Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Reviews

March 06, 2024

Dune: Part Two and the Death of Freedom

Those who went to Dune: Part Two expecting a happy ending must have left the theater rather confused. For those unfamiliar with Frank Herbert’s groundbreaking sci-fi novels, the story of a young prince whose father is killed by a rival family and who must rally a bunch of oppressed rebels to stand against tyrants so as to claim his rightful kingship must have signaled to them that they were getting a rousing hero story such as found in Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Harry Potter. Continue Reading...
January 10, 2024

The Curse of The Iron Claw

Four decades ago, the American director Robert Aldrich made the most cheerful, companionable, and charitable movie ever produced about professional wrestling. Against all expectations, Aldrich—the grand master of the grotesque on the basis of such cartoonishly misanthropic masterpieces as Kiss Me Deadly, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? Continue Reading...
December 22, 2023

Going My Way: An Enduring True Fairy Tale

Every Christmas, I try to write about Christmas movies, especially about old Hollywood, because the best directors at the time considered it worthwhile to make movies that would chastise and cheer up the nation, indeed remind people of the spirit of Christmas and thus try to fit Christianity into the new entertainment that dominated the American imagination. Continue Reading...
December 14, 2023

The Holdovers and the Odor of Sanctity

When it comes to film genres, the kinds, the sorts, the categories of picture defined by certain conventions and characteristics, we’re all familiar with sci fi, the western, the detective crime drama, the war epic, fantasy, comedy (which includes mini-genres like rom-com, absurdist (think Airplane! Continue Reading...
December 05, 2023

The Little Corporal Gets a Little Film

Among all art forms, the movies have the greatest propensity to glorify violence, brutality, and savagery of all sorts. Because the medium is inherently kinetic, cinema captures the thrill, terror, and barbarism of battle; and because it is empathetic, cinema trains audiences to identify with and immerse themselves in the action they’re shown onscreen. Continue Reading...