Reviews – Page 8 – Religion & Liberty Online

April 10, 2024

Beyoncé and the Neglected Downtrodden

Given that contemporary pop music is stagnant, Beyoncé’s country-inspired album Cowboy Carter was bound to be something of a sensation. Its chief significance is not aesthetic—the recordings are simultaneously too slick and underdeveloped. Continue Reading...

April 09, 2024

Man and Machine in World War II

Tom Hanks was the moral conscience of America in the ’90s, so far as Hollywood was concerned, and audiences largely concurred, because he’s like a new Jimmy Stewart: he exudes moral integrity and childlike innocence. Continue Reading...

April 02, 2024

Sigmund Freud, C.S. Lewis, and a Great Madness

Ambiguity is, in a neat mental onomatopoeia, a difficult word to define. But to begin to understand a piece of art like the film Freud’s Last Session, define it we must, and religious artists would do well to try to understand the film. Continue Reading...

March 08, 2024

The Zone of Interest and the Family Next Door

Jonathan Glazer has been nominated for two Oscars, as writer and director of The Zone of Interest, a movie about Nazis that was also nominated for Best Picture and Best International Film. Continue Reading...

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...

February 28, 2024

How Do You Solve a Problem like Reacher?

Over the course of two seasons, the action series Reacher on the Amazon Prime streaming service has lured in viewers for its vigorous action, surprising storylines, and vigilante vision of the world. Continue Reading...

February 20, 2024

Oppenheimer and a Future Worth Waiting For

I remember looking at all the social media reactions of critics and friends who had seen Oppenheimer, now up for a Best Picture Oscar. So many of them described walking out of the movie “devastated” and “depressed.” Continue Reading...

February 08, 2024

Ferrari: The Need for Speed … and Beauty

Michael Mann is famous for crime dramas like Thief (1981), Heat (1995), and Collateral (2004) that suggest that only criminals can be free, since the rest of us are constantly bossed around. 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...

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