Opinion

In my reviews of Dune: Part One and now Dune: Part Two (filed and pending publication; stay tuned!) I’ve written a bit comparing and contrasting Dune with Star Wars. Here I’d like to consider Star Wars in relation to The Lord of the Rings and J.R.R. Tolkien’s larger legendarium. ... read more

What the Mission: Impossible series discovers in this moment is this: Imperfect stunts can be more thrilling than perfect ones, and an unflappable superman who always knows exactly what to do and does it perfectly is less exciting than a fallible, vulnerable action hero — one who can be caught by surprise, who hesitates and ... read more

Does the movie “secularize a saint”? Reckoning with the curious dearth of God talk and overt religiosity in this faith-based biopic about the founder of a religious community ... read more

There’s something bracing about a blockbuster epic in 2024 that doesn’t care what you think of it, that is primarily concerned with being the best possible version of itself. ... read more

What kind of world do we want, and what will we do to achieve it? Those are the questions with which Alejandro Monteverdi’s Cabrini leaves us at the end of its 140 minutes. The questions land harder after the story we’ve seen. ... read more

The Fury Road prequel is a satisfying return to the world of the demented 2015 film—but there were two missed opportunities, relating to Immortan Joe’s Wives and Furiosa’s revenge. ... read more

In which I chat with the editor of a collection of essays about the Arts & Faith Top 100 films about my contribution to the book ... read more

Wildcat bills itself as “based on short stories by Flannery O’Connor,” though it could equally be said to be based on O’Connor’s letters (the source for much of Flannery’s dialogue) and her prayer journal (used to depict her prayer life in earnest voiceovers). ... read more

Is there no hope? This desperate question hangs over the previous film in the saga, Miller’s 2015 extravaganza Mad Max: Fury Road. Now, the same question haunts Furiosa, an epic origin-story prequel for Fury Road’s stealth protagonist, Charlize Theron’s Imperator Furiosa. ... read more

Sometimes it seems like the universe is sending you a message. In the MCU, the calls are coming from inside the house. ... read more

Is it possible to tell meaningful stories in a multiverse premise? Or does the multiverse idea tend toward nihilism? ... read more

A question worth asking of a story, then, is: “Is there room for God in this story, in this world?” ... read more

The decency and goofy sweetness of the King films continue in Paddington in Peru, though the broader moral and social themes are lost in the quest adventure plot. ... read more

I do hope to get back to more regular movie writing in 2025. For now, I hope you enjoy my latest “quick win,” a tongue-in-cheek Christmas movies list I published at All Things SDG. ... read more

Watching Chris Sanders’s The Wild Robot, I felt things I haven’t felt in a very long time watching a Hollywood animated movie outside the Spider-Verse: wonder, discovery, joy. ... read more