Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. Starring Brie Larson, John Gallagher, Jr., and Kaitlyn Dever.

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Thirteen years before he was helming what seems poised to become one of the biggest box office hits of all-time with Spider-Man: Brand New Day, writer/director Destin Daniel Cretton hit an absolute home run in his directorial debut, Short Term 12. The film depicts life in a group home for teenagers with difficult backgrounds and their supervisors. The cast is stacked with actors who went on to become way more famous than they were in 2013, and rightly so, based on how excellent they were here. Romantic and work partners Grace (Brie Larson) and Mason (John Gallagher Jr.) are joined by new volunteer Nate (Rami Malek) as supervisors for a variety of teens including Marcus (LaKeith Stanfield) and Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever). Short Term 12 is ambitious in the emotional heights it seeks to land. In the wrong hands this story could’ve ended up as a cliched, over-sentimental mess, but with Cretton’s boldness and Brie Larson’s powerhouse performance leading the way, it delivers one of the most emotionally/spiritually satisfying, life-affirming stories I’ve ever seen.

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It’s time for another decades poll!

This time from a decade filled with Hollywood spectacle: biblical epics, Westerns, and spectacular Technicolor musicals populate this decade. After World War II, international films start to make the rounds in America, particularly those of Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman, inspiring a whole generation of filmmakers including Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and Martin Scorsese (the latter of whom often calls the 1950s the greatest decade for cinema ever). Legendary filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, and Elia Kazan all gained prominence during this decade as well.

It’s the decade where Hollywood began to go all out competing against the new medium of television, creating new formats like VistaVision, CinemaScope, and even 3D movies. Eventually all the grandeur began to crumble with the failure of Cleopatra in the decade to come, but at its height in the 1950s, it was something to marvel at.

VOTE HERE ON YOUR FAVORITE 1950S MOVIES!

“This great evil, where does it come from?”

In the stacked year of 1998, we were blessed with two of the best WWII films ever made. In July, Spielberg changed the war film genre with Saving Private Ryan, masterfully displaying the brutality of the infamous Omaha Beach and the European theater. While it would be the third most successful film of 1998, another (and arguably better) WWII film would slip in at the end of the year to offer its own distinct and introspective voice: The Thin Red Line. While Malick’s dramatic reentry into the film industry after 20 years was met with somewhat mixed reception and a modest box-office return, I can confidently say it has aged like fine wine, firmly cementing itself as one of the greatest war films ever made.

The Thin Red Line depicts the long and grueling campaign of Guadalcanal. Guadalcanal was one of the more crucial campaigns in the Pacific theater, resulting in significant losses of territory and positions for the Empire of Japan. The more than 6-month conflict was a hard-earned but decisive American victory, further forcing a Japanese retreat after the turning point of Midway. The film is an adaptation of a novel of the same name by James Jones (From Here to Eternity), which depicts 3 different soldiers’ responses to combat and trauma.

Malick, in an unsurprising manner, takes a rather unconventional approach by having the film less narrative-based and more meditative. The Thin Red Line delves into war, the cost of victory, and the impact we have on the world around us. In this massive star-studded cast, the film seems to primarily focus on the struggles of Sean Penn’s character and Jim Caviezel’s. Gym plays a conscientious objector who flees from combat to live with natives of local Islands, but he’s caught and sent back to the front by Sean Penn. The dynamic between these two sets the tone for most of the film. This main dynamic is the relationship between man and nature. This is not from a merely material stance from the perspective that but a more spiritual understanding of the Earth and the responsibility that man has to keep it, which was given to him in the Garden of Eden. The beauty of the Pacific Islands and the people who inhabit them is consistently juxtaposed with the brutality and carnage of modern warfare. Our characters consistently reflect on this world and the role we play in it, barraging us with an inner monologue that feels distinct to the individual yet applicable to all. Caviezel’s character is perhaps the most sensitive to this, and has a deeply satisfying character arc that shows him discover a more selfless way in expressing his love for humanity.

This is just one of the many characters featured in The Thin Red Line. Part of the joy of watching the film is discovering and watching them interact with each other. The Thin Red Line’s lack of focus on one character is what adds to the grandeur of it. The sheer quantity of A-list actors that practically volunteered for the film upon hearing of Malick’s return was staggering, and left him with the unenviable task of turning down A-listers like Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt, Al Pacino, Gary Oldman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Viggo Mortenson, and Martin Sheen. So many characters are featured in the film; Bill Pullman and Mickey Rourke’s characters didn’t even make the final cut. Despite having to gallop through so many over less than 3 hours, Terrence manages to give each character their own distinct personality and enough time to grow within the world of the Pacific Theater.

I would argue that there is hardly any war film that isn’t “anti-war”. Even the so-called propaganda films of the 1940’s didn’t shy away from the profound sadness of war. As a regular consumer of the genre, I have yet to find one that truly says “Yeah, war is awesome, let’s go!” Thin Red Line takes war to another level, however, and asks its audience to meditate on the true “Why” of war. It elevates the audience to more than just being observers, but instead active participants in the discussion. This creative gesture has always elevated Terrence Malick above most of his contemporaries.

The scale of The Thin Red Line is truly massive. Cinematographer John Toll does a career-defining job with some of the greatest cinematography of the modern Hollywood era. Battles feel grand yet intimate, visceral yet clean, and sweeping yet grounded. I frequently find myself in awe of the spectacle being presented without being distracted from the messaging. There are tracking shots in here that belong in the top 10 of all time, and I am awe-struck to think how they were even pulled off. The beauty of nature is on such display, in perfect sync with one of Hans Zimmer’s more underrated scores, that most of the shots could be used as high-quality wallpapers or paintings.

The Thin Red Line is one of the ultimate cinematic experiences. Through brilliant direction, what could have been a by-the-books soldier memoir is elevated to an extraordinary meditation on man, nature, and God. Beautiful cinematography, excellent acting, impeccable scoring, and high-quality storytelling all come together to make one of the greatest war films ever made.

Death. Taxes. Spider-Man.

A tale as old as time (or Gen Z). Since Sam Raimi’s first Spider-Man film brought the character to the big screen, there have been 11 solo projects centered around our “friendly neighbors” from Queens and Brooklyn. The IP has proven time and again to be a major cash cow for Sony, generating $9 billion at the box office over the last 24 years. Audiences have consistently flooded theatres to see the latest project featuring Peter Parker or Miles Morales.

This latest installment, Brand New Day, comes on the back of the most successful solo IP film of all time, Spider-Man: No Way Home, which featured a heartfelt crossover between Tom and the other two live-action Spider-Men, Andrew Garfield and Toby Maguire. That movie, which closed the arc for the high-school version of Peter Parker in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), tied a nice bow around the Jon Watts trilogy (Homecoming, Far From Home and No Way Home) and set up Tom Holland’s character for a sort of “soft reboot” in the next set of films.

Despite the critical, financial, and cultural success of the first three solo Holland films, this was a welcome opportunity for change. While Spider-Man was back on the big screen and incorporated into the larger universe of Marvel, it felt like something had been lost in the emotional resonance of Spider-Man’s earlier films, particularly the Raimi trilogy. Jon Watts, for all the good he did, seemed to fundamentally misunderstand the character of Spider-Man. His life was too simple, too neat. Whereas past iterations of Spider-Man, including the maligned Amazing Spider-Man run with Andrew Garfield, leaned into the complexity, emotional weight, and impossibility of navigating a life as a teenager with a secret identity who is constantly wrestling with the potential of putting his loved ones in danger, Holland’s Spidey’s low point before halfway through Spider-Man: No Way Home was the death of his mentor Tony Stark in a movie that wasn’t even his own, Avengers: Endgame. Watts’ movies featured little drama.

It also never felt like any of Watts’ movies took seriously that Spider-Man is a “friendly neighborhood” hero who is a quintessential New Yorker. Even to the point where an entire movie was set in Europe, which, while it was a great movie, was also definitively the worst Spider-Man film. The most egregious transgression, however, was the lack of imagination in the action sequences. Despite the new technology available to Watts, the web-slinging and fights of his Spider-Man films were below average at best when compared to what the previous Spider-Man films were able to pull off (with far more limited technology).

In the aftermath of Spider-Man: No Way Home’s ending, audiences were given the possibility of seeing a more emotionally mature and evocative Spider-Man film in Brand New Day where Holland’s Peter Parker would wrestle with the consequences of his decision to erase his memory from existence to save those he loved.

That possibility has become a reality. Spider-Man: Brand New Day painstakingly delivers on everything that was missing from Watts’ trilogy, and is thus the greatest entry in the Holland era of Spider-Man (I cannot emphasize this enough; it is in an entirely different stratosphere).

Brand New Day is a grounded, back-to-basics adaptation of the Webhead from Sunnyside, Queens. The multiversal disarray is traded for a heartfelt, weighty, and emotional character-driven drama. It is, as my friend LJ said in his Letterboxd review, “A love letter to NYC and a reminder why Spider-Man IS the face of Marvel.” It is everything good about the previous installments baptized into a refreshing layer of maturity. Brand New Day is enthralling, frenzied, earnest, captivating, and filled with love for the ethos of Stan Lee’s most iconic creation.

There is so much to love about this project, but the following points are some of the stand-outs.

The Positives:

This Spider-Man is Different

I am seeing a lot of instant reactions that compare Brand New Day directly to Spider-Man 2 (2004). While I understand the sentiment, I think it is a disservice to both films and particularly to Brand New Day. As I watched Brand New Day, I saw many similar themes to the early Raimi movies, but the delivery and execution are different. Brand New Day doesn’t just feel like a new type of Spider-Man movie. In many ways, it feels like a new type of superhero movie. I need to see it again to put my finger on specifically what I mean by this, but Brand New Day felt different. The pacing was frenetic and well executed. The chemistry of the ensemble cast was impeccable. New York comes alive and is a character of its own. I think Destin Daniel Cretton deserves an immense amount of credit for just how distinct this movie is from other comic-book movies.

Tom Holland Shines

I have loved Tom Holland as Spider-Man since he first appeared in Captain America: Civil War back in 2016. He is the best Peter Parker ever. He nailed the awkward high school nerd vibe of a young Spidey in the first three movies. As Spider-Man matures in this newest installment, so does Holland’s acting. While I loved The Odyssey, Spider-Man: Brand New Day confirms to me that Nolan’s biggest whiff outside of Charlize Theron’s Calypso was his utilization of Holland as Telemachus in the film. The beauty, the sincerity, the earnestness and relatability of Peter Parker is elevated by Holland’s line delivery and presence. Only Holland could make a scene where he’s building legos the most moving scene of the entire film (shoutout to male friendship).

Zendaya’s Best Performance

Zendaya is beautiful. We all know this. Zendaya is an actress in high demand. We also know this. But did we know she could do this? You probably did, but I didn’t. That is probably my fault, as I have had limited interaction with her filmography. I have only seen her in Spider-Man films and the Dune franchise. She has been serviceable up until now in Spider-Man, and she was good in Dune: Part Two. This was the first time I have seen Zendaya on the big screen and left the theatre thinking she was potentially the best performance of the film. In this movie, she is at worst a standout. Every time she is on screen, her charm and range are on full display. Her and Jon Bernthal’s interactions are the most entertaining of the project, and her scenes with Peter drive the emotional core of the film. 9.4/10.

