Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Reviews

May 19, 2022

Disney’s new Moon Knight series mocks both gods and men

My previous essays reviewed two Progressive visions of manliness. Michael Mann’s HBO series Tokyo Vice reduces contemporary Japan to racism, sexism, and homophobia. Michael Bay’s Ambulance relatedly gives us a contemporary America where ethnic minorities, strong, independent women, and gay protagonists vanquish an evil white man. Continue Reading...
May 12, 2022

Michael Bay’s Ambulance is DOA

Film critics recently have been trying to encourage their audiences to return to theaters—cinema, after all, is a lot more impressive on a big screen and in the company of people who share our emotions. Continue Reading...
April 28, 2022

Waiting for a miracle in the noir classic Laura

I will close this series on film noir with Laura, because it’s altogether more beautiful and it has something of a happy ending. In being the most beautiful noir, it also involves the most sophisticated reflection on beauty in its relation to American society and to tragedy. Continue Reading...
April 26, 2022

Soylent Green takes place in 2022, which is nice

According to an old Hollywood commonplace, nothing can beat the plot of a good sci-fi film when it comes to predicting the future. Many of the promotional taglines that accompany these features assure us that, should we invest in a ticket, we’ll be “entertained” and “educated,” or even “enlightened,” by a product that “presciently signifies the all-but-inescapable fate of our planet” (2012), that warns of a future that “looks, feels, and almost tastes and smells like a nightmare vision of our times” (1984), or that offers a “harsh but searingly urgent” glimpse of the overall prospects for mankind (Blade Runner). Continue Reading...
April 22, 2022

Leo Strauss, Spinoza, and an enlightened faith

Love him or hate him, it’s almost impossible to ignore the philosopher Leo Strauss (1899­–1973). Few individuals have drawn out so thoroughly some of the implications of philosophy for a range of political positions while simultaneously exploring perennial issues such as the meaning of the Enlightenment and its relationship to classical and religious thought. Continue Reading...
April 06, 2022

Masculine despair in The Killers

My first film noir essay was on The Maltese Falcon, whose ambitious protagonist, private detective Sam Spade, chooses justice over an uncertain promise of happiness, the love of a dangerous woman. Continue Reading...