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April 7, 2014
The rap on Wes Anderson is that his movies are fun to look at but lack substance. In designing vivid, self-contained worlds, he fetishizes material things—clothes, contraptions and structures—while paying scant attention to plot, character development and ideas.
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November 18, 2013
The most important news photographer of the 20th century was a Russian-Jewish immigrant clothing manufacturer from Dallas, Tex., who almost left his camera home on the day his life went crazy. Abraham Zapruder, whose half-minute film has fueled a half-century of conspiracy theories, recorded a presidential assassination, wept, said he thought the gunman was behind him and sold Life magazine the rights to his movie. Today its 26.6 seconds can be watched on...
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February 24, 2014
When I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, I saw the movie “Jesus,” also known as the Jesus film, at Moody Bible Church in Chicago. I remember Jesus’ face, his kind voice and not much else (also that it was Martin Luther’s birthday and that we sang a hymn of his before the movie).
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February 17, 2014
I recently forced myself to see Martin Scorsese’s new film, The Wolf of Wall Street. It’s strange to describe going to a Scorsese movie as something I had to talk myself into; often the trailers alone grab me by the throat and won’t let go until I see the thing. But hearing star Leonardo DiCaprio describe the film as a latter day Caligula gave me pause. I can take three hours of a lot of things, but I wasn’t really sure what the point of that particular exercise might be. ...
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The big screen has a strange relationship with abortion. The oft-made claim that Hollywood advances a liberal social agenda doesn’t hold much water when it comes to the prochoice cause. While sex, drugs and alternative lifestyles abound, when it comes to unplanned pregnancies, more often than not screenwriters opt to have the woman bring the child to term.