Opinion

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You are running a very outdated version of Internet Explorer. Patheos and most other websites will not display properly on this version. To better enjoy Patheos and your overall web experience, consider upgrading to the current version of Internet Explorer. Find more information HERE. ... read more

Following a Fathom Events US debut in April, a moving Spanish documentary about the transformative power of the Eucharist returns to theaters for an encore screening. Note: Alive/Vivo is in theaters Tuesday, June 21st only. SDG Original source: Catholic World ... read more

“I shouldn’t be alive … unless it was for a reason.” “You’re not getting what the universe is trying to tell you.” The first line above, from the dawn of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, was uttered by Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark in Iron Man (2008) after a nearly fatal encounter with ... read more

The film opens with Nelly in an assisted-living facility where she has evidently spent some time, going from room to room matter-of-factly saying “Au revoir” to the residents. Then she comes to a room where the bed is made up and the last “Au revoir” has been said. Nelly confides later to her mother (Nina ... read more

Six years after its release, Scott Derrickson’s Doctor Strange remains one of the best Marvel movies, and certainly one of the only cinematically interesting installments. In a franchise replete with visually dull, generic action sequences, Derrickson and company crafted a unique, kaleidoscopic visual vocabulary to express the reality-bending power of sorcery. They also gave ... read more

When it comes to movies, of course, the timeline of available material is sharply restricted: “Old movies” can mean movies only two or three decades old, and at most take us back only to the early 20th century, with fleeting glimpses of the late 19th. Movies, like books, can be set in any time ... read more

An opening title positions Pixar’s Lightyear as a movie, not within a movie, but within a movie world: the world of the Toy Story movies. The conceit is that we’re watching young Andy’s “favorite movie” from 1995: the movie behind the Buzz Lightyear merch. First-time feature director Angus MacLane calls Lightyear “Andy’s Star Wars.” ... read more

The word “dominion” is uttered once in Jurassic World Dominion, in an oblique, irreverent allusion to Genesis 1. “Not only do we lack dominion over nature, we are subordinate to it,” asserts Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in one of his trademark, smugly iconoclastic epigrams. Later in the same speech, though, Malcolm turns with ... read more

Based on the unlikely true story of an amateur boxer turned priest who died of a rare degenerative disease, Father Stu leans on Wahlberg’s mischievous charm and buoyant aura of invincibility, with hints of something darker and more fragile beneath the surface. Stuart approaches life in some respects like a pickup artist approaching women, ... read more

Pixar’s new Turning Red is the latest example of an increasing shift to overbearing maternal figures, from young Mirabel’s and Miguel’s domineering abuelas in Encanto and Coco to middle-aged Joe Gardner’s loving but controlling mom in Soul. Antecedents for this trend of mothers as functional antagonists include Merida’s demanding mother Queen Elinor in Brave ... read more

Life isn’t exactly back to normal — whatever “normal” may mean now, or in the future — either for the movies or for me. I did see more movies in 2021 than in 2020, but I still did less reviewing than in previous years. On December 31, 2020, I wrote to a friend confiding my ... read more

Jon Watts. Tom Holland, Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, Benedict Cumberbatch, Alfred Molina, Willem Dafoe, Marisa Tomei, Jon Favreau, Andrew Garfield, Tobey Maguire, Benedict Wong, Jamie Foxx, Rhys Ifans, Thomas Haden Church, J.K. Simmons. Disney/Marvel. Artistic/Entertainment Value Moral/Spiritual Value +2 Age Appropriateness Kids & Up* MPAA ... read more

Among the many shrewd conflations made by Erica Schmidt in adapting Edmond Rostand’s play Cyrano de Bergerac as a musical, first for the stage and then for the screen, is a mashup of two virtuoso displays of Cyrano’s verbal flair in the play’s opening scene. In Rostand, when a boorish nobleman insults Cyrano’s famously ... read more

Watching The Batman, I found myself thinking about the Zorro connection and especially about those two early Zorro movies — and the differences between them. Among these differences are contrasting visions of the hero’s relationship to the people he defends: Is a hero a savior or champion standing alone between the powers of evil ... read more

SDG: So, Mark, after years of trying to get a movie made about Father Stuart Long, you’ve been touring with the film and seeing how audiences respond to this story. I’m curious what you’ve learned, either researching or playing the role, or even from people’s responses to the film, that has changed you in ... read more