Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Australia’
Film
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Uncertain Sympathies: John Patrick Shanley’s ‘Doubt’
John Patrick Shanley’s ‘Doubt’ looks at the darkness to be encountered even within the most sacred locales
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We Meet Again, Dr. Jones: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
When a film takes in over $100 million in its first weekend, no one much cares what reviewers say about it. The corporate verdict is in. Negative reactions can be dismissed as “elitist,” a word that has become pivotal in presidential campaign rhetoric. Positive comments can be lamented a
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What Might Have Been: A flawed adaptation of Ian McEwan’s ‘Atonement’
Novelists are liars. So are filmmakers. In their search for the truth artists find mundane reality quite unsuited to their purposes. The only solution lies in creating an alternative universe, where events and personalities lead to desired conclusions. In “Burnt Norton” T. S. Eliot observed, “
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Byzantium,Texas: ‘No Country for Old Men’
As a title, No Country for Old Men boasts a noble ancestry. It traces its roots through the novel by Cormac McCarthy to the opening line of William Butler Yeats’s poem “Sailing to Byzantium.” In the poem Yeats yearns to leave the ephemeral world of “whatever is begotten, born
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His Dark Materials, Indeed: Is ‘The Golden Compass’ anti-Catholic?
‘The Golden Compass,’ reviewed
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A Man for Our Season: Michael Clayton, one man’s ethical wasteland
George Clooney as Thomas More? A review of ‘Michael Clayton’
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Ingmar Bergman, Theologian?
At age 89, on July 30, 2007, Ingmar Bergman left us. Tragically, he won’t be widely mourned by today’s movie audiences. His unblinking, introspective examination of the human condition places heavy demands on his viewers. His last film, “Saraband” (2002), was greeted respectf
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To Change the World: Michael Apted’s ‘Amazing Grace’
‘Amazing Grace’ attempts to depict Wilberforce’s life while also capturing a sense of the labyrinthine journey of a simple moral issue through the thickets of political intrigue and compromise.
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Wondrous Stillness: Into Great Silence
French theorists used to employ the term “pure cinema” to describe film as an entirely new art form of moving images. It struck directly at the senses and created its own experience, without reliance on older forms like literature, painting, music or photography. The theory provided the