Sadie Sink, future face of the MCU?

Sink’s role has been highly speculated in the film for months, but was (officially) kept secret until the film’s launch. I will not reveal who she is, but my friend Sam characterized her performance as “the best character introduction in the MCU since Spider-Man debuted 10 years ago.” I agree. She and Zendaya combined for the best characterizations of the project.

Jon Bernthal

The MCU for years has been plagued by soul-sucking comedy. Since Endgame (and even before that), Marvel has ruined countless scenes with poorly-timed comedy. It seemed like their writers had forgotten how to let a scene breathe on its own, and how to integrate comedy into the film organically through the particulars of characters. Perhaps the best part of Brand New Day, and a sign of its maturity, is that the comedy only serves to advance the plot and development of its characters and their relationships. Nowhere is this more present than the Punisher (Jon Bernthal) and Spider-Man’s partnership. Any time they are on screen together it feels like a buddy comedy I would pay copious amounts of money to experience. In every moment of comedic relief, there is a depth of character revealed. Bernthal is not an arbitrary add-on, but an integral part of the emotional pay-offs of the film’s central theme. More Punisher, please.

Web-Slinging and Fight Choreography

As alluded to earlier, Jon Watts Spider-Man trilogy was severely lacking in on-screen exploration of how new technology in film and editing could truly bring to life Spider-Man’s powers and abilities. Several sequences in here are jaw-dropping. Tip of the cap to Cretton, Holland, and everyone who brought it to life.

These are the biggest successes of Holland’s film, and they far outweigh the negative, but there are two minor problems I had with the film.

The Negatives

MCU Bloating - Too Many Cooks in the Kitchen

The additional characters and entities (Hulk, Punisher, Department of Damage Control) add a lot to the film, and the writers did a phenomenal job eliminating any “pre-work” necessary to follow the film. Simultaneously, there is a lot that could have been cut out and everything that could be cut out actively takes away from the more resonant beats of the project’s themes. The Hulk appearance alone was a mess. They could have kept the scenes with Professor Banner as a small cameo, and removed the Hulk. The integration would have kept its purpose and removed the fluff.

Tramell Tillman

I am profoundly disappointed in the script for Trammell Tillman’s character. I had high expectations for his inclusion after his mesmerizing performance as Milchick in Apple TV’s Severance, but he was not given space to shine at all. I hope he is written better in future projects.

While it will most likely not surpass the love most have for Spider-Man 2, my initial reaction tells me Spider-Man: Brand New Day will become my favorite live-action Spider-Man film. It does not change my skepticism about the quality and future of the superhero genre, but it is certainly an exception to the general lack of creativity that plagues recent comic book movies and is worth a trip (or two) to your local theater.

It is more than a welcome addition to the Spider-Man franchise, and scores an 8.4/10.

“Before filling the glass with good liquid, the bad one must be poured out.” - St. Augustine

I don’t need to tell you the story of St. Augustine — no, not you, readers. You know already of the great saint, whose conversion story is perhaps the most famed ever written. His life gave birth to the concept of the Augustinian journey — the story of a man who sins, who rejects the call to conversion for years, but who ultimately makes atonement and returns home to his true self. This Christianized version of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey has been applied to characters across history, literature, and film — including, surprisingly, Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster, critical smash, The Odyssey.

It’s key to note here — and this is where the “surprisingly” comes in — that I’m referencing Nolan’s Odyssey here, not Homer’s. Yes, it’s an adaptation, and quite a faithful one at that, both in its structure and in its presentation of the main hallmarks of the 3000-year-old story. But Nolan brings a decidedly Augustinian lens to his interpretation — dare I say, translation — of the story, especially in how he sees the character of Odysseus. Purists will argue with me, I’m sure, that such an interpretation does not reflect the Homeric concept of virtue in the book and would be foreign to that age. That this Odysseus, furthermore, has more in common with other Nolan protagonists than with the Odysseus of the text. To which I say: yes, fine. But, just as translators of the work across the centuries have brought their own societal ideas, prejudices, and biases to their translations, Nolan does as well here, offering what is his most Christian work yet as a result.

Was this purposeful? Perhaps not. But Nolan was born and raised Catholic. The Baptismal mark remains and has colored his work in the past (especially in his Dark Knight trilogy). To find it here, in an adaptation of one of the key foundational texts of Western Civilization, makes it a rich, deeply rewarding film — one with five moments I especially want to highlight.

Spoilers, of course, follow. Yes, the book is 3,000 years old. I get it. But Nolan adds in key differences that are worth saving for your own viewing.

I. “The Power of a Sacrifice is in the Cost of the Person Making It”

Early in the film, Nolan has Penelope (Anne Hathaway) recount to Telemachus (Tom Holland) stories of the father he never knew, including of the final night before he left his beloved Ithaca for Troy. That night, Odysseus (Matt Damon) told Penelope why he had to go off to war — despite his misgivings with it. He warns Penelope that King Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) sacrificed his own daughter for favorable winds and would not hesitate to do the same with their own son, Telemachus, if Odysseus refused to aid him.

Penelope, justifiably horrified, calls this monstrous. Odysseus replies, “the power of a sacrifice is in the cost of the person making it.”

Here, Nolan immediately lays out a contrast between Agamemnon and Odysseus, showing Odysseus willing to sacrifice himself for his son, his family, his Ithaca, if it means protecting all of them. For him, “of course love is a sacrifice.” He willingly accepts that he may never return, if it means protecting what he holds most dear. The power is in the cost, indeed.

The Christian concept here is evident — “no greater love than this” — but it’s also a fascinating starting point for a character who will later need to find his way back to this version of himself again.

II. “Zeus’ Law”

Now, this is less a single moment than a key theme running throughout Nolan’s version of The Odyssey. Over the course of the film, characters encourage each other to treat strangers like they’re a god in disguise. Telemachus tells characters on more than one occasion that they have “wise eyes, Athena’s eyes.” Odysseus, upon reaching the cave of the fearsome Cyclops, says that his crew has nothing to fear because of “Zeus’ Law” (spoiler: Odysseus was wrong).

We see, in this Greek world, a people who believed that the divine touched and influenced everything in their lives. The existence of the divine was simply a given, seen in the waves, in the wind, in the storm. This extended all the way down to the way people were meant to treat each other — thus, Zeus’ Law. Nolan’s concept of it is based on the Greek concept of xenia, one of the most important themes of Homer’s poem. He interprets xenia, however, through what can only be described as a distinctly Christian lens, seeing it more as “treat each person like they’re made in the image and likeness of God.”

Telemachus insists that every stranger be given a place at the table in his father’s house for that reason. Penelope insists, near the end of the film, that Odysseus — in the guise of a beggar — have his feet washed for this same reason as well.

With this theme, Nolan is commenting on something that has been lost in our modern times that must be regained again. Strangers deserve love. They deserve respect. They deserve hospitality. To do otherwise is to violate Zeus’ Law — to violate all that is meant to be sacred between men.

Breaking this law is the great sin that plunges Odysseus into the horrors that follow — but more on that later.

III. “Accept Your Punishment”

After Odysseus and his crew leave Troy, they encounter horror after horror at each stop they make. They hope for hospitality, for Zeus’ Law, but are instead given pain and death from giants, witches, and, yes, gods themselves. All due to their sins at Troy and after.

At one point, after the witch Circe (Samantha Morton) horrifically turn Odysseus’ crew into pigs, she warns him that “your men don’t want you to defy the gods. But the gods say only you make it home.”

Odysseus replies without hesitation, “then I defy the gods.”

He, once again, refuses to accept his fate and stubbornly fights back against the divine. For this, his crew is lost, and he is left alone on the island of the sea nymph, Calypso (Charlize Theron). He spends the next seven years there, eating lotus flowers, all to forget the pain and suffering he has both endured and wrought by his own hand. He is a man who knows what he has done but is unable to atone.

“Make me pure, Lord…but not yet.” So said Augustine. And so also says Odysseus.

Before reaching Calypso’s island, Odysseus heard the song of the Sirens — one of the most stunning sequences of the film — and only then admits what had been haunting him since Troy. Why he had been up late, weeping to the goddess Athena each night. The song, for him, was “a song of all the promises I failed to keep. And it told me I don’t really want to go home.”

As he slowly remembers everything that happened to him, he recounts this story to Calypso. When she challenges him that he had not been ready to go home over these past seven years, Odysseus quickly replies, “I am now. Help me go home.”

Odysseus, at long last, accepts his sins. But to return home, he must accept the god Poseidon’s punishment on the open ocean. Here, atonement and baptism are both intertwined and necessary — the only way he can finally return home not just to his beloved Ithaca, but truly to himself.

IV. “What if the Odysseus You Knew Had Lost His Way?”

Near the end of the film, Nolan offers his most key contribution to Homer’s text — the scene that recontextualizes the film entire. After Odysseus has returned to Ithaca in the guise of a beggar, he is asked to speak with Penelope. Nolan stages this scene so that Odysseus is speaking to his wife through a screen — a deliberately evocative image, bringing to mind countless confessionals seen across the centuries.

Here, in this moment, Odysseus confesses to Penelope his great sin — the song of all the promises he failed to keep when he left his home for Troy, all those years ago.

What if the Odysseus you knew lost his way? What if...one night, in a strange city, he saw things that made him think the home he knew couldn’t possibly be there anymore. What if…when he left the belly of the horse, and opened the gates of Troy, he saw ten years of rage pour into that city in one night?

We left them a gift, an offering of peace, that they took into their home. We violated all that’s ever sacred between people. It turned a fight into a hunt.

To burn the walls of Troy was to burn the world entire. Including his home.

Nolan takes the story of the Trojan Horse, one of the most famous in all of Western Civilization, and marks it as a tragedy, smashing Zeus’ Law to pieces and breaking the world itself apart as a result. What was presented as a gift was instead a betrayal. In this world, strangers do not bring knives into the homes of those who welcome them in. But, with this trick, all of that was shattered. Violent deeds, violent ends. For all.

Each stop on Odysseus’ journey home reinforces that awful truth. And it is only by confessing his sins, by admitting what he had done and what he had failed to do at Troy and since, that Odysseus can begin to move forward towards a future where Zeus’ Law can be rebuilt again.

V. “Chasing the Escaping Sun”

At the very end of the film, Odysseus accepts exile after killing all the suitors in his home, taking one last punishment to restore order to his house — and to the world — again. What he has committed, killing men in his own home, violating the laws of hospitality one last time, deserves punishment. One he gladly takes, giving the throne to his son and leaving to head into the unknown West with his beloved Penelope.

This decision plucks the bow of Catholicism one last time with resounding effect. After a good confession, atonement must be made if there is to be any absolution. As they sail into the West, Odysseus fears that his sins and their consequences will be forgotten, but Penelope believes that civilization can be rebuilt again — a task that will fall to the next generation.

