
Richard Jewell
Eastwood’s conceptions of heroism and villainy have always been, if not endlessly complex, at least never simplistic.
Eastwood’s conceptions of heroism and villainy have always been, if not endlessly complex, at least never simplistic.
It becomes repetitive, nonsensical, and just loud after everyone gets an origin story and we're left with nothing to do but go boom.
Roger Ebert on James Ivory's "Howards End".
"The Ballad of Narayama" is a Japanese film of great beauty and elegant artifice, telling a story of startling cruelty. What a space it opens…
An article about today's noon premiere of a new movie about architect Benjamin Marshall at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
An article about the screening of Horace Jenkins' "Cane River" on Friday, November 1st, at the Academy Film Archive in Los Angeles.
Scout Tafoya's video essay series about maligned masterpieces celebrates Steven Soderbergh's Solaris.
An article about today's noon premiere of a new movie about architect Benjamin Marshall at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
An FFC on Gavin Hood's Official Secrets.
A celebration of Yasujiro Ozu, as written by a Far Flung Correspondent from Egypt.
I have come to appreciate silence not as a sign of weakness or capitulation, but as a finely sharpened dagger that finds its way to…
The nominees for the Chicago Films Critics Awards for 2019.
Named after the David Cronenberg film, this is the blog of former RogerEbert.com editor Jim Emerson, where he has chronicled his enthusiasms and indulged his whims since 2005. Favorite subjects include evidence-based movie criticism, cinematic form and style, comedy, logical reasoning, language, journalism, technology, epistemology and fun. No topic is off-limits, but critical thinking is required.
Here's a spoiler-loaded reading of the Coens' masterpiece from Father Robert Barron, self-described "Catholic Evangelist." I don't know anything about Fr. Barron, but this is certainly a Catholic interpretation -- of the movie, of the book of Job, and of the Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love." Of course, I don't see the movie the way he does (and he doesn't even mention Larry's doctor or Schrödinger's cat or the... dybbuk?), but he does have some interesting ways of looking at it. I do like the way he understands how we reconsider the rabbis' counsel as the movie goes along.
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And Fr. Barron makes one simple, important point that I think some people overlook: "No one in the movie disbelieves in God. It's not a question of is there a God or not. But they're trying to discern, what does God want? What is God doing?" That is correct. The film takes place in a world in which God is obviously not dead (although it's set not long after the TIME cover) because these people still believe Hashem is a presence in their lives -- if a somewhat distant one. Instead, God is either silent, indifferent, passive-aggressive, or nonexistent. The question, then, becomes not so much what God wants from these characters as what these characters want from the (unexamined?) vision of God that they cling to, and how are they going to square that faith with the day-to-day world they live in?
What do you think? And let's agree that all comments below are for people who've seen the movie...
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This message came to me from a reader named Peter Svensland. He and a fr...