Uncategorized

On celebrations and empty chairs at the table in three films: Still Walking, Summer Hours, and Rachel Getting Married.

When I teach modern U.S. history, I find that students will wonder occasionally why American history courses invariably involve sustained discussions about race.  The question is fair, actually, particularly when posed by international students who originate from places with entirely separate histories, where racial issues are sometimes different both in degree and kind.  Race, as […]

If Christians are to account for race in their lives, it must be seen as a matter of discipleship.

From a 2005 interview with Xan Brooks for the Western release of Howl’s Moving Castle: Personally I am very pessimistic… But when, for instance, one of my staff has a baby you can’t help but bless them for a good future. Because I can’t tell that child, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have come into this life.’ And […]

Jacques Tourneur’s last journey into the fantastique genre is saturated with dialogue that goes straight to the heart of his favourite and most fascinating questions, evoking Charles Williams and even C.S. Lewis. Problem is, the narrative deck is stacked from the outset, so there’s no room for the sort of ambiguity and psychological suspense that make Tourneur’s earlier supernatural thrillers so effective.

Andrew Sarris’s perspectives on film have been an inspiration to many film enthusiasts who are more educated in the art and history of cinema than I am. Nevertheless, when I heard that he was among the many staffers laid off by The New York Observer in June, I was dismayed enough that I knew I […]

… it might as well be this one. (via /film)

Fans of the moody supernatural thrillers Jacques Tourneur lensed for Val Lewton in the forties or his noir masterpiece Out Of The Past may find little appeal in this sunny, easy-going tale of a small town parson set just after the American Civil War. But of the twenty-nine feature films he directed between 1939 and 1965, this is the one he fought to do. One wonders if he may have felt an affinity with the story’s central character, the transcendently decent Reverend Josiah Gray – prefiguring perhaps the greatest portrayal of small-town integrity to be found in American literature and film.

Nice smorgasbord, Jeffrey. Keeping the food movie conversation going… When Chocolat was in theatres, two widely varying responses deepened my appreciation of the film; Frederica Mathewes-Green brilliantly and forcefully made the case for what bothered me about the film, then Loren Wilkinson (Regent College) drew out what was right about the film – as is […]