All humans fall. But only in the course of accepting our sinful nature, confessing, and making atonement can there be hope for a next generation to do just that. This was true for Odysseus. It is true for us as well.

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Some of these themes exist in Homer’s original text, but not all — and certainly not interpreted in this manner. Nolan retells the Odyssey in his own distinctly Western way, one born from his own Catholic upbringing. Nolan pulls not only from Homer but from the entirety of Western tradition in his telling, looking to Virgil, to Dante, and yes, even to Augustine. He’s not the first to Christianize Homer’s text — Clement of Alexandria even did so around 200 A.D. — and he won’t be the last.

Does this make for an absolutely pure adaptation of Homer? No, something that I am sure some classicists will take issue with. They certainly took issue with 2004’s Troy, another cinematic retelling of Homer that I also called out for its many liberties, particularly its cynical agnosticism. Nolan, with his take on Homer, takes far fewer liberties, while also retaining the importance of the laws of the gods — but some liberties he takes, nonetheless.

A 1:1 adaptation? Surely not. Maybe not the adaptation some classicists wanted, but the adaptation today’s culture needed. Here, with one of the foundational texts of Western Civilization, Nolan’s current obsession with the story of sin and the Fall of Man (see Tenet and Oppenheimer) reaches its zenith: his Odyssey aches for a salvation that secularism has failed to offer, that can only be found in the divine.

Nolan’s take is a fascinating one, a translation all its own, and one that brings Christian, civilizational values back to the forefront of popular culture. That, truly, is something worth celebrating.

“You know I’m blind, right?”

With a single sentence, the greatest ancient poet had thrown my movie review plan far off course. What was I going to do now?

I had packed everything I thought I needed for this trip: a ram & a ewe, a carbon-steel knife, a dozen torches, a hammered copper hoplon, a backpacking-size IMAX 70MM projector, a pop-up IMAX screen, an inflatable Dolby 7.2 surround sound system, two folding plush movie theater chairs, candied figs (I knew he probably wouldn’t want popcorn), a sub-zero sleeping bag, and lots of water. I had been told that it was cold and dry on those black Icelandic beaches; was it ever.

It had all begun so well. I had landed in Reykjavik a little after 11 local time and took an Uber to the entrance of the dead. My only miscalculation up to this point was that sunset in Iceland was at 11:08 PM, which gave me plenty of time to set up my screen, projector, and inflatable Dolby 7.2 surround sound system. If I was going to get the interview of the millennium, I wasn’t going to do it halfway.

The ruddy-handed sun dove beneath the horizon, splashing out its last rays on the copper shield; I slit the throats of the ram and ewe. As a movie critic living in Flatbush I hadn’t had much experience slitting sheep throat, but I had watched a couple of YouTube tutorials on the flight over and it was actually pretty easy. The dark blood dripped onto the pan and I waited for my interview with the original storyteller.

I had seen the mistakes made by Odysseus in his trip up here, so I had ChatGPT generate a sign for me that said “For The Original Storyteller” in Ancient Ionic and Aeolic Greek, and placed the sign gently on the ram’s bloodstained horns. I had to shoo away a number of greedy pretenders. Virgil made a strong case and I was almost taken in by Hesiod, but I kept them all away. Finally, he approached. Nothing was going to stop me from getting this story.

As Homer stooped to sip the blood, I spoke my prepared speech:

O greatest bard, I ask thee now to sit

And watch a great retelling of the great

Odysseus, your greatest, boldest, Hero,

Directed by that Christopher of famed

House Nolan, he a mighty storyteller

Who’s sung of dreams, of stars, of magic men,

And of whatever Tenet was about.

Wilt thou recline and watch this film with me?

“You know I’m blind, right?” The right corner of his lips tightened into a smirk and he almost seemed to look through me. I couldn’t speak—my heart was a boiling storm of rage, disappointment, and confusion. Had I done all this for nothing?

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Disclaimer: None of this review will make sense without at least a slight working knowledge of Avatar: The Last Airbender. If you haven’t seen it, Run, don’t walk, and enjoy an amazing thing.

“I know you’re not supposed to cry over spilled tea, but... it’s just so sad.”-Uncle Iroh

Sigh.

Listen. I went into this with an open mind.

I’ve dressed up as Katara for Halloween. I own a Momo plushie. I love the original series. And Avatar Studios made their debut film as a continuation thereof, promising that it was made by true fans, for true fans. So here we are. The intention is to set aside my powerful bias and talk about the movie qua movie. And the intention is also to not bring up The Legend of Korra, the Shyamalan war crime film, or the live action series at all (Though these have all hurt me). I went into Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender with hope, because I understood that it was made by people who loved the original series, and wanted to make something that held up to its predecessor. And I believed in them. Uncle Iroh would want me to.

To set the scene, this film takes place 13 years following the events of the Avatar: The Last Airbender finale. The gang are all young adults, bettering the world in their respective roles, and doing very well at healing a wounded world. But Avatar Aang falls into a quarter-life crisis (happens to us all) about how he is the last airbender and sole keeper of his culture. But! Then he encounters a mysterious other airbender. And a mysterious artifact. And a mysterious group of non-benders with mysterious nefarious intent. So he must reunite the familiar faces of Katara, Sokka, Zuko, and Toph to save the world yet again. And so the stage is set.

It is considered polite when giving one’s critiques to present them as a compliment sandwich: Good, Not-so-good, Good.

The Good Stuff:

The nostalgia hits right away. The theme music from the original series starts up in the opening scenes and you are in, baby. You are on board. You are ready to go, yip-yip!

The visuals are fairly spectacular. Avatar Studios shook up the animation a bit, adding texture and color that was dazzling in certain scenes. It was beautiful, it was exciting. The motion and the composition was visually interesting, and the scale of the world they created was enormous. They were also fearless in the action sequences, creating some incredibly inventive scenarios that were really fun, actually. (Like throwing an airbender into a tornado. Amazing.) The fight scenes were epic, the stakes were high, and the story beats were exciting.

And I’ve got to give it this - it was a tight plot. So tight in fact, that we are now going to gracefully segue into….

The Bad.

If the visuals were the shining star, it came at the steep cost of everything else. Truly, truly, I think this film would have worked if it was a series of episodes. Then at least we could have learned ANY of the supporting characters’ names. And motivations. And reasons to care about them. Perhaps then we could have a plot that didn’t feel like someone picked up pieces from the cutting room floor and then put it on 2x speed. Perhaps then Zuko would have had more than 4 lines in the whole movie, and perhaps Katara would have had more to do then say “But Aang, you’re the Avatar” and hug him in a tragic manner several times. In watching this film you can tell that there was so much more that was supposed to be in it. There were so many scenes that you could feel the absence of, conversations that you can tell were cut to squeeze in another fight scene, and consequences that just never get shown. What we are left with is a breakneck-paced action sequence extravaganza that feels incomplete as a film, but really impressive as a list of ideas on paper.

Also, though I think they did a really good job aging the characters up, it seemed as though they couldn’t decide if they actually wanted the characters to be perceived as adults. What this resulted in was a weird amount of scenes where the characters were looking like Vogue models but acting like the young version of themselves. It was odd, especially since this film has a heavier and more mature tone.

In prioritizing the look of the film, the story and dialogue got beaten up in a dark alley and left for dead. Exposition was, to put it kindly, heavy-handed, and yet somehow, simultaneously, the voice actors were left fighting for their lives with the most repetitive, robotic simple sentences ever gleaned from a Duolingo prompt. Some of that could be forgiven if the essence of the characters remained, if not intact, at least recognizable. And to that end, we gracefully segue back into…

More Good:

They absolutely nailed the facial expressions of the characters. Sokka was spot-on. Toph was exactly the way she should be. The continuity of the world was there. There were moments of heart and charm that convinced me that this was not a mere cash grab taking advantage of a successful franchise, but rather a true passion project that unfortunately had a troubled production and was forced to make compromises. There were subtle and not-so-suble nods to the original series that made me happy. There was a frankly bizarre Spirit World sequence that did not make me happy. We can’t win them all. But we can keep trying, and strive to keep the standards high.

The original series was an amazing show. It was light, it was funny, it was creative, heartfelt, and sometimes deeply profound. It could make a stupid joke as easily as it could make a grown adult cry. And it has proven itself an exceptionally difficult act to follow. But this is what inevitably happens. The stuff we love gets blitzed in a blender and served to us in fresh new ways, because “fresh” and “new” is exactly what a crowd craving nostalgia wants….. right?

While I deeply appreciate that this film is not the worst of the indignities The Last Airbender has suffered, it didn’t do it for me. But I hope it inspires thousands to watch or rewatch the original series. It’s immediately what I started doing after finishing the film, and it made everything better.

What’s funny about Days of Heaven is that it is in many ways a remake of Malick’s previous film, Badlands.

Both films follow a young couple who flee after the man (in this case, Richard Gere) commits murder. However, unlike Badlands, this is not based on a true story, and the murder was an accident.

Thus begin the comparisons to the Book of Exodus, and the Steinbeckian influence of The Book of Genesis on the next three decades of Malick’s work.

“Whatever Cathy may have been, she set off the glory in Adam. His spirit rose flying and released him from fear and bitterness and rancid memories. The glory lights up the world and changes it the way a star shell changes a battleground.” (East of Eden by John Steinbeck, Chapter 13, Section 2)

“I went to work in the mill. Couldn't wait to get in there. Begin at 7:00. Got to have a smile on your face. And one day you wake up, you find you're not the smartest guy in the world. Never gonna come up with the big score. When I was growin' up, I thought I really would.” - Bill (Richard Gere), Days of Heaven

On January 17, 1917, Emil Avimalg Malick was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, not far from New York City.

Baptized a Presbyterian, he grew up a strong, capable boy, who excelled at everything he touched, including becoming an accomplished pianist and organist.

Five years prior, Irene Thompson was born to a large Irish Catholic family that lived on farmland not far from Chicago, where she was destined to meet Emil Malick. They married on June 26, 1942, moving to Alexandria, Virginia during a very tumultuous period for the nation.

Prior to the move, Malick had enlisted in the Navy as an officer, before being moved to the Power Plant Division of the Bureau of Aeronautics in Washington D.C. However, he continued his passion for music, helping support his family with recitals featuring a range of music from “the Londonderry Air to J.S. Bach”.1

These were the parents of Terrence Frederick Malick, born on a Tuesday, November 30, 1943 in Ottawa, Illinois: Irene wanted to be home near her family’s farmland for the birth of their first child.

Terrence would eventually come to live the majority of his adolescent life in the suburbs of Waco, Texas, but at heart his roots were planted in the soil of American Midwest farmland.

Malick was sent to boarding school in the fall of 1955, 110 miles away from his family in Waco at St. Stephen’s Episcopal High School, near Austin.

