“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.

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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(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.

Watching Disclosure Day was one of the most unusual theatrical experiences of the year, and I’m still processing it days later. It’s one of Spielberg’s most optimistic movies and the message of hope is definitely refreshing for today, but it discusses themes of information-sharing and the power of images to communicate truth - as if it were taking place in the 90’s. Whether you think Spielberg still has talent or that he’s deeply out-of-touch with reality, it’s hard to ignore the nostalgia that Disclosure Day conveys; nostalgia for a bygone era where sci-fi and the question of extraterrestrials had captured a less cynical public’s imagination. It would make sense to follow up Disclosure Day with a revisit to Spielberg’s other alien-themed movies (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., War of the Worlds, and even the infamous fourth Indiana Jones film). But in addition to those classics, here are five 90’s movies I was reminded of while watching Disclosure Day:

Fire in the Sky (1993)

This is a small forgotten thriller that adapts the account of an alleged alien abduction in 1975. Though obviously never verified as true, the movie presents the story as deadly serious, framing it as a mysterious Twin Peaks-style mystery that culminates in the protagonist’s frightening memory of the abduction, the movie’s definitive highlight.

Mars Attacks! (1996)

Tim Burton’s mean-spirited parody adapts a classic 1960’s trading card game and turns it into an all-out farce of celebrities getting squashed by impish Martian invaders. An inverse of Disclosure Day’s “can’t we all just get along” sentiment, although it still suggests violence is all due to poor communication. At least the humans have the power of Slim Whitman and Tom Jones.

Contact (1997)

Adapted from the novel by Carl Sagan, Contact explores the intersection of faith and science, ultimately concluding they are both necessary for helping humanity discover the truth. It features exceptional performances between the agnostic Jodie Foster and the Christian Matthew McConaughey as they grapple with challenging questions about the universe, becoming an unusually mature and contemplative sci-fi drama.

The X-Files (1998)

While it might be no more than a big-budget feature-length episode of the classic tv series, this movie adaptation has all the shadowy government cover-ups and undisclosed extraterrestrial life-forms fans of the show could ask for, only this time with bigger set-pieces. Even today, Mulder and Scully remain some of the most watchable tv-investigators.

The Iron Giant (1999)

Brad Bird’s classic animated adventure forgoes cynicism in favor of true Spielbergian optimism, a belief that the human race can overcome paranoia by acknowledging free will and the capacity to choose the good. In the tradition of E.T., the empathy shared between the human character and the alien creates a powerful bond that communicates the need for mutual goodwill.

I’ll never forget seeing The Empire Strikes Back for the first time. While I’d been lucky enough to see A New Hope in theaters for its 1997 re-release, it was off to the library to grab VHS copies for the rest of the original Star Wars trilogy. Even though the screen was dramatically smaller than what I’d started my Star Wars journey on, it didn’t matter: the opening battle on the ice planet of Hoth absolutely captivated my 5-year old imagination. Watching the Rebel ships fly between the giant Imperial Walkers, struggling to take them down, blew my mind. As I grew older, I would literally stop and rewind the tape (I know, I’m dating myself a lot here), trying to figure out how they created the sequence.

The answer? Dennis Muren.

A Kid, His Toys, and a Camera

Muren’s story is not so different from the stories of many of the pioneering filmmakers that emerged in the 1970s and 80s. Like James Cameron, Muren started off as just a kid who liked playing with plastic models of dinosaurs and spaceships (how fitting) — but, crucially, he had a still camera in tow too, finding exciting ways to shoot his action figures to bring them cinematically to life. These long hours led to a passion that would define the rest of his life — and the future of moviemaking as we now know it.

Eventually, Muren found himself taking a job as a second cameraman at a fledging new upstart visual effects studio in California. It didn’t pay great, the hours were long and grueling, and he spent his days in a nondescript, hot building, but he was getting to finally do what he loved: filming physical worlds in miniature and making magic.

Oh, and they were making Star Wars.

