Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Reviews

October 31, 2022

Tim Burton’s Sleepy Hollow Is a Tale of the Founding

Halloween has somehow become a celebration of America becoming American, a New World unlike the Old World, a place where horror is a literary or cinematic genre rather than a memory—the dimly recollected past stretching back millennia through seemingly endless suffering, man’s inhumanity to man, older than civilization. Continue Reading...
October 27, 2022

Heaven and Hell in America: Dante’s Indiana

In a cultural landscape that is often hostile—or at best indifferent—to religion, a popular and widely lauded novel whose plot focuses not only on matters of faith but also a main character whose worldview and identity is shaped entirely by his Catholicism is a rare occurrence. Continue Reading...
October 20, 2022

Andor Succeeds Where Other Star Warriors Fail

If there’s anything close to national mythology in America nowadays, it’s Marvel. This may be depressing, but we should nevertheless face the fact and make the best of it. Before that, it was Star Wars, which is still an incredibly profitable business, even as it is failing. Continue Reading...
October 13, 2022

Blonde at Its Best Highlights What’s Worst

Director Andrew Dominik’s Blonde, now available on Netflix and starring Ana de Armas as “blonde bombshell” Marilyn Monroe, is a long film. Not merely because of its almost three-hour run time but also because it feels long when you’re watching it. Continue Reading...
September 28, 2022

Godard Is Dead. Is Cinema?

Jean-Luc Godard died on September 13, 2022, and the news in the world of cinema and culture was received as confirmation that cinema itself was dead. Godard had a remarkable influence on cinema in the ’60s, but his fame went beyond that. Continue Reading...
September 15, 2022

The Manchurian Candidate Is a Neglected Masterpiece

In 1959, when Richard Condon published his political thriller The Manchurian Candidate, he took a topical idea and ran amok with it. The idea was that during the Korean War a platoon of GIs had been captured by the Chinese, brainwashed (“not just washed, but dry-cleaned”), and released back home to do the enemy’s bidding. Continue Reading...
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