Film Archives

At the end of Return of the Jedi, for a moment, Luke embodies a balance, not between darkness and light, but between mercy and justice.

People can be, are, and indeed always have been entertaining, but people are never entertainment.

Perhaps the best way we can honor Graham’s paradigm-shifting, government-deception exposing, heroic legacy is to partner with one another much sooner on the journey than Graham’s skeptical advisors partnered with her.

The film’s accurately bleak depiction of a world without grace instills a powerful longing in viewers that reality might actually be otherwise.

District 9 is hardly a family film, but family is at the core of the story.

Lady Bird invites us to consider the nature of our love and our roots in a time when the concepts are as nebulous and mishandled as ever.

Those who are lonely during this season don’t need to be mocked or called out or even lightly teased for their viewing habits.

Advent is a season to reflect on the hope of Christ’s coming, a season to practice how not to be complacent, the very thing we see in Rogue One.

Spiritual longing typifies Spielberg’s approach as a storyteller and may account for at least some of his blockbuster appeal.

The benevolence of the spirits in My Neighbor Totoro serves as a reminder that the spiritual realm—though mysterious and unlike our own—is not something to fear.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is not only what many audiences need, but how they need it.

On whose graves, and whose suffering, is our greatness built?

There is something deeper that lingers in the human psyche—something more than the experience, or a twisted desire for evil—something that horror taps into and awakens.

It’s shockingly awful and shockingly compelling as horror because Paxton’s character remains so upsettingly loving and so fatherly throughout, clearly, sincerely believing in the killing he’s doing.

As we move forward into a “brave new world,” we have to wrestle with the questions posed in Blade Runner 2049.

Even in the Hudson Valley, I think the larger appeal of Halloween is that our local ghosts can scare us, but we can, ultimately, domesticate them.