Muren’s work with the team at his new employer, Industrial Light and Magic, completely upended the entertainment industry upon Star Wars’ release in 1977. Muren, however, did not rest on his laurels — he was addicted to this new visual effects frontier. He ultimately only took a single weekend off before getting to work on his next film, Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, again as a second cameraman. His tireless work ethic and perfectionism caught the eye of both Lucas and Spielberg, earning him a promotion to Effects Director of Photography for his next film, Empire Strikes Back, where his miniatures work on the Battle of Hoth continues to be legendary. Oh, and he won his first Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

After that, he became a Visual Effects Supervisor — a role he would hold on to for the rest of his films going forward.

The Digital Frontier

What came next for Muren? Perhaps you’ve heard of these ones: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial; Return of the Jedi; Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom; Innerspace; The Abyss. During that stretch from Empire through Abyss, Muren would win six Academy Awards, as his groundbreaking work at Industrial Light and Magic continued to both upend and define blockbuster filmmaking during the 1980s.

When his company began to move into computer graphics, it was Muren who insisted that this new, digital frontier not lose the handcrafted feel of film. For audiences to be able to not only embrace but believe these computer-generated images, the effects needed to be as unnoticeable as possible, mimicking the lenses and film-stock look that audiences were accustomed to. Muren’s decades spent building physical worlds in miniature were invaluable to these new, digital worlds, making his legacy one that continues to stretch into today. (Today’s current filmmakers would be wise to take a page out of Muren’s book, here, but I digress.)

As more and more films began to embrace computer-generated effects, Muren put himself at the forefront of figuring out how to use these new tools most effectively, supervising these new techniques initially on James Cameron’s The Abyss. Following The Abyss, Muren took a one-year sabbatical to study CGI software and hardware theory, assembling the first robust film scanning, manipulating, recording system for flawless, photo-real 2D and 3D image manipulation.

All that time spent studying? Well, it proved to be pretty invaluable, with two little films called Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park to follow.

A New Jurassic Age

When Steven Spielberg was starting pre-production on Jurassic Park, he was initially planning on doing all of the dinosaur work in stop motion, turning to master stop motion animator Phil Tippett (more on him in another article, I’m sure) to figure out how to make this a reality. The results were impressive, but looked…well, like stop motion, not dissimilar from the Harryhausen creature work that defined previous decades of visual effects work. Spielberg needed something more fluid and realistic for the dinosaurs, or audiences would never be sold on the core concept of dinosaurs being brought back to life.

Enter Muren. He saw the stop motion work being done for the wide shots of the movie and decided to allow the team at ILM to create CG test footage of a walking T-Rex, hoping to convince Spielberg that ILM could pull off visual effects work never before attempted. The results, showing fluid movement but also the weight of the T-Rex lumbering across the screen, convinced Spielberg to immediately abandon his original plans, likening watching the test footage to “watching our future unfolding on the TV screen.”

The hours were grueling — not dissimilar to those early days on Star Wars, as Muren and the crew spent long days and nights designing and rendering these new computer-generated effects on computers that could barely keep up. The end result, though? I don’t need to tell you. Jurassic Park, despite releasing in 1993, still largely stands up today. Why? Because of Muren’s perfectionism, stretching the capabilities of his time to the utmost limit.

It’s no understatement to say that the effects work on Jurassic had a seismic effect on the entertainment industry. Suddenly, anything was possible in filmmaking. Things that had been only dreams before, deemed impractical, were now just a few clicks away. Lucas, who previously was endlessly frustrated that the ideas in his head weren’t able to be fully realized on screen, finally felt the technology was ready for his Star Wars prequel trilogy. Similarly, a young, primarily shock-and-awe filmmaker from New Zealand, Peter Jackson, felt this his dreams of Lord of the Rings and King Kong movies were now also possible. In the decades that followed, new visual effects landmarks in filmmaking would always be called “the next Jurassic Park.” A new standard was set, and filmmaking would never be the same.