Here lay the roots of Days of Heaven, as quoted in Malick’s last-ever recorded interview given in 1979:

It was in Austin, Texas that I had the idea for ‘Days of Heaven.’ I found myself alone for a summer in the town I had left when I was a high school student. There were those green, undulating hills, and the very beautiful Colorado river. The place is inspired. It is inspiring, and there the film came to me all together. It would be difficult for me to make a film about contemporary America today. We live in such dark times and we have gradually lost our open spaces. We always had hope, the illusion that there was a place where we could live, where one could emigrate and go even further. Wilderness, this is the place where everything seems possible, where solidarity exists—and justice—where the virtues are somehow linked to this justice. In the region where I grew up, everyone felt it in a very strong way. This sense of space disappearing, we nevertheless can find it in cinema, which will pass it on to us There is so much to do: it’s as if we were on the Mississippi Territory, in the eighteenth century. For an hour, or for two days, or longer, these films can enable small changes of heart, changes that mean the same thing: to live better and to love more. And even an old movie in poor and beaten condition and can give us that. What else is there to ask for?

Malick gives what I would call a pretty atypical answer for that younger period of his life. I think, if asked now about his inspiration for Days of Heaven, he would see that it’s a lot more autobiographical than it lets on.

There is a recurring kind of character in Malick’s films, typified first by Martin Sheen’s stoic murderer Kit in Badlands. We’ll call him the Wild Man. In Badlands, Sissy Spacek’s Holly chooses to be with the Wild Man over the Good Man, her father, who sees the evil in Kit and refuses to let his daughter be with him, before Kit kills him.

The Good Man is less of a risk-taker than the Wild Man, and is only drawn out by the appearance of the Woman.

In The Thin Red Line, a whole mix of these two kinds of men are pitted against each other amongst the American Forces in Japan in World War II, with Jim Caviezel’s Pvt. Witt representing the Good Man and Sean Penn’s 1st Sgt. Welsh the Wild. In The New World, Pocahontas must choose between the Colin Farrell’s ex-mercenary John Smith and Christian Bale’s English farmer John Rolfe.

In The Tree of Life, the Woman melds with the Good Man in the form of the protagonist’s mother, Mrs. O’Brien, played by Jessica Chastain, and the Wild Man is characterized by Mr. O’Brien, played by Brad Pitt. Young Jack (Hunter McCracken) must choose whose moral exemplar he must follow. (The name “O’Brien” was chosen for the family after Malick’s maternal Irish grandmother, Katherine “Kitty” O’Brien, a version of whom is actually portrayed in Tree of Life briefly by Fiona Shaw.)

In Days of Heaven, after fleeing from Chicago into the American heartland of the Texas Panhandle (although the film was primarily shot in Alberta, Canada) Bill (Gere), his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams), and his younger sister Linda (Linda Manz) must start a new life working on the land of a wealthy farmer (Sam Shepard, whose character is never named).

Bill and Abby keep their relationship a secret, telling the many other workers they encounter that they are brother and sister to avoid any suspicion. The rich Farmer, who is far more shy than the wild Bill, begins to take a liking to Abby; however, he also finds out that he only has one year to live from his doctor from a terminal illness.

One thing leads to another, and soon the newly motivated Farmer, aroused by his short lease on life, asks for Abby’s hand in marriage. Abby, shocked, asks Bill what to do, and he tells her to accept, knowing full well that the Farmer will die within a year and they can inherit his wealth. Abby, though conflicted, accepts.

Bill, Abby, Linda, and the Farmer all end up living in a twisted Eden, living an isolated but happy life, until the Farmer begins to pick up that Bill and Abby may not exactly be brother and sister.

Throwing another wrench into the situation, Abby begins to fall deeply in love with her husband despite her continued, secret faithfulness to Bill. And from there, everything begins to crumble.

Bill’s murder back in Chicago of a foreman— a tussle that didn’t mean to get that far— still marked him just as Cain’s murder of Abel did, and the entire movie sees him on the run. He gets a way out- living off the land as a simple farmhand— but eschews it for a sick, twisted will-inheriting scheme that eventually sets him on the run yet again.

But beyond simply being a meditation on Genesis, there’s something more here which I didn’t even realize until I sat down to begin this essay.

The young couple flee from their native Chicago to the Texas Panhandle to begin a new life, essentially raising Linda as their child.

Days of Heaven went through a famously tumultuous production that resulted in Terrence Malick disappearing for twenty years, however that story would take up an entire other essay. What’s important to know from it is that Malick ended up making the decision in post-production— when the cut wasn’t working— to add voice-over from Linda to tie the story together. Large swaths of dialogue (which can be found in the original script) were cut and the movie focused more on visuals.

Linda suddenly became the protagonist— all of the events were viewed through her young, but already slightly jaded eyes, with the voice-over giving us her thoughts on her brother, God, and life itself.

What I didn’t realize until my second rewatch is that Linda is Malick, swept up from a life in Chicago he barely knew to Texas, with his Wild Man father and a mother who wanted more than anything to be seen as Good.

Without spoiling what exactly happens to the characters at the end of the film, the last shot of the movie is Linda following her friend along some train tracks, played by Jackie Shultis, after running away from her Texas boarding school, as we hear Linda muse:

“This girl, she didn't know where she was goin' or what she was gonna do. She didn't have no money on her. Maybe she'd meet up with a character. I was hopin' things would work out for her. She was a good friend of mine.”

Ellen Page is the perfect person to play Sinon, and a Catholic should be deeply excited by Nolan’s casting and writing of this character, rather than apprehensive or worried about the film being “woke”.

Let me explain.

In Matthew 13, Jesus’ disciples ask him why he teaches in parables. Christ answers them in a rather cryptic fashion: “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given…This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand…But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.” Christ frames his decision to teach in parables as a way to speak to those ready to listen while those who have closed their eyes and ears to the Gospel may not even realize a message is present.

By casting Ellen Page, a woman who has surgically altered her body to pretend to be a man, as the character Sinon, Nolan gives us a parable for the transgender movement as a whole that, when properly understood, castigates our modern Western world for allowing the lies of transgenderism to contaminate our society and murder our children. Far from being some “woke” attempt to normalize or defend transgenderism, Nolan’s Odyssey reveals the tragedy of what this deeply evil movement has done to our children, and by casting Page in this role, Nolan signals the deeply Catholic underpinnings of his adaptation of The Odyssey.

Spoilers abound from here on out, for Nolan’s Odyssey in particular since it departs from the source material in crucial ways for my argument.

Also, when I use the pronoun “he”, I am referring to the character Sinon, and when I use the pronoun “she”, I am referring to the actress Ellen Page.

First, who is Sinon? The character does not appear in Homer’s Odyssey, but is a crucial character in the story of the end of the Trojan War, and he does appear in the Aeneid. He is the Greek soldier remaining on the beaches of Troy with the Trojan Horse, and he explains to the Trojans that the horse is an offering to Athena left by the departing Greeks to ensure fair winds home. Sinon has been consistently interpreted in the Western tradition as a symbol of deceit and treachery; Shakespeare uses him as a negative character comparison in several plays, and Dante places him among the fraudulent counselors in the 8th circle of Hell. Throughout most of the Western tradition, Sinon was not a sympathetic character.

In Nolan’s Odyssey, he is. Kind of. Nolan’s version of the character has something of a back story. When Odysseus left for Troy, he chose the men who would make up his army by lot. Antinous, one of Penelope’s future suitors, was chosen by lot to go but he bribed Sinon’s family to send Sinon, at the time not even a teenager, in his place. Although Odysseus saw through the ruse, he allowed Antinous to perpetrate this deception to prevent shame from coming on both Antinous’ and Sinon’s fathers. To cover up this shameful transaction, he brought a child into battle with him. Sinon fought by Odysseus’ side for ten years and was left to tell the Trojans that the Horse was a peace offering, but when they arrive they mercilessly kill him from afar with spears before he can speak. With his last breath, he gasps out that the horse is a gift for Athena, convincing the Trojans to bring the nefarious gift into the city. Through Sinon’s sacrifice and deception, the downfall of Troy is assured and the Greeks capture the city.

But Sinon’s story is not finished. When Odysseus visits Hades, Sinon comes and drinks of the sacrificial blood which allows him to speak. And when he does, it is revealed that Sinon the Deceiver is actually Sinon the Dupe. When Odysseus left Sinon on that beach, he knew the boy would die. Since dying men tell the truth, Odysseus deceived Sinon and let him believe the Trojan Horse really was nothing more than a peace offering. Odysseus let a child die for a lie that would bring down a civilization.

Is this not the story of transgender children? Before they are old enough to fully understand the weight of their actions, they are allowed, nay encouraged, to make decisions that will ruin their chance of a normal life. They are bought and sold by faithless adults, deceived and in turn repeating the deception while those who know better stand by silent to preserve their parents from social embarrassment. These children mutilate their own bodies but cannot convincingly “pass” as a member of their desired gender, even as Ellen Page does not convincingly fill out the armor of a Greek warrior. The armor is ill-fitting and seems designed to call attention to the fact that the person wearing it is not a man. And finally, as the deception begins to crumble around them, the same adults that encouraged or allowed this madness in the first place sacrifice these children on the altar of deception, allowing them to destroy their bodies and minds sometimes to the point of suicide rather than tell them the truth.

The parallels are striking. Throughout the film, Odysseus and the Greeks stand as an allegory for the destruction wrought on Western Civilization by its own sons in the last century. The Achaean cities are troubled by reports of the raiding Sea Peoples, whom Odysseus says will destroy civilization to the extent that even writing will be forgotten. He also reveals that the Sea Peoples are the Greek armies themselves, returning from war but unable to be at peace, plundering and destroying as they had trained themselves to do for ten long years outside the walls of Troy. Odysseus blames himself for breaking Zeus’ Law, deceiving the Trojans through an offering to the gods, making war using the instruments of peace. By breaking divine law, the gods have retreated from the Greeks, leaving chaos and destruction as their path.

So it is today. We have abandoned the Law of God, desecrating everything in our path and becoming the agents of our own destruction. Even those of us who were well-meaning share a great deal of the blame for going along with the deception and sacrilege for a share in the promised “progress”. One of the most visible and insane acts of civilizational self-deception we have propagated is the transgender movement, and so Nolan’s choice to cast one of Hollywood’s most visible victims of transgender ideology in this particular role is utterly fitting in the story he is trying to tell. Nolan is telling a story of our civilization in decline by returning to one of our foundational myths and making it an elegy for the West. In this context, his choice to cast Ellen Page in the role of Sinon is not only fitting; it is crucial to understanding Nolan’s deeper meaning. Could Nolan’s use of a transgender actress be itself a Trojan Horse, pretending to be an offering to the gods of woke while containing inside a truly subversive Christian message?

Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

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Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender (Paramount+) - July 25

Is it possible to make a good Avatar: The Last Airbender movie?

That’s what original series creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino hope to do with this new film that was originally supposed to come out in theaters last year.

The film actually leaked in its entirety earlier this year, either by hackers or people who worked on the film who were frustrated by its mangled release. However, I may or may not have seen a clip that leaked and I will say…it looks pretty true to the spirit of the original animated series.

