While outraged families are right to cut off Disney from their children’s imaginative formation, they should have been doing this a long time ago. The now-blatant sexual agenda of the corporation is only the final manifestation of a distorted and perverse view of reality that has pervaded the “Disney” brand for a long time. The [...]
American mythologist Joseph Campbell’s discernment of the hero’s quest and his distillation of world myth into an easily-digestible template has had a powerful impact on contemporary culture, including influencing George Lucas' "Star Wars" films. The mythologist Joseph Campbell was the grandson of an Irish peasant-immigrant. Brought up in a Catholic home in New York, he [...]
"The Chosen" addresses and transfigures the duality we love in our popular mythology: a man who is also God. Repeatedly, it raises questions about how we imagine the humanity of Jesus. What was it like when Peter and Andrew pulled in that massive haul of fish after catching nothing all night? How do you picture [...]
If J.R.R. Tolkien were still in his grave, it is likely that he would be turning in it. The cause of his consternation would be the gollumizing of Middle-earth by the forthcoming TV series bearing the name of The Lord of the Rings. This new “adaptation”, produced by one of the Tech Tyrants which are [...]
When works of literature go to the movies, it’s usually an unpleasant sight. There are noble exceptions, however, which are worthy of praise. The film adaptions of two literary classics come to mind. First is the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, starring Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy and Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet. [...]
The movie "Amadeus" is a wondrous meditation, through the reminiscences of Antonio Salieri, on the ways of genius, the value of contrition, and the arbitrariness of metaphysical justice. "Amadeus" opened the door to a fantastic world of whose existence I had not been aware. The movie changed my life. " —Anonymous viewer of the film [...]
"Spider-Man: No Way Home" avoids the most obvious of our contemporary lies about reality, but it too paints a flawed understanding of evil, both in how to prudently fight against it and how it attaches itself to us humans. Don’t set your public policy or moral clock by the newest superhero movie. It’s got some [...]
Part of the philosophy of "Dune" is that after a long and dark digital age, man must learn again to become self-reliant: to think and act as self-determined and self-reliant individuals; to be active participants in nature, not mere passive receivers of pleasure and pain. For that is the place of beasts, not men. Dune [...]
Valkyrie is a 2008 thriller film directed and co-produced by Bryan Singer and written by Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Alexander. The film is set in Nazi Germany during World War II and depicts the 20 July plot in 1944 by German army officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler and to use the Operation Valkyrie national emergency [...]
"The Green Knight" is probably the best movie adaptation that we Christians could dare hope for from the modern world: well-researched, thoughtful, and meditative. Go see the film. Revel in its beauty. But use your Christian understanding to claim what you want from it so you may better serve Christ. The Green Knight is a [...]
"Luca" might have “subtexts” that are unhealthy, but its “text” is about outsiders finding acceptance, fatherless children finding fathers, and young people whose talents fit them for things other than goatfish-herding being given the opportunity for school. None of those things belongs to one group exclusively. They belong to all of us who are human. [...]
Larry Elder’s film “Uncle Tom” is a must-see for anybody who thinks all black people think alike or that American black history is simply a history of victimhood. They’re black, they’re proud, and they’re all-American—just like the film they’re in. While it is unlikely that blacks will vote as a majority for Donald Trump or [...]
Documentary filmmaker Cameron O’Hearn's "Mass of the Ages" argues that in the abbreviation of the Roman Catholic liturgy after Vatican II, there was much left out of the Traditional Latin Mass. In an essay about Pope Francis’s recent legal document restricting the practice of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), I wrote that his legislation, though [...]
I cannot fully accept the world of John Wick. But like the pagan world and the Old Testament’s eye-for-an-eye, I cannot fully reject it either. The world of Wick is a world of senseless violence and also violence that is roughly sensible because it is informed by justice. One of the most enjoyable action movie [...]