As much as ‘The Tree of Life’ is about a family, it’s just as much about Jack’s relationship with God, and how it changes as he grows.

Lonely, cold, but stubborn, it had somehow managed to rise up from the half-frozen, slowly thawing soil.

“It is not easy to be a Catholic, and it is not easy to be a writer. To be a Catholic writer is doubly difficult,” wrote Jacques Maritain, who nevertheless became one of the most influential 20th-century Catholic writers on either side of the Atlantic.

The paradox at the heart of Christianity is that we must die in order to live again. And few movies witness to that truth like “Romero” (1989).

Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection made us into one with our great maker.

Parody, Ernest Hemingway said, is a step up from writing on the wall above the urinal. He was wrong.