Can we learn to communicate from an outside intelligence? Spoiler Alert! If you have not yet seen the movie, this article may provide you with a great deal more information than you wished to know at this point. Since the 1999 film The Matrix received careful scrutiny on many fronts regarding its possible underlying Christian […]
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- The Last Man: Herod and Jesus in “Sunshine”
When viewed as an allegory of biblical history, the controversial third act of Danny Boyle’s gripping sci-fi adventure is transformed from an illogical divergence into a blinding revelation. The following analysis contains spoilers for the movie “Sunshine.” The Creation Week is the elementary typethat orders everything God has said and everything He has made. The […]
- Why We Should Jettison the “Strong Female Character,” Part III
Click HERE for part 1 of this series, and HERE for part 2. The recurring characterization problems with such Strong Female Characters arise in no small measure from the struggle to show that men and women are interchangeable and can compete and cooperate with each other on the same terms. As I have already noted, […]
- Why We Should Jettison the “Strong Female Character,” Part II
The Rise of the Action Heroine Click HERE for part 1 of this series. Partly as a result of this everywoman heroine trend, partly in order to be more inclusive in traditionally male dominated genres, partly in order to push back against stereotypes, partly in order to legitimate eye candy for male audiences, partly in […]
- Why We Should Jettison the “Strong Female Character”: Part 1
The trailer for the latest Star Wars movie, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, was released last week. Following the success of the revival of the franchise in last year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, anticipation is unsurprisingly at a fever pitch. As in the case of The Force Awakens, much of the pre-release speculation and comment has been preoccupied […]
- The Artificial Resurrection
Genesis and Genetics in Blade Runner 2049 The power of science fiction, and what’s positive about it, is that you’re able to experience the worst-case scenario without actually having to live it. (Actor Ryan Gosling, who plays Officer “K”) (Warning: The following analysis contains spoilers for both Blade Runner films.) Released in 1982, the original […]
- Growing up Nostalgic: Perpetual Adolescence and the Kingdom Come
“An ethic unshaped by eschatology is neither Jesus’ nor Christian.” – Tremper Longman How does an immature culture grow up? Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver is about the dangers of being lost in adolescence. By the end of the movie, the viewer is pointed to a road we infer leads to maturity, but only after a […]
- Tomboys and Totems
“…a mystery without a solution, a horror story without savagery, a nightmare in which all the watches stop at noonday…” The Bestial Gardens of Men Then they will say to the mountains, “Fall on us!” and to the hills, “Cover us!” (Luke 23:30) The following lines by Edgar Allan Poe, slightly reshaped, are the first […]
- Separation and the Sea: All Is Lost and Cast Away
“13th of July, 4:50 pm. I’m sorry. I know that means little at this point, but I am. I tried, I think you would all agree that I tried. To be true, to be strong, to be kind, to love, to be right. But I wasn’t. And I know you knew this. In each of […]
- Detached People Can Only Float
Weightlessness is fun. At the beginning of Gravity (2013), we can see one astronaut dancing the Macarena and another one playing with his jetpack. They like it out there in the space. Apart from zero-gravity they can enjoy beautiful views, and even the silence is likable, although Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) prefers listening to his […]
- Wall-E and the New Creation
In an inverse Eden, a land laid waste, one works alone tending the trash. There are none like him in all the earth, inquisitive, playful and most drawn to those mysterious, dancing bipedal creatures who lost earth and left it to go wandering the vast wilderness of space. Humans have been driven from the earth […]
- An Experiment in Film Criticism
C. S. Lewis was no fan of the cinema. He once described himself as “rather allergic to films” and after attending one he added in a letter to a friend, “Do not worry it shall not become a habit.” But though he was quick to dismiss films, his fruitful discussion of story, myths and literature […]
- 50 Shades of Surprise
I confess that I’m surprised by the number of Christians who are surprised by the popularity of Fifty Shades of Grey. Many are simply bewildered by the buzz the movie has generated. They shouldn’t be. This is the world we live in. More precisely, this is the country we live in. We live in a […]
- 2001: A Space Odyssey
In the November 1993 issue of Open Book Peter Leithart commented brie_y on gnosticism. The _lm 2001 is a great specimen of gnosticism, and is worth viewing as a Sunday School project for an adult class. The author of the basic story was Arthur C. Clarke, an old-school science _ction writer whose novel, Childhood’s End, provided the basic theme of […]
- Two Films by Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock’s earlier movies display a strongly moral, even Christian, point of view, and certainly can be enjoyed by Christian viewers. His later works, such as Psycho, The Birds, and his television series, are not as clearly moral in tone. In these later efforts, Hitchcock brought humorous or absurd twists into his plots. Hitchcock was able thereby […]
- Arts and Play, Part 4
Movies Movies as an art form have a powerful impact because they take place in a dark room, on a large screen, with no distractions, and because they entail many of the arts: music, acting, choreography, design and color, etc. A movie can be an overwhelming experience for a young person who has not matured […]