That delightful lull between the end of classes and the beginning of exams provided the perfect opportunity to catch up on movies missed during the last several months. As it turns out, Iand thus regular readers of this columnhave missed little. Two walls of the neighborhood video shop feature new r

For the last several months images of heroism have filled the media. The immediate heroes, the firefighters, police and rescue workers, have gradually been supplanted by brave survivors, mourning the dead and living for the future. Their stories have helped us through the horror, especially in this

What follows should come with a warning label for a goodly number of longtime readers. It is time for us Catholics to turn up the lights and take a second look at that brand of mid-century Anglo-Catholicism from both sides of the papal divide that dominated our undergraduate days.

Frantically searching for ways to postpone sitting down at the keyboard and trying to find something relatively new to say about the most over-analyzed film and social phenomenon of the year, I idly called up my favorite search engine and typed in harrypotter. The monitor blinked once and then came

Even by the generous criteria generally applied to summer films, last summer was a particularly disappointing season. Vacation movies target young audiences with young themes, and, as a result, they emerge half-baked from the minds of young, or wannabe young, filmmakers. Okay, I plead nolo contender

Forgive the ponderous title. As a veteran reviewer, I do recognize the limits of my role. Ordinarily, I would try to find a mildly entertaining way to remind readers that Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now received a warm if not enthusiastic welcome when it first appeared in 1979. I would conclu

A. I. Artificial Intelligence leaves no doubt that it wants its audiences to enter a realm of pure fantasy when it identifies one of the last remaining islands of civilization as New Jersey. As the voice-over narrator (Ben Kingsley) explains (pace George W.), global warming has melted the polar ice

Sell everything to buy the “pearl of great price,” the Gospel tells us (Mt. 13:46). Disney did exactly that, mortgaging the Mouse House for upwards of $140 million to produce this year’s summer blockbuster, Pearl Harbor. It bought a pearl of pure plastic.No, “Pearl Harbor&rdq

As you might have suspected, neurosis plagues columnists and reviewers. After a quarter century of these near-monthly essays on the state of civilization as mirrored in popular films, I still wonder each time I sit at the word processor if this is the column that will finally reveal, once and for al

Aristotle was such a dope He misled generations of critics into thinking that art imitates nature Anyone who goes to the movies knows that art imitates other art Tom Hanks doesn rsquo t imitate anyone in the real world he imitates Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda Murders Indian wars and invasions