Acton Institute Powerblog Archives

Post Tagged 'movies'

October 24, 2024

Conclave’s Art Is Great, but Its Doubt Is Dubious

The intersection of religion and politics has always fascinated Hollywood filmmakers, from Becket and A Man for All Seasons to The West Wing. And no wonder. Both religion and politics are two of the biggest commanders of loyalty in their followers, and therefore they wield an enormous amount of power. Continue Reading...
September 25, 2024

How ‘Eat the Rich’ Movies Hurt the Poor

Hollywood’s new wave of movies satirizing the wealthy and powerful are garnering plenty of money and critical acclaim. But they’re also perpetuating destructive myths about wealth and inequality that will harm the very marginalized class the industry claims to be defending. 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...
June 27, 2023

Disney and Human Flourishing

Sometime in the last decade, the collegiate class were led by their dedicated sophists to start talking about “the narrative,” which hadn’t concerned them before. Soon they also started complaining about propaganda, “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation.” Continue Reading...
August 17, 2022

The two lives of Steve McQueen

Someone once said of Steve McQueen (1930–80) that his range as an actor was deep but not very broad. All right, I admit it—I said it in my 2001 biography of the all-American star who still looms over Hollywood like a sort of male equivalent of the Statue of Liberty, more than 40 years after his untimely death. Continue Reading...
May 03, 2022

Hollywood’s craven surrender to the Chinese Communist government

Who’s in charge in Hollywood? Surely studio bosses, well-compensated executives, A-list actors, and celebrated writers and directors set the agenda in the American entertainment industry, don’t they? Not so fast, says Wall Street Jour­­nal reporter Erich Schwartzel in a rigorously researched, admirably hard-hitting new book that looks at the pernicious influence of China on Hollywood. Continue Reading...