Keeping the Spirit Alive

In the years that followed, Muren would continue working primarily with Lucas and Spielberg, serving as the VFX Supervisor on the first two Star Wars prequels, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and on War of the Worlds. He would serve as a VFX supervisor one last time — on JJ Abrams’ Super 8 — before serving primarily as a consultant, first on WALL-E and then on JJ’s Star Wars sequel, The Force Awakens.

Muren may be at the forefront of the digital age of filmmaking, but it’s his background in the analog era that makes his legacy so untouchable in Hollywood history. He insisted on retaining the handcrafted feel that got him into the industry in the first place, while also admitting the limits of computer-generated technology. While others were wanting to push more and more — even into creating digital humans — Muren pushed back on that and continues to do so.

He is, in total, the recipient of eight Academy Awards. Spielberg said that he “set the example” for visual effects excellence. Others have called him a pioneer. He became the first visual effects artist to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is the reason why so many screenwriters and directors now feel able to tell stories never before possible, bringing a level of realism to visual effects work that never existed previously.

Not bad for a kid from Glendale who just really liked building spaceships and dinosaurs.

When I think about the now almost dead convention of the movie overture, one word comes to mind: audacious. The idea that a movie, already three hours long, would start out by asking its audience to sit through a several-minute musical introduction looking at a screen with – at most – a still image and the word “overture” is unthinkable today for so many reasons. Even the Star Wars movies, which are bold enough to make the audience sit through a two-minute text crawl while the main title music plays, offer the viewer slightly more than Lawrence of Arabia (1962) with its four-minute overture played over a black screen.

Where did the movie overture come from, and why have we gotten away from this convention?

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“I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion.”

The man who said these words is Nicolas Kim Coppola,1 better known professionally as Nicolas Cage. Cage is an enigma, a cipher, a man of many facets. To some, he is a beloved and talented actor, with a gift for the dramatic arts which has seen him traverse diverse roles in many genres. To others, he is a talentless, over-acting hack who ruins every project he touches.

To me? Cage is…well…both. Simultaneously. Sometimes in the same film. Sometimes in the same scene. And I can’t look away. No matter what sort of film he’s in, Cage will always find a way to make it watchable. His career has had its highs and lows, but with the new Marvel show Spider-Noir hitting our Amazon screens this week, I thought I would share some of the better fruits of my quixotic quest for Cage completionism. I tried to select one film from each of the various types of roles he has stepped into over the years, so rather than just picking my favorite 90s action movies you have a more varied understanding of the phenomenon that is Cage.

I warn you: stepping onto the path of Cage is not for the faint of heart. It is a road fraught with twists and turns, highs and lows, exhilaration and boredom. Many of his films I can’t in good conscience recommend to anyone, much less a Catholic audience. But there are diamonds in the rough and if you can stand him, I think your film diet will be richer by ingesting a little Cage.

Without further ado, here are five films to introduce you to the different facets of the strange career of the man, the myth, the legend: Nicolas Cage.

Moonstruck (1987)

The Heartthrob

Best Cage line: “I lost my hand! I lost my bride! Johnny has his hand! Johnny has his bride!”

Yes, he does have a fake wooden hand.

Moonstruck is my favorite of Cage’s romantic roles, a phase which dominated his early career. He plays Ronny Cammareri, a baker with a love of opera who falls in love with his brother’s fiancee (played by Cher in an Oscar-winning performance). It is perhaps the most Italian movie ever made, a love letter to the culture in which young Nic Coppola had grown up. Its cavalier attitude towards pre-marital sex makes this one a qualified recommendation, but its values are, at root, solid. The characters are charming, the jokes are delightfully funny, the writing, drama, and emotional resonance are at times Shakespearean, and it is at heart a film about love, family, and the meaning of life.

The Rock (1996)

The Action Hero

Best Cage line: “Well, I'm one of those fortunate people who like my job, sir. Got my first chemistry set when I was seven, blew my eyebrows off, we never saw the cat again, been into it ever since.”