I can’t say for sure, but I’m excited to check this one out (legally) when it drops.

Next up, one of the big theatrical surprises of this year that we wrote about, coming this Wednesday to Prime Video…

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“Nolan’s Most Christian Film to Date?” by Joe Wilson

Christopher Nolan's latest film has been accompanied (at least in conservative circles) by no small amount of pre-release controversy, ranging from the casting to the lackluster dialogue featured in the trailers to some strange press tour comments by the cast. It turns out that the film itself is one of the least controversial blockbusters released in recent years; certainly less "problematic" than Nolan's last film, 2023's Oppenheimer. Nolan takes The Odyssey, a story deeply ingrained in the Western psyche, and gives it a loving, largely faithful adaptation to the big screen. Almost all of the story beats of the epic poem are here, and the supernatural elements are treated with awe and reverence rather than shoddily cut out (looking at you, Troy).

It’s almost unnecessary to say that from a filmmaking perspective, Nolan directs with a panache unequaled by any other director of his generation. The cinematography is breathtaking, and Nolan’s commitment to practical filmmaking techniques give certain sequences a visceral quality seldom felt in modern Hollywood. The performances are all generally pretty good, though none stand out as excellent or Oscar worthy except for Samantha Morton’s Circe. It’s a very typical Nolan cast, pace the critics, and he gets the same quality of performance from them that he’s gotten in the past. His trademark non-linear approach to time is tailor-made to adapt ‘The Odyssey’, with its separate timelines, in medias res structure, and multiple story-within-a-story sections.

Overall its a very solid film and a good adaptation of its source material; better could probably be done, but it’s nothing like the fear-mongering that was peddled by content-hungry podcasters and the conservative ecosystem more willing to tear down than build. It’s not the best film in Nolan’s filmography, but it is the closest thing we’ve gotten to a true epic in decades, and I encourage our readers to check it out in theaters.

There are, to be sure, flaws in the film. The dialogue is all very modern in its idiom, which distracts from the epic grandeur of the cinematography and subject matter. This film aspires to be Ben-Hur or Lawrence of Arabia; visually, it comes close but in its dialogue it is more akin to a recent Spider-Man film. Nolan’s best dialogue was in films he co-wrote with his brother Jonathan, and I believe that this film is missing Jonathan’s touch badly. That being said, it’s not distractingly awful like, say, a Disney Star Wars script, and conveys the meaning of the story well enough for a wide 2020s American audience.

I also did not like Nolan’s approach to Penelope, whom he wrote as very human whereas the poem characterizes her as almost saint-like in her patience and faithfulness. Her relationship with Telemachus was fraught at times, though her genuine love does shine through, and although Anne Hathaway gives the performance her all I missed the gentle, strong, feminine Penelope of the original.

Much could be said about the themes of the film and the fact that Nolan seems to actually be trying to “say something” with The Odyssey, something he has rarely done in his filmography. Much of that discussion would drift into spoiler territory, so perhaps it is better saved for a different forum. However, I do believe that it is deeply Christian in its outlook; perhaps Nolan’s most Christian film to date. Ultimately the fears that this would be a “woke” film or a sacrilegious butchery of a foundational Western text are unfounded. Indeed, by using some of these confusing counter-signals in the casting and marketing, Nolan may be trying to signal a deeper message about the decline of Western civilization. My theory that Nolan’s worldview is, above all, deeply rooted in his boyhood Catholicism continues to be vindicated. I’ll be going back a second time; I encourage all of you to at least give it a shot with an open mind.

“An Ancient Story with Modern Problems” by Charlie Scott

I have a complicated relationship with this film, coming up to its release. I went from perhaps the film's biggest fan, to being so disinterested I almost didn't even want to see it, only at the end to have my hopes raised again to be somewhere in between. Well after millions of feet of IMAX footage and months of disastrous press touring from the cast and from Nolan himself, I have finally seen The Odyssey and can say that it is just okay.

Perhaps the biggest pro of this film is that it will undoubtedly get millions of people to read this classic. It in fact inspired me to read it before the film came out, and I can confidently say that I am absolutely in love with it. I had bought graphic novels and Fitzgerald translations in the hopes of teaching it to my students next year, and after reading the Fagles translation I could not be more excited to embark on the journey with my students.

Nolan did an excellent job with picking Penelope and Odysseus' actors, as well as the incredible special effects. He had scenes where he displayed his full brilliance in amazing scenes of horror and awe, and set up some pretty solid sentimental moments. Nolan even explores newterritory by delving into the guilt of how the Achaeans conducted themselves during the fall of Troy (an incident that is extensively covered in ‘The Aeneid’). The film is overall well shot (except the final fight with the suitors was quite hard to see at times), and while it was quality it wasn't quite up to the level of Oppenheimer.

With all of these pros, however, there are some MASSIVE flaws with the film that will keep it from being Nolan's best in the long run. Without a doubt the worst part of this film is the costumes and dialogue. These two aspects together prevented me from hardly ever feeling immersed in this massive 3-hour run time. I was wrong to think that the accents wouldn't bother me, but it turns out that they did. These two things paired with some highly questionable casting decisions led to a tale that hardly felt like it had anything to do with Greece. Multiple highly unnecessary F-bombs are dropped that totally shatter any and all hopes of immersion, including one moment where an African-American shoves Odysseus and exclaims “F*** off”, that had more in common with downtown Chicago than anything that's ever happened within a thousand miles of the Aegean Sea. Time after time the drawing and clunky dialogue would remind me that I'm watching a modern interpretation of The Odyssey, rather than a faithful adaptation.

From the casting of Page and the affirmations of her new gender, to Penelope's hyper modern mini rant about her problems that “only men” can hold the throne, to Jon Bernthal (who is a good actor) pretty much playing a mobster or The Punisher instead of a Spartan King, all of these things added up to prevent me from enjoying it as much as I wanted to. The costumes are always abhorrent, with most of them looking cheap, none of them historically accurate, and the only one that had any effort put into it looks like a Batman costume (Agamemnon).

While Nolan has flashes of great brilliance in the Cyclops scene and the Circe body horror scene, I can't help but feel that these are two of the best scenes mostly because they are the most fleshed out. I am aware that they shot way more footage than was used in the film, and I can't help but think that there is an 8-hour cut of this film existing somewhere that had to be edited down to three. There are numerous good scenes that are cut short and lose their emotional impact because we are only permitted to stay a minute or two at the absolute maximum. One of my favorite scenes from the original story was the moment where Argos and Odysseus finally meet, and the two share an intimate moment as he is the only one who recognizes his master. This moment is given perhaps five seconds, and is used to bypass the dramatic revelation that Odysseus has to Telemachus.

Nolan's Odyssey acts as a CliffsNotes summary of Homer, capturing most of the major details but grazing over any of the finer details, and it shows in some of the character choices. Telemachus, for example, has far less agency and is far less capable than the original. The bad female characters of the original epic are given practically total absolution of any and all evil that they've done. Calypso's highly predatory and deeply unsettling behavior from the original is borderline justified by the film, as she just took care of him, grew to love him, and didn't want him to leave necessarily but was fine to let him go on his own. The unfaithful maids of Odysseus’s house suffer no consequences for their treachery or behavior, despite them being just as complacent in the suitors' plot as the suitors themselves. Instead any guilt within this reimagining is burdened on the men, whereas it seems women can do no wrong. Even Helen of Troy is given a bizarre dynamic with her husband Menalaus, where the film hints that she either ran away with Paris of her own free will or wasn't grateful to be back home. Even Clytemnestra is given total absolution for her actions. This move no doubt has something to do with it being based on the Emily Wilson translation.

I know this is a lot and I could go on about the things I enjoyed and the things I didn't, but at the end of the day I can't say that it's a great adaptation of the Odyssey. This could improve on a second viewing (which I am planning on) or an Extended Cut, and overall is worth seeing in theaters, but I can't endorse it on faithfulness to the source material. As a film it mostly works (and will probably be a little better on rewatch), but as an Odyssey adaptation it doesn't work as well.

P.S. - The giants scene should have been cut; it felt like Monty Python and Holy Grail.

‘The Gospel Hidden in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey’ by Jack Morgan

In July 2023, Christopher Nolan released his twelfth feature film, Oppenheimer, to resounding success. It was nominated for 13 Academy Awards and won 7, securing his first-ever victories for Best Director and Best Picture. It was his magnum opus and hailed as the crowning achievement of his career. The themes of guilt, responsibility, and the consequences of hubris explored in Oppenheimer are among the most profound in Nolan’s storied career.

After Oppenheimer amassed $976.7 million at the box office and had its remarkable award season success, all eyes turned towards his future: what was next for the defining director of the 21st century? What mountains were left for him to climb? What stories were left for him to tell? How could he possibly follow up, duplicate, or even come close to the success and critical acclaim of Oppenheimer?

It took a year and a half before Nolan and Universal Pictures announced that his next project, and thirteenth feature film, would be The Odyssey. He was going to adapt a story that Hollywood had, for decades, deemed unadaptable: a 2,800-year-old epic. Nolan has revealed in the past few weeks on his press tour that this is the movie he has always wanted to make. It is the project that his entire career has been building towards.

After seeing it, I can confidently say The Odyssey is an unequivocal triumph. It is a remarkable meditation on responsibility, atonement, remembrance, and faith. Rather than deconstructing one of the founding texts of our Western canon, Nolan’s adaptation of ‘The Odyssey’ was crafted with deep respect and reverence for the source material. A story of the return of the father, the elevation of the son, and the vanquishing of evil.

Still, all adaptations will have differences from their source, and the greatest tweak Nolan makes is to the character of Odysseus. The changes are sensational and deeply moral and appear to reflect the enduring influence of the Christian worldview that shaped his upbringing as a Catholic schoolboy in England. Unlike Homer’s Odysseus, Nolan’s Odysseus is not a prideful man nor a womanizer. He is rather a man of deep integrity and honor, plagued with guilt after living through the unintended consequences of his victory in the Trojan War. A victory he secured through deception and the breaking of Zeus’s Law: the reigning moral code of his day.

Nolan captures something deeply true in his portrayal of Odysseus: even the greatest of men are fallible, capable of immense good and immense evil, often despite their intentions. Greatness, according to The Odyssey, is thus not the possession of an abstract heroic ideal but the lifelong pursuit of virtue despite one’s own failures. Integrity does not mean perfection. What distinguishes the truly great man is not a spotless soul but a persistent desire to atone for his sins, to restore order where he has sown disorder, and to accept responsibility for bringing good into the world while confronting the evil within himself.

In Nolan’s Odyssey, it becomes clear that Odysseus survives not because he is the strongest man, but because he is the kind of man who refuses to surrender to his failures. He is sustained by his sense of honor, his willingness to bear responsibility, and his unrelenting desire for the good. Like every man, he stumbles. Unlike many, he gets back up.

