By Matthew Sawczyn If you’ve ever been blessed to visit the Holy Land, or have spoken with someone who has, a common description is that the Gospels suddenly felt real. Seeing the dirt, the water, the sky under which Jesus walked… there is an indescribable tangibility to the Faith that hits the pilgrim. Jesus really existed (I mean, really existed); …
Invisible Men: How H. G. Wells’ Famous Novel Has Been Adapted with the Times
– By Joe Campbell – (The following article contains spoilers). As a Universal monster, the Invisible Man has always fascinated me. Unlike Dracula, the Wolf Man, or The Mummy, there isn’t anything seemingly monstrous about him from the outset. He’s just a regular man who disappears. Yet he continues to hold a steady place alongside Universal’s other monsters. One would …
Looking for the Good Place
– By Joe Campbell – (The following contains spoilers for all four seasons of The Good Place, including the series finale). Last week saw the end of the beloved fantasy comedy show The Good Place. The hour-long series finale was a bittersweet culmination of four seasons and multiple interconnected character arcs. There were tearful goodbyes and mature growth. It has …
‘1917’: No Greater Love
– By Matthew Sawczyn – Among the gorgeous visuals and bombastic explosions, there’s one brief moment in director Sam Mendes’ 1917 that truly encapsulates this tale’s theme of brotherhood and sacrifice. It’s a “blink and you miss it” line, an offhand act, subtle but powerful. The movie begins with two soldiers resting underneath a tree: Lance Corporal Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) …
The Impractical Nature of Dreams in ‘Rudy’
By Sam Hendrian This article is part of our Classic Film Throwback Series. “Well, you know what my dad always says: Having dreams is what makes life tolerable.” Technically speaking, the word “dream” is synonymous with “hope,” “goal,” “aspiration,” and several other abstract nouns. Yet it seems to operate on a whole level of its own, transcending any concrete definition …
‘The Aeronauts’: A Glimpse at the Birth of Weather Exploration
– By Maria Andress – Released worldwide on Amazon Prime, The Aeronauts may look like an unlikely film to garner high praise; However, it is doing just that. Based on the book “Falling Upward: How We Took to the Air” by Richard Holmes and starring Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones, this film is an excellent example of a period of …
‘1917’, WWI Cinema, and the Horrors of War
– By Sam Hendrian – Hollywood is not-too-fondly renowned for its glorification of terrible things, especially war. Violence has the dangerous ability to entertain rather than disgust, undermining our instinctive understanding of human dignity. Yet despite this unfortunate trend, there are countless examples that do just the opposite, including Sam Mendes’s recently-released, critically-acclaimed World War I film 1917. With the …
Why We Still Need Little Women
– By Sam Hendrian – As someone who enjoyed reading Louisa May Alcott’s beloved novel Little Women, and as an admirer of Greta Gerwig’s directorial talents, I went to see the latest cinematic adaptation of the classic story and enjoyed it immensely. Of course, when people are constantly questioning whether Hollywood still has a bone of originality left in …
Netflix’s ‘Messiah’ Offers a Surprisingly Thoughtful – and Tense – Exploration of Faith
By James Powers One of the more persistent (and annoying) labels given to Jesus is that of political revolutionary. Especially lately, it’s trendy to claim that his primary purpose was to knock down tyrants and give power to the disenfranchised masses; that he was a member of the same club that includes Gandhi and Che and the barricade boys from …
Uniting the World Through Entertainment: The Imagineering Story
– By Sam Hendrian – “What we are selling is not escapism, but reassurance.” This quote from legendary Disney imagineer John Hench captures Disney’s core mission perfectly, even if the multibillion-dollar company does not always live up to it. Escapism is predominantly commerical and maybe a little psychological; reassurance is profoundly spiritual. In The Imagineering Story, a six-part documentary …