Religion & Liberty Online Archives

Reviews

May 26, 2023

Keep The Covenant on Your Moviegoing Radar This Memorial Day

This Memorial Day, there is one movie in theaters that addresses directly the experiences of veterans. While American families are entertained by the Super Mario Bros. movie, now a billion-dollar proposition worldwide, people who prefer more true-to-life action can see the movie I recommend, Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, which has barely made any money, even though it’s an exciting, gripping experience, and it’s got a star, Jake Gyllenhaal. Continue Reading...
May 17, 2023

Tetris and the Birth of an Obsession

It may be hard to picture now, when American children spend seemingly every waking hour absorbed in Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, but once upon a time the country’s youth contented themselves with activities that did not involve gazing into tiny screens—you know, riding bikes, throwing around a football, jumping rope. Continue Reading...
April 26, 2023

Shrinking and the Rebirth of Manliness

Harrison Ford has suddenly returned to acting at the age of 80, after a decade of mostly forgettable cameos. He’s now making movies and even TV series that are bound to get quite a bit of critical attention and renewed popularity. Continue Reading...
April 20, 2023

The Disordered Loves of The Last of Us

The Last of Us is the latest prestige drama from HBO and has gained near universal critical acclaim, garnering the second-largest audience for the network since 2010, trailing only the Game of Thrones prequel series, House of the Dragon. Continue Reading...
April 18, 2023

Jesus Revolution and Generation Z’s Religious Crisis

My initial impression of the film Jesus Revolution was a simple one, albeit a bit self-centered from a Gen-Z movie reviewer: This isn’t a Gen-Z movie. Rife with bell-bottom jeans, hippie culture, and portrayals of anti-government angst, the film tells the origin story of the Jesus movement of the 1960s and ’70s, particularly the growth and struggle of the West Coast evangelical group known as Calvary Chapel. Continue Reading...
April 06, 2023

Dungeons & Dragons and the Death of Honor

The most popular entertainment for boys not yet overtaken by the miserable ideology of our times is the tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons, a source of friendship and adventure. It became a part of pop culture with Stranger Things recently but turned out to be of little importance to that show. Continue Reading...
March 09, 2023

Creating Christ: Challenging Christian Origins

As Creating Christ will have it, Christianity as we know it was more or less invented, or at least redirected, by two members of the Flavian dynasty, Emperor Vespasian and his son (and eventual emperor) Titus, as a way of enforcing docility on zealous Jewish sects who wanted pagan Rome out of Jerusalem and out of their lives. Continue Reading...
March 01, 2023

Tár Falls Just Short of Greatness

One of this year’s Oscar darlings, Tár, also turns out to be the only major movie since #metoo to mount an attack on cancel culture. This is paradoxical, of course, as we see from the three nominations—Best Picture, Best Direction, and Best Original Screenplay—received by the artist behind the movie, Todd Field. Continue Reading...
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