It is in The Odyssey, then, that Christopher Nolan’s Christian upbringing seems to haunt him most clearly. The questions he wrestles with and the themes he returns to could only emerge from the fertile earth of a deeply Christian imagination. His Odysseus is a man burdened by grief and guilt who deliberately chooses the path of repentance, exchanging the warrior’s armor that defines the film’s first two acts for something more akin to a monk’s cowl in the third; a third act which reaches its climax in a scene of confession, where Odysseus recounts his guilt and sins through a screen—a clear homage to the ancient Christian practice of confessing one’s sins to a member of the presbyterate. The most ingenious stroke of Nolan’s adaptation, however, is embodied in the track “Another Name” from the film’s score. The scene it accompanies reveals that the admission of our faults, the acknowledgment of our sins, and the acceptance of responsibility for the harm we have done all serve a greater end: the restoration of communion. Compunction is not an end in itself but the fuel of the all-consuming flame of caritas. In this movement from repentance to communion lies the philosophical and theological heart of Nolan’s adaptation.

This is the key to understanding every scene on Calypso’s island, which serves as a home base and reference point for the whole film. Even while trapped in a mind-altering haze, Odysseus continues to long for something beyond the shores of her island. That longing is not merely for Ithaca but for reconciliation—with his home, with those he loves, and ultimately with the man he is called to become. His desire to leave Calypso’s paradise is inseparable from his repentance.

The Odyssey is not without its flaws, but at its core, it is breathtaking—arguably the most spiritually resonant of Nolan’s films. It is a genuine spectacle, yet its greatest strength lies elsewhere. As the archetypal story of the return of the king, it carries the emotional weight necessary to do justice to one of the foundational themes of Western literature and, indeed, of every story that strives toward the good, the true, and the beautiful. It deserves to be seen in theaters, and more than once. Like Nolan’s best work, the film rewards repeated viewings, revealing new layers and connections each time. For me, The Odyssey is a 9.8/10 and immediately earns a place among my five favorite films of the 2020s.

As a little bonus, I want to shout out some of the standout performances from the film:

(For paid subscribers only)

I have already seen The Odyssey twice and will probably see it several more times before its theatrical run is over. I’m confident that in a few weeks, I’ll regret something I overlooked or failed to include in this review. But if you take only one thing away from it, let it be this: if you weren’t already planning to see The Odyssey, make room for it on your summer to-do list. You won’t regret it.

In 1973, Terrence Malick began his career with one of the greatest directorial debuts of all time: Badlands. Using crowdfunding and his connections, Malick was able to create a dreamlike but somewhat disturbing portrayal of what true youthful impulsiveness looks like.

Badlands is loosely based off of the Starkweather homicides of 1957. It tells the story of Kit (Martin Sheen), a 25-year-old wannabe James Dean who ends up forming a strong bond with a 15 year old Holly (Sissy Spacek). Kit is predatory and relations between him and Holly are implied (extremely tasteful) before he kills Holly’s father and the two decide to run off together. This starts a long murder spree that takes us all the way through the beautiful American West.

Badlands is a remarkably reflective film. It takes its time to explore the consequences of impulsive behavior, and the fact that youth is typically drawn to this more so than others. Easily manipulated and prone to going where the wind takes them, Malick clearly shows the consequences of this in full and ugly detail. Kit can be seen or interpreted as a manifestation of the Devil. If you let him in just a little bit he will come in and take control and you will just be stuck in the passenger seat, as Holly is. She continuously sits by and goes “Eh, whatever” as Kit continues to escalate things and pull her in deeper and deeper. She is intrigued by him and somewhat frightened by him at times, but has no desire to stand up to him. Holley’s go-with-the-flow type behavior something that seems to be present in all young generations, and not per se exclusive to Gen Alpha.

The major enigma of this film is, however, Kit. Expertly played by Martin Sheen, this character is mysterious and acts in ways that sometimes seem illogical. It is very clear from the beginning that despite his charming charisma and perceived easygoing nature, he is the furthest thing from that. The greaser archetype of the 1950s certainly had a reputation for being violent and disruptive, but Kit takes this to a whole new level, probably to its most extreme limit. The film presents the idea of a greaser transitioning from a potentially violent and rebellious youth into a fully formed serial killer. This does track with the real Charles Starkweather, who killed 12 people in about the course of a month.

The biggest and most daunting question around the entire film is simple: Why? Why kill all these people? Why run around? Why end things the way you choose to end them? The truth is that there aren’t easy answers to these questions. People under the effect of sin act illogically and unpredictably. God designed the universe to act in harmony, and that which is logical and moral is of God. When you depart from this, you separate yourself from Him.

Departing from these certainly is a demonstration of our own pride, which is a cornerstone of Kit’s character. Is most likely why he chooses to end things the way he does. His disturbing notion that his reasons for the killings were “just something to do, I guess” is a clear manifestation of the warning St. Paul gave us in Philippians 4:8

The idle mind is the Devil’s playground.

Badlands carries a dream-like feel to it that dulls the violence but nevertheless acts in a hypnotic manner. Right out of the gate, Malick demonstrates his unusual style of heavy voiceovers and beautiful shot composition. Shockingly enough, he went through three different cinematographers over the course of shooting. The first one quit halfway through because he could not stand his unorthodox method of shooting, and the second one filled in until an official replacement could be found in the third. Despite all of these changes, Badlands is seamless and its imagery and style, showing that the true man with the vision was in fact Malick.

There is a distinct benefit to voice over in all of his films. They give us a very intimate view of his characters and an insight into the internal monologue. These internal monologues often give us unique insight into the characters and are super in-depth, meaning that they are not overkill or wasted moments. None of Badlands is wasted, and it is a highly efficient and well paced film with no fat. Sissy Spacek for being as young as she is, absolutely crushes every monologue she’s given, and was perfectly casted to play Holly. Martin Sheen of course steals the show; it feels every much of this character as an actor could possibly hope for.

Badlands is a cautionary tale against bad influences, impulsive behavior, and spiritual lethargy. It bases itself off of real life events to deconstruct the greaser archetype and so the ocean that a man who acts violently is someone to be sought after, but rather someone to be avoided. It’s a strong warning against going with the flow and it’s a call to arms to have a strong base so as not to be swept off by the whims of the devil.

(This article was written in May of this year)

When this site’s editors asked me to write a preview for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming Odyssey adaptation back in January, I agreed without much hesitation. After all, it seemed like an easy enough task: I respect much of Nolan’s work as a director, and the Odyssey is one of my very favorite classical texts. But I knew I would be unable to write the preview until the spring semester ended. So I shelved the project, focused on my academic work, tuned out, and waited for May.

A lot can change over the course of the semester, as it turns out. First came the casting rumors, and then the trailer, and – after that – the deluge. Incendiary YouTube videos attacking Nolan’s film have racked up millions of views; prestige media outlets like the Atlantic rallied to its defense; even Elon Musk has waded into the fray. Given that Nolan’s Odyssey has become the film that launched a billion clicks, and the subject of a feud between the world’s richest man and (arguably) its most famous director, what more can a simple literature teacher hope to add?

Quite a lot, as it turns out.

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In the wake of Gladiator’s box office triumphs and Oscar glory at the start of the New Millennium, studios across Hollywood rushed to get their own “swords and sandals” historical epics in theaters. It was the 1950s writ anew, as studio heads fast-tracked new films tackling everything from the Crusades to Alexander the Great (the less said about the Alexander one, the better). Only Zack Snyder’s 300, released at the very tail end of the 2000s, seemed to gain a cultural foothold in a similar way to Gladiator, but the new age of Hollywood historical epics quietly segued to superhero films, not to be seen again — until 2026’s The Odyssey.

Christopher Nolan’s hotly anticipated take on one of Homer’s foundational texts isn’t Hollywood’s first attempt at Homer — not even its first attempt this century. In the midst of that aforementioned swords and sandals heyday of the first decade of the 21^st century, Warner Bros. put into production a retelling of Homer’s The Iliad, hiring German filmmaker Wolfgang Peterson to develop it.

If you may indulge me a fun bit of history up front here. During production, Peterson pulled out when given the opportunity to reboot the Batman franchise, and Warner Bros. turned to one of its hottest up and coming filmmakers to take over: none other than Nolan. When Peterson ultimately returned to develop his Iliad film after all, Warner Bros. gave Nolan the Batman franchise as a consolation prize. Over twenty years later, I think you can safely determine who got the better end of the deal.

All of Peterson’s hard work resulted in 2004’s Troy: a box office hit, if not a critical one. More than 20 years after its release, Troy has started to receive a cultural reclamation, prompted likely by the tweets of the world’s richest man earlier this year. As the world prepares for The Odyssey, now is the best time to ask the question: does Troy deserve a second look?

The short answer is no…and yes.

Troy moves beyond Homer’s text to retell the entirety of the legend of the Trojan War. For those needing a bit of backstory from their college English course days: the Greek army of Agamemnon of Mycenae and his brother, Menelaus of Sparta, attack the city of Troy after Trojan prince Paris absconds with Helen, wife of Menelaus. Fighting with the Greeks is legendary hero Achilles, while Paris’ brother, Hector, leads the Trojan army.

If that description sounds overly simplified, that’s purposeful — the movie itself, in its rush to retell the Trojan War in under three-hours, overly simplifies the entirety of Homer’s tale, particularly harming its first half. We the audience are never given a good reason why Helen would run off with Paris beyond lust for her Trojan prince and disgust at her Spartan spouse. When this action is the instigator for everything that follows, failing to buy it makes what comes next closer to empty spectacle rather than riveting Greek tragedy.

The further choice to sideline the Greek gods that are deeply important to Homer’s text in favor of a more grounded, agnostic approach takes away much of the text’s mythic power, resulting in an epic that can feel stuck in action movie cliches rather than a deeply moving drama.

The key portrayals of Achilles and Hector, played by Brad Pitt and Eric Bana respectively, are done broadly right, if again simplified. Achilles, a demigod in Homer’s myth, is a brooding action star here, while Hector receives a more sympathetic take. These choices — laid more at the feet of the screenwriter, David Benioff (one half of the Game of Thrones adaptational duo), and director Peterson — result, again, in a first half that is a struggle to connect with emotionally.

It is truly not until late in the film, during a scene where Peter O’Toole’s King Priam of Troy visits Achilles in his tent, that the film comes alive in a startling way. That scene — easily the best of the movie — is so filled with drama and nuance that you almost forget the lack of emotional connection that came before. If the rest of the movie had this emotional heft and patience, it would be a far different enterprise. But Troy fails to convince us of the central reason why this war must happen. It fails to make us care about the fates of Paris and of Helen. In fact, it seems to despise them, as much as it despises the gods that dominated this ancient world.

And yet. Troy still offers rewards within its lengthy runtime. All $185 million of its budget is on the screen, with the costumes, the sets, and all the movie stars making the film nothing short of a spectacle to behold at all times. The battle scenes at the walls of Troy are arresting — especially the fight between Achilles and Hector that starts the film’s third act. What follows, including the showstopping scene between Achilles and Priam, is the best of the film. The Trojan Horse being pulled into the city and sack of Troy that follows are both filled with compelling visuals — not to mention Sean Bean’s entertaining turn as Odysseus, easily one of the film’s highlights.