My favorite Cage phase is definitely his streak of 90s action films. Face/Off, Con Air, and Gone in 60 Seconds are all vintage Cage classics. But perhaps the best of the bunch is The Rock, because Cage’s cheesy acting style is complemented by the similar talents of director Michael Bay and co-star Sean Connery. Sean Connery plays James Bon…err, John Mason, the only man to ever escape from Alcatraz. When a group of disgruntled military vets take the island prison and threaten to use it to release a deadly nerve gas on San Francisco, he is recruited by Cage’s FBI chemist Stanley Goodspeed (yes, that is the character’s name) to infiltrate the island and stop the terrorists. It’s a non-stop thrill ride of actors and directors constantly one-upping each other to do the most over-the-top thing possible, and it’s glorious. If you’re a fan of 90s action films…well, you’ve seen it already, but if not, this is a cinematic treat just waiting for you to watch it.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (2011)

The Franchise Star

Best Cage line: “Because right now the only thing that’s standing between you and the Rider is me. And he’s just - He’s... [groans] He’s scraping at the door. Scraping at the door!”

Cage plays Spider-Man this week, but it’s not the first time he’s played a big name franchise character. He’s played Superman (Teen Titans Go! To the Movies; The Flash), Dracula (Renfield), and a knock-off Batman (Kick-Ass). But the supernatural role he was born to play is Ghost Rider. The first Ghost Rider film is fine, but it’s in the poorly-regarded sequel that the character truly gets the adaptation he deserves.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance may, in fact, be the most Traditional Catholic film I’ve ever seen.

I don’t mean Traditional Catholic in a pre-Vatican II sense. I don’t even mean it in a Council of Trent kind of sense. I mean this film is in the Catholic Tradition that gave us Dante and the Book of Revelation, Michelangelo and Hieronymous Bosch, St. Francis of Assisi and St. Simeon Stylites, the Templars and the Knights Hospitaller, St. Vincent Ferrar and Girolamo Savonarola, the Sedlec Ossuary and Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini. That brought us the God-Man willing to die on a Cross to drown our contract with Satan in His life-giving Blood.

It’s that kind of heavy metal Catholicism that namby-pamby modern man tries to excise out of the tradition, that we are embarrassed by and try to hide when “the right set” are about. We think that because we know that God is Love that we have comprehended every facet of His Being.

The medievals knew God is Love. They also knew He was terrifying.

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is the kind of film you could show Dante or Geoffrey Chaucer and they'd be right at home. It's ridiculous, it's un-nuanced, it's reverently irreverent, it's more than a little unhinged, and it's unspeakably cool. It has the weird mix of decent theology, paranoid spiritual warfare, and unadulterated mythology that any student of medieval literature will be well familiar with. Don’t be fooled by the bad reviews: this is Nic Cage’s best film. And possibly the best superhero film of all time.

Pig (2021)

The Indie Darling

Best Cage line: “Why do you care about these people? They don’t care about you. None of them. They don’t even know you because you haven’t shown them. Every day, you’ll wake up, and there’ll be less of you. You live your life for them, and they don’t even see you.”

Cage has a reputation for being a crazy, over-the-top actor, but he’s also taken on many serious dramatic roles over the years, and within the past decade he’s become something of an indie darling. The film that best exemplifies this stage of his career is 2021’s Pig (full review here). Pig is a contemplative film about loss, love, and the sacramentality of food. The marketing played up Cage’s reputation as an action star only for the film itself to subvert that image, giving us a restrained Cage in a subtle, excellent role. Cage has indeed won an Oscar (Leaving Las Vegas, 1995) and has the dramatic chops to pull off serious roles, and it is only recently that he has once again started to become appreciated for that side of his career. The Cage freak-out memes are funny, but with films like Pig we see a different side of Cage, one which intrigues and delights the true Cage connoisseur.

Outcast (2014)

The Master of Slop

Best Cage line: “You want my blood? YOU WANT MY BLOOD???”

Cage had a well-documented slump in the middle of his career. He was not very choosy about the roles he took, and so ended up in a lot of incredibly bad films. Sometimes, these films resulted in mostly forgettable and phoned-in performances (such as the 2014 remake of the Christian apocalypse series Left Behind). Sometimes, Nic Cage is introduced with twin snakes entwined around his arms, chanting like a mad shaman out of some sort of fever dream.

