Film

In 1937, Paramount Pictures released “Make Way for Tomorrow,” a drama that documentarian Errol Morris once declared “the most depressing movie ever made, providing reassurance that everything will definitely end badly.” In it, an elderly couple (Victor Young, Beulah Bondi), lose their home to foreclosure and are forced to split up, because none of their many children will take both parents in at the same time. The film’s director Leo McCarey, a.k.a Mr.

There is perhaps no better example of the motion picture as an act of faith than Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. The best-reviewed film of 2014 thus far, it was shot in a little over a month of days spread over a time span of 12 years, with the same actors playing the same roles, aging as their characters aged, changing as their characters changed. What could possibly have gone wrong, other than everything?

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...

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...