As the film finally reaches its conclusion, the entertainment value on display cannot be denied. But what lies underneath that sheen is what ultimately frustrates.

Again and again, Achilles tells other characters in the film that what matters most are the actions we make here and now — not what comes in the next life. That obsession with having your name remembered, with leaving a legacy that will be remembered for thousands of years, is what matters most in this version of that ancient world. Whether that be a familial legacy or a cultural one, the earthly actions of these characters matter far more than what is to come in eternity. That alone is a remarkable contrast to another historical epic’s main theme that had been uttered on posters, in trailers, and on the movie’s cover art just four years prior (love you, Gladiator).

This deliberate choice to rob the original text of the magic and piety that helped define it makes Troy not a mythic epic but instead simply a Hollywood action picture — an admittedly gorgeous one, that being said. Taken on those terms, it is an often entertaining time, at least in its second half. But knowing its source material and the corners it chooses to cut in favor of action over character, Troy fails to live up to the legacy it so clearly is most concerned with.

Hopefully the next attempt at a Homerian epic better fulfills the promises Troy attempted to make over two decades ago.

Welcome back to “What’s Good on Streaming”; aiming to showcase what’s actually good from your streaming subscriptions! This is an exclusive for paid subscribers, so if you want to check out the rest of the list and see what’s good each week, consider joining our paid tier!

Obsession (Peacock) - July 17

The movie that if you haven’t yet seen, you’ve definitely had a friend or two rave about (or at least talk about how disturbed they were). It’s Bishop Barron-recommended, and my friend Eddie wrote a great review of it for this site that you should check out. Just please go in with the expectations that, yes, this is a horror movie! I pre-ordered the 4K disc and am excited to finally check it out.

And next up, one of the sleeper hits of 2023 that’s getting a highly-anticipated sequel later this year, which just dropped on Netflix today…

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Never has there been someone so mysterious in the world of cinema as Terrance Malick. A man shrouded in mystery who practically never does interviews, does not allow cameras on his sets, or lets people into his creative process, Terrence Malick is the most private man working in the film industry today. Despite all the secrecy, Malick is perhaps the greatest Christian filmmaker working today and should be the gold standard by which others are measured.

While Malick’s Christian faith is undeniable, what denomination he subscribes to is quite elusive. He was born into a split-faith household and seemed to be much closer to his Catholic mother than his Episcopal father ( at least as seen through his films). Malick’s academic career is almost as impressive as his filmography. He would go on to attend an Episcopal School and then Harvard, where he would graduate with a degree in philosophy and receive the Rhodes Scholarship. At Oxford, he was responsible for translating Heidegger’s The Essence of Reason into English. He would come just short of getting his doctorate from Oxford due to a major dispute he had with his advisor over Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein (all highly dense philosophical reading). Returning to the US, he taught philosophy at MIT and freelance wrote until he decided to become a filmmaker.

Terrence Malick would start strong using his newfound connections at the AFI Conservatory with Badlands and Days of Heaven. From the very beginning, he demonstrated a unique and dreamlike style that would only become more pronounced as his career continued. His stunning sense of imagery was quite pronounced, especially with Days of Heaven, as well as his rather unorthodox style of filmmaking. He would end up suddenly taking a 20-year hiatus from filmmaking before his triumphant return in The Thin Red Line. From then on, Malick would continue to make profound films until the present, with his upcoming Jesus film, The Way of the Wind, still in editing 6 years after filming wrapped with no end in sight.

Profound and contemplative are the best ways to describe the art of Terrence Malick. Every question under the sun is asked over the course of every film he has made, and not always provide answers. At the core of all of it is Christianity. Christianity is the cornerstone of all his films, even if it is sometimes discreet. His films feel more Catholic than Evangelical because they offer a holistic view of the universe through faith and science, rather than being more issue-based. Not to mention his most recent film (A Hidden Life) being the story of a not particularly well-known blessed in the Catholic Church (Franz Jägerstätter). His approach to Christian filmmaking is far more impactful than stereotypical Christian films like God’s Not Dead (I apologize to fans of the film). Belief in Christ isn’t just placed on the surface and preached to the audience like a loud sermon, but baked into the very material of his films.

Malick is obsessed with people, places, and the interior monologue. All of his films are heavily voiced over and feature extensive photography of humans and settings. Rather than telling a straightforward story, he elects to convey complex thoughts, reflections, and ideas in a dreamlike style that is unmistakable. Nature is a constant and is captured in all of its stunning glory, with Days of Heaven in particular being maybe the most beautiful film ever shot. The beauty of God’s creation is on full display in every film and meditated on extensively. Mankind is something that is held sacred and revered in almost all of his films, and no life is ever lost without great contemplation. Life is something natural and sacred, the way things ought to be. Death is unnatural and a sign of our fallen nature and the broken world we live in. This fundamental understanding of how things were meant to be is one of the many things that separate a Malick film from others. In The Thin Red Line, when Jim Caviezel’s character is meditating on the destruction that mankind causes to the world, it avoids the toxic environmentalism of the modern era (that people are a poison that should be reduced), but instead offers a more grounded and Christian insight into how we were called to be tillers of the Earth yet subject to it, trying to establish a healthy balance.

Terrence Malick’s shooting style is considered highly unconventional, to the point where he is the only one who does it in this fashion. Rather than having a strict schedule of what to shoot and when based on a screenplay, he will just go out with the cast and crew and begin shooting all sorts of scenes that come to him. He may start with a highly detailed screenplay, but then start to heavily improvise shots and neglect the script. This typically leads to strain on the crew, as well as what may seem like excessive amounts of footage (The New World had over 1 million feet of 35mm film shot by the end). This style also accounts for the extended periods he spends editing his films, which usually take years.

There is something to be gained from seeing all of Terrence Malick’s films. Every single one of his films offers a profound and moving experience where something of value can be discerned or learned. All of his films are shot with a beauty and elegance that is often imitated but never quite perfected (Train Dreams is the closest and could be considered a spiritual addition to his filmography). The cinematography in a Malick film is something that you will remember and may even put as your wallpaper at some point. These gorgeous shots are always paired with some of the finest soundtracks and scores ever compiled. His most underrated trait as a filmmaker has always been his taste and choice of music. From James Newton Howard’s deeply moving score for A Hidden Life to the soundtrack of The Tree of Life that fits so well it could be a score, Malick’s taste in music, in my book, is impeccable. Casting is never an area of need as well, which is not surprising since most actors and actresses practically line up to be in his films whenever they enter production (see the casting section for The Thin Red Line).

Regardless if Terrence Malick ever ends up finishing The Way of the Wind, he has already made his impact on the world of cinema. No other filmmaker quite captures the interior monologue and reaches such profound levels as Malick. Every icon he creates using the art form stands as a challenging yet deeply rewarding jewel in the crown of Christian cinema.

Perhaps best described as the “American Tarkovsky”, the cinema of Terrence Malick is perhaps some of the most edifying visual media that a Catholic can take in, and something worth letting become a part of your soul.

This list proved to me that the 1960s was a better decade for film than I remembered. I always think of this period as simply being the “decade of musicals” but this was also the era that Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, and Stanley Kubrick were putting out some of their best work.

Check out the results below!

50. Yojimbo (dir. Akira Kurosawa)

49. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (dir. Stanley Kramer)

“The granddaddy of screwball comedies: a large-scale road trip/treasure hunt film with an underlying social commentary about the effects of greed on human nature. Boasting the best ensemble cast in Hollywood history, along with the most memorable (and daring) car chase sequences captured on film.”

48. Bonnie & Clyde (dir. Arthur Penn)

47. The Hustler (dir. Robert Rossen)

“More than just a standard sports drama, the film is an engaging morality play about the cost of ambition, acceptance of personal failure, and the drive for excellence in a young man’s quest for glory. The film is a must-see for its blend of free-form jazz, neo-noir cinematography, and tour-de-force performances.”

46. Z (dir. Costa-Gavras)

45. The Jungle Book (prod. Walt Disney)

44. Bullitt (dir. Peter Yates)

43. Goldfinger (dir. Guy Hamilton)

42. Where Eagles Dare (dir. Brian G. Hutton)

41. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (dir. John Ford)

40. True Grit (dir. Henry Hathaway)

39. The Manchurian Candidate (dir. John Frankenheimer)

“This quintessential political thriller/satire has effected every movie of its kind afterwards. Angela Lansbury, shockingly, plays one of the greatest villains of the movies.”

38. Becket (dir. Peter Glenville)

“Brilliantly written and acted, Becket memorably dramatizes the spiritual awakening and death of the English martyr.”

37. Doctor Zhivago (dir. David Lean)

36. Days of Wine and Roses (dir. Blake Edwards)

“Blake Edwards’ sobering depiction of a marriage torn by the cycle of addiction is an underrated masterpiece of kitchen-sink realism graced by the chameleon-like prowess of versatile comic actor Jack Lemmon, who balances polished wit with tragic pathos to deliver a hard-hitting performance for the ages.”

35. The Innocents (dir. Jack Clayton)

“One of the eeriest, coolest ghost stories out there. Shockingly modern in its horror ‘language’.”

34. The Miracle Worker (dir. Arthur Penn)

33. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (dir. Jacques Demy)

32. Night of the Living Dead (dir. George Romero)

31. Persona (dir. Ingmar Bergman)

“One of the most enigmatic art house films ever made, Persona touches on every topic and then some with care and intelligence.”

30. The Reluctant Saint (dir. Edward Dmytryk)

“The Reluctant Saint embodies humble Franciscan spirituality in just about every aspect: acting, production values, filmmaking technique, etc.”

29. The Magnificent Seven (dir. John Sturges)

28. A Fistful of Dollars (dir. Sergio Leone)

27. Oliver! (dir. Carol Reed)

26. The Longest Day (dir. Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki)

25. Lilies of the Field (dir. Ralph Nelson)

“One of the best Catholic movies ever and an all-time great performance from Poitier”

24. Cool Hand Luke (dir. Stuart Rosenberg)

“Paul Newman delivers one of the most iconic and spectacular performances in an anti authority film that shaped generations. Cool Hand Luke's iconic score and star studded cast all work together in one of the greatest films of the 1960s.”

23. The Music Man (dir. Morton DaCosta)

22. Once Upon a Time in the West (dir. Sergio Leone)

21. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (dir. George Roy Hill)

“From the era of countercultural cynicism comes the last great film about America’s treasured myth: the Old West. Ridiculously entertaining and exceptionally crafted, the film succeeds as both a tribute and a revisioning of the genre not only through the charismatic presence of its iconic leads, but also its brilliant, character-driven script, penned by the legendary William Goldman.”

