Alejandro Amenábar’s film Agora, starring Rachel Weisz as the celebrated pagan mathematician and philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria, has occasioned a number of online reality checks regarding the tensions and outright contradictions between the Enlightenment myth of Hypatia’s story and what is historically known. Many of these are from Christian writers, but the most complete and helpful online treatment I’ve found so far belongs to a self-styled “Irish-Australian atheist b-st-rd” with an academic background in medieval literature and ancient and medieval history, blogger Tim O’Neill of Armarium Magnum (hat tip).

O’Neill’s year-old post “Agora” and Hypatia - Hollywood Strikes Again takes...READ MORE

Beauty, loss, longing, mystery: Fans of Tolkien might reach for such language in describing the power of Middle-earth. They are not words that many Americans naturally associate with animation. American animation typically means humor, slapstick, sentiment, and perhaps a positive message about family or believing in yourself.

Only Pixar rises significantly above that level. The Incredibles and Up are among the most emotionally affecting movies I’ve ever seen. But there’s something that myth does that we don’t find even there. Perhaps WALL-E comes close to “ripping open the inconsolable secret,” as C. S. Lewis put it in “The Weight of Glory”—to awakening us to awe and spiritual hunger for...READ MORE

I would like to think that the time and energy I’ve devoted over the last ten years to Catholic film criticism—work I’ve always seen as an apostolate to families and individual moviegoers, especially Catholics but also non-Catholics and non-Christians—has contributed in a small way to the kingdom of God. I’m still a little taken aback at how some Catholics seem to feel in effect that the whole endeavor is basically pointless, since movies are such a complete wasteland that there is little or no value in trying to discern good from bad and it would be better simply to wash our hands of the whole business.

Here’s a comment from a combox awhile back on a post mentioning, among other films,...READ MORE

Defying early box-office nay-sayers, Focus Features’ life-affirming documentary Babies opened over Mother’s Day weekend with significantly better ticket sales than originally estimated, thanks to what the website Box Office Mojo is calling (in the idiom of the movie beat) “a huge Mother’s Day bump.”

For the record, I love Babies; my review opens this way:

Everyone should see Babies. Even people who have cats instead of children should see Babies. … Directed by documentary filmmaker Thomas Balmès, who lives in Paris with his wife and three children, Babies is pro-life in the best possible sense: It is a celebration of new life, of love, of family, of the wonder of the world.

Other...READ MORE

Have movie previews gotten to be too much?

Parents have been complaining for years about inappropriate coming attractions playing before movies aimed at younger or more innocent viewers—and it’s getting worse.

Part of the problem is simply more trailers. Enticed by marketing dollars, theater owners are cramming more and more previews in front of movies these days, as a recent Hollywood Reporter article notes.

What used to be two, three or four trailers ten years ago has ramped up to six, seven or even more—so many that marketers and exhibitors are starting to worry about poisoning audiences’ moods before the movie even begins. Plus, packing more trailers on more films only makes...READ MORE

The celebratory media frenzy over the 50th anniversary of The Pill has reached even the pages of Variety, where past editor and current vice president and editorial director Peter Bart has written a strange essay called “‘Sex’ and the summer franchise” (subscription required) that somehow contrives to link a blip in summer movie patterns to five decades of contraception.

Bearing the subtitle “Fifty years ago the Pill changed everything, including the movies,” the essay is an odd mishmash of social commentary predicated on a tenuous entertainment news note: This summer’s movie roster features two (2) chick-flick franchise sequels (the third Twilight movie and a Sex and the City sequel),...READ MORE