In Outcast, Cage and Hayden Christiansen play exiled crusaders who team up with a Chinese princess to put her brother in his rightful place as Emperor. It’s unhinged, it’s not very good, but at least it’s quite entertaining and that’s the best you can ask out of Cage’s slop era. He got to cut loose and just have some fun and when that happens, there’s magic in a Cage performance.

There are my five picks to represent the different phases of the Cage. Comment below with your favorite Cage performance, and stay tuned for our review of his turn as Your (un)Friendly (bad) Neighborhood Spider-Man! In Authentic Black and White, of course, the only true noir way to experience it. Cage deserves nothing less.

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WALL-E has one of the most unique starring credits I’ve ever seen for a movie.

The title character of WALL-E is listed as being played by Ben Burtt, and this is true, Ben does provide the vocals when the character speaks. But he also not only modulated WALL-E’s voice but did all of WALL-E’s sound effects, and designed most of the sounds in the movie.

WALL-E is not only Andrew Stanton’s love letter to the science fiction stories of his childhood, but also it’s a celebration of the career of Ben Burtt, one of the greatest sound designers of all time.

Star Wars - The Original Trilogy

Lightsabers. TIE fighters. Chewbacca. R2-D2.

All of these and more, given life through sound by the one and only Ben Burtt.

Burtt was interested in movies as a child, making stop-motion 8mm films, but was less interested in directing his own films as he was in the intersection of movies and technology; his father was a chemistry professor at Syracuse University.

While pursuing a degree in physics at Allegheny College, he got a creative spark when 2001: A Space Odyssey author- who also adapted it for the screen- visited the college in his last year:

The talk was on science, not on the movies, but I ended up being his escort on campus for a day and I started asking him questions about how they did 2001. He went up to the blackboard and did all kinds of drawings, explaining motion control, matte painting, and in-camera effects. I realized: Here is a fellow who is a scientist, but who also exists in the worlds of science fiction and movie making.1

Little did Burtt know that he would end up being at the forefront of science-fiction filmmaking, building on the incredible work Kubrick and his crew did on 2001 with his work on Star Wars. 2001 is notable for its grounded, realistic approach to science-fiction: movies in the genre before it went more fantastical and a bit silly. Burtt and Lucas would take a similar approach with their space opera, which on paper sounded silly but on the screen would look more like a documentary of a real galaxy far, far away.

Lucas found Burtt through USC: after his inspiration from Clarke, Burtt moved out west and got his masters there at the film school, which launched many famous film careers including John Wayne, Ron Howard and Kevin Feige. The Star Wars director had gone to the heads of his old film school to ask for a promising sound designer when his usual collaborator Walter Murch was busy changing cinematic sound design forever with his work on Apocalypse Now (Murch is worthy of his own essay down the line).

Lucas and Burtt developed a unique technique called “worldizing”, which involved going to real locations outside of a studio and recording unique sounds to capture a specific ambience: in the case of Star Wars this meant going to airfields to record unique WWII planes and to zoos to record animal sounds that would be morphed into the voice of Chewbacca.

His work is so iconic from the original Star Wars film alone, and also won him his first Oscar!

Burtt’s work continued as Lucas brought him onto almost every project he did for the next few decades, which happened to include a lot of Star Wars. But it also included another iconic trilogy…

The Indiana Jones Trilogy

For Raiders, Burtt shifted to sounds that were even pulpier than that of Star Wars: guns, whips, arrows, and even poison darts take on a personality of their own, in nods to the adventure serials of the 1930s which inspired the series.