20. A Hard Day’s Night (dir. Richard Lester)

“One cannot imagine the 1960s without The Beatles, as they were not only the decade’s most influential rock band, but also its biggest cultural touchstone. Richard Lester’s zany nouvelle vague mockumentary is a satisfying cinematic portrait of the Fab Four that will leave a cheeky grin on viewers’ faces with its dry humor, joyous music, and gorgeous cinematography.”

19. Harakiri (dir. Masaki Kobayashi)

“A masterpiece of world cinema, Harakiri is somber and highly rewatchable critique of the Bushido code and history. Mystery, action, and tragedy all surround this must see tale.”

18. The Apartment (dir. Billy Wilder)

“Part comedy, part drama, part romance, part satire; The Apartment is all this and more in one greatly entertaining package.”

17. Planet of the Apes (dir. Franklin J. Schaffner)

16. The Birds (dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

15. My Fair Lady (dir. George Cukor)

“The music and performances are simply irresistible. Also the colors: a quintessential ‘why can’t they make movies look like this nowadays’ movie.”

14. Charade (dir. Stanley Donen)

13. The Great Escape (dir. John Sturges)

12. West Side Story (dir. Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins)

“The undisputed crown jewel of American musicals: visually dazzling and technologically ambitious; emotionally violent and musically beautiful; tenderly romantic and unforgettably tragic. From its nearly silent prologue to its devastating finale, West Side Story is a true masterpiece of American cinema that continues to cross the boundaries from first-rate entertainment to historic excellence.”

11. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (dir. Stanley Kubrick)

“Endlessly quotable and off-the-wall bonkers. The wildest ending of the decade.”

10. High and Low (dir. Akira Kurosawa)

“Akira Kurosawa's drama is both an engrossing police procedural and an exploration of class that rebukes a simplistic ‘eat the rich’ mentality.”

“The stakes are high and the costs are real in Akira Kurosawa’s excellent crime thriller about a menacing kidnapper and the wealthy tycoon he mercilessly torments. Aside from being an engrossing cop drama, it is a thought-provoking moral drama that offers profound insight into the value of human dignity, the authentic nature of justice, and the interior vices that consume the human soul.”

9. Andrei Rublev (dir. Andrei Tarkovsky)

“Tarkovsky's masterpiece, and cinema as high art. Everything in this movie builds to one of the most stunning conclusions in film history.”

“Andrei Rublev is a profound meditation on the nature of art and how it can touch the divine. The extraordinary conclusion is literally iconic.”

8. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (dir. Sergio Leone)

“Perhaps the most referenced and recognizable Western of all time, Leone's almost 3 hour epic flies by like a high quality whiskey: smooth and strong. Morricone delivers one of the most famous scores in cinema history in a must-see film for everyone.”

7. To Kill a Mockingbird (dir. Robert Mulligan)

“Robert Mulligan’s screen adaptation of the beloved Harper Lee novel is an American classic for a reason: not only is it thematically gripping in its depiction of Southern mores and legal ethics, but it is also a sentimental portrait of a long-gone childhood innocence. Featuring one of the great scores by the legendary Elmer Bernstein and a gentle, lordly performance by the one-and-only Gregory Peck.”

6. Mary Poppins (prod. Walt Disney)

“Movie magic at its most magical! It’s so good that they made a movie about the making of the movie!”

5. Lawrence of Arabia (dir. David Lean)

“The scale and scope of Lawrence of Arabia is breathtaking, but it ultimately serves as a historical and aesthetic backdrop to one of the most fascinating character studies of all time.”

4. Psycho (dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

“The greatest and one of the most influential of all horror films. The best twisted ending of cinema. Simply put, Psycho is the most thrilling movie ever made.”

3. 2001: A Space Odyssey (dir. Stanley Kubrick)

“Nothing more to be said about this film. Truly one of the most monumental achievements in cinema.”

“Encapsulates nothing less than the millennia-spanning evolution of mankind within two and a half hours. Amazing, profound, transcendent.”

2. A Man for All Seasons (dir. Fred Zinneman)

“Faithfully adapted from Robert Bolt’s stage play, Fred Zinnemann’s dramatization of St. Thomas More’s martyrdom is Hollywood’s finest hagiography. Avoiding a paste-and-cardboard approach to a saint’s life, the film succeeds as an engaging, dialogue-driven period piece that doesn’t shy away from the trifold relationship between conscience, religious liberty, and the natural law, and their necessity towards ensuring the survival of Western civilization.”

1. The Sound of Music (dir. Robert Wise)

”It’s the best movie musical, one of the best Catholic movies, and (sneakily) one of the best WWII thrillers. It’s without flaw and breathtakingly beautiful from start to finish. It’s the best movie of the 1960s.”

Directed by Béla Tarr. Starring Mihály Víg, Putyi Horváth and Miklós B. Székely.

By

Bella Tarr’s Satantango has been on my watchlist since college. It stands as one of the final bosses of international cinema, thanks to its limited availability and, most of all, its titanic seven-and-a-half-hour runtime. It is universally lauded as one of the greatest achievements in world cinema. It took me almost ten years to work up the courage, and find the time, to watch it in one sitting, but I am so grateful I waited this long to see it.

The story follows a collective farm deep in the Hungarian countryside after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the people left behind to pick up the pieces. They are broken, lying, cheating, neglecting, and attempting to steal from one another. A former villager, long believed to be dead, suddenly returns and tries to gather them into a new commune, but there is little trust to be found and even more confusion.

Satantango is one of the most challenging but also one of the most rewarding films I have ever seen. It requires patience, life experience, familiarity with slow cinema (you should be comfortable with the pace of a Tarkovsky film), and, above all, endurance. Satantango is perhaps the slowest film I have ever seen. It is one of the few films in which time does not feel as though it was ever considered. Rather, Tarr submerges us in a world so bleak that it can be overwhelming at times. A feeling of hopelessness and loss permeates the film like a dead animal trapped in an air vent. The masterful long takes, averaging about 145 seconds per shot (the Hollywood average is between 2.5 and 3 seconds), practically hypnotize the audience into this bleak, muddy world, allowing time to pass much more quickly than one might expect. There are only about 150 cuts over the film’s seven-and-a-half-hour runtime, and each one genuinely feels like it matters.

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Welcome to “What’s Good on Streaming”; aiming to showcase what’s actually good from your Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ subscriptions and more! This is an exclusive for paid subscribers, so if you want to check out the rest of the list and see what’s good each week, consider joining our paid tier!

Project Hail Mary (Prime Video)

We’ve written a few articles on the film already, but if you missed this one in theaters it is now free to stream exclusively on Prime Video.

It’s one of the year’s most fun films (and possibly the best so far). I just rewatched it with a large group on a movie set I’m working on (more on that soon) and the whole room was enraptured.

Highly recommend.

Next up we have one of last year’s best films…

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(250 year old spoilers follow)

It’s the Fourth of July, a day right after this film is released, and I am on my way to offer two hours of my day to Angel Studios in exchange for an exciting and hopefully inspiring biographical drama about the life of George Washington in his younger years as a general.

While I was waiting outside the theater, an older gentleman excused himself while he passed us into the theater wearing a hat and shirt with “250 Years of America” on it. I caught a glimpse of the kind of crowd I was about to belong to. When I finally stepped inside the theater I was surprised to find the whole theater packed with Virginians wearing their proud red, white, and blue. This was going to be something. As I watched the few trailers of Angel Studios branded films that preceded the film (all consisting of similar conservative historical dramas with random B-list actors you would never expect) among the crowd of patriots, a suspicious feeling began to sink in.

Where had I felt this feeling before? As the film began, it opened with something that would mark the rest of my experience watching the film:

“This Film is Approved by the Angel Guild”

This will be of great importance to remember in a bit, but for the meantime the movie is about to start. Very soon into the film, the rather young Washington appeared on screen, to which I was expecting something like a crowd cheer by the way other characters had kept mentioning the name “Washington”. Constantly it was brought up and treated with great emphasis; it was almost as if the actors were trying to directly give the crowd goosebumps every time it was spoken. This was a pattern that repeated throughout the entirety of the film.

This subtle, yet noticeable awareness of the audience throughout scenes gave the whole film a sense of inauthenticity and unbelievability in its telling of the George Washington story.

The best way I can describe it is in a particular scene when George Washington is meeting up with his love interest Sally Fairfax (Mia Rodgers). During the course of the scene a famous classical piece by Bach is playing in the background, seemingly coming from somewhere in the room. The characters don’t seem to notice it. It most likely would not have even been played during that time in history. And yet it is a popular classical piece that people would associate with high class and so… it is used in the scene because it is expected.

Throughout the film, Washington’s journey is marked by clichés. Rushed romance and action kept just under enough control and within the sight of the camera to give the illusion of a vast raging and violent battle. The ending finally moves young George from a passive to active character…far too late.

A vivid sense of unbelievability grew larger when I could sense everyone in that theater nudging to their neighbor when Andy Serkis (as Edward Braddock) or Ben Kingsley (as Robert Dinwiddie) popped on to the screen to give the most mediocre performance I’ve seen from them. It was almost as if it didn’t matter that they were playing characters in a story, but rather that their mere presence as professional actors in this “Christian Film” was enough to make the Angel Studio fans feel like “they’ve made it with Big Hollywood” despite whether the film turned out to be good or not.

This very goal towards primarily being a “better Christian adaptation” of what would normally be a “secular film” proved greatly detrimental in providing the audience with believable and real characters and a story that is worth investing in. Instead what was presented was an hour and a half of “Young Washington” failing in his positions of authority, without clear responsibilities or agency on the part of his character, all while his personality is kept crystal clean of any emotions lest his legend be stained of any genuine human flaws.

Earlier in the essay I mentioned the opening title of the film which mentioned an approval by the Angel Guild and after some quick searches online, everything that I had experienced just recently made sense. Unbeknownst to me, Angel Studios has a system called “The Guild Score” where any member can vote on a certain project they would want to see Angel Studios produce.

“A measurement of the audience’s passion for and support of a potential film or show, the Guild score is the deciding factor that determines whether a project will either come to fruition or will need to be refined and resubmitted for further voting. The Guild score will also closely predict what a potential film’s Rotten Tomatoes audience score would be”1

All that I had just spent watching for the past 2 hours was the product of a film so heavily influenced, refined, and finally approved by over a million guild members that by the end of it, had lost all sense of personality and expression.2 In the end I was greatly disheartened by a film which promised more than a regular production studio, and delivered not even a quarter of it.

It was a heavier blow to take once I realized that over 100 of the shots filmed were made using generative AI (a fact that was made obvious during the course of watching the film and that I just had to confirm afterwards). Although the use of AI is implemented in various ways, such as for establishing shots or for adding the firing effect to the canons, it is most prominently used in creating the illusion of a freezing cold river during one of the action sequences. The director argues for the use of generative AI to “make something safer and more affordable in that scope to a project like this”.3 I can’t help but see the usage of it within this context be nothing other than a waste of potential talent and creativity in a film which already is largely lacking in such.

In the end, Young Washington is a prime example of Angel Studio’s anxious concern with providing the expected at the risk of losing what is needed within a story.

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a month ago · 1 like · Dean Robbins