The National Catholic Review

Film

  • August 18-25, 2014

    Stark reality meets gentle whimsy. I’d like to think this is a characterization of the Irish temperament and the arts that flow from it; but whether or not that idea has any wider validity, it fits Calvary perfectly.

  •  A lot is wrong with higher education in America but plenty more is right. If its economic problems can be dealt with, there’s reason to be optimistic about the future. Only time will tell. That’s the take-away from Ivory Tower, an informative if somewhat complacent documentary by director Andrew Rossi ("Page One: Inside the New York Times").

  • July 7-14, 2014

    There is nothing quite like a nun with a voice.

    This month, 50 years after Soeur Sourire, the Belgian singing sister, topped the charts with her pop hit “Dominique” (and received the dubious distinction two years later of being portrayed on screen by Debbie Reynolds), Sister Cristina Scuccia of Sicily won the televised talent competition “The Voice of Italy” with her rendition of “What a Feeling,” a rousing performance...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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...

  • 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.

  • 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...