My favorite sound is that of the iconic boulder from Raiders’ opening sequence, which was actually one of the more difficult sounds for Burtt and sound re-recording mixer Gary Summers to crack:

We would do gunshots and we would do explosions and we worked on the boulder. We rolled things down the hills out there–we got rocks and rolled them and nothing really seemed right. But one afternoon we were coming down one of the hills here in a little Honda Civic station wagon that belonged to the sound department. We were coasting on the road that had big rocks–sort of baseball size rocks. There was this great crunching and rumbling of a sound with the car moving over the rocks. I thought…that could be the boulder! We had our gear with us, so I just hung out the back of the car and recorded where the tires rolled over the rocks–no motor–and that became the basis for the boulder.2

Raiders, along with Star Wars, also provided opportunities for Burtt to make famous a unique sound he had heard in a Western, 1953’s The Charge at Feather River, dubbed the “Wilhelm scream” after the character who it originated from.

Burtt used it famously for a falling stormtrooper in Star Wars, a falling Nazi in Raiders, and even on the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special (for yet another falling Stormtrooper). The sound effect would appear not only in later Star Wars and Indiana Jones films but would make regular appearances in other franchise films like Lord of the Rings, Batman, and Toy Story.

The Prequel Trilogy

By the time George Lucas got around to doing Episodes I, II, and III, he had come to trust Burtt so much that he actually asked him to edit all three films, a gargantuan task considering how ambitious all three of those films were.

But he still got to work on all the sound design, and actually all of my favorite Ben Burtt sounds are from this movie.

To name a few that come into my brain immediately:

• Jango Fett’s blasters and Slave 1

• The entire Podrace sequence

• The Geonosians

• The Acklay

• The Sando Aqua Monster

• And, last but not least, arguably the greatest of all Star Wars sound effects, Jango Fett’s seismic charge

Burtt on his inspiration for the sound:

I think back to where that idea might have come to me...I remember in film school a talk I had with an old retired sound editor who said they used to leave a few frames of silence in the track just before a big explosion. In those days they would 'paint' out the optical sound with ink. Then I thought of the airlock entry sequence in ‘2001’. I guess the seeds were there for me to nourish when it came to the seismic charges.

One of the biggest mistakes of the sequel movies was not bringing back the crew that had worked on the prequels3 or even the original trilogy, particularly Burtt. Can you think of a single iconic sound from those films that wasn’t originally from him?

WALL-E

No disrespect to Andrew Stanton, but I would feel confident in saying that Ben Burtt is the true auteur of WALL-E.

The entire first act relies pretty much on Ben’s sound design, Roger Deakins’ visual consulting, and Thomas Newman’s score. If that combination doesn’t make an incredible movie, I don’t know what will.

I’m not sure how much I can say about Burtt’s work on WALL-E that isn’t better captured by the video above, but I will say if you’re going to watch any of the videos linked above (although you should watch them all) I would recommend this one. Burtt’s passion and creativity shine here as he shows off some old Disney sound effect machines (which he actually used on the film) and creates the voice of WALL-E.

Both this video and the one of his work on Episode II were a huge inspiration to me as a kid when I was just learning about what it takes to make a film. For a while, these videos convinced me the greatest job in the world was to be a sound designer (specifically a foley artist). It taught me that making movies could actually be really fun!

Cheers to Ben Burtt, one of the best to ever do it.

This is the beginning of a new series, focused on the cinematographers, composers, sound designers and more who elevate the movies they work on. If you have some favorites you’d like us to write on, let us know below!

Thomas Newman.

You might not know him by name, but you almost certainly know and love his music. When asked to write about a below-the-line filmmaker, I immediately thought of Newman. Thomas Newman is one of the best (and most consistently great) composers working, and yet he goes unrecognized by the casual moviegoer. I hope you enjoy this exploration (via five tracks from his film scores) of one of my favorite composers!

Newman belongs to the great Newman dynasty of film composers: his father Alfred Newman wrote the music for dozens of legendary films, including How Green Was My Valley, The Song of Bernadette, Gentlemen’s Agreement, Miracle on 34th Street, All About Eve, The Robe, and The Greatest Story Ever Told. Thomas’ family also includes his brother David, uncles Lionel and Emil, and cousin Randy - all film composers as well. Young Thomas was originally drawn to musical theater rather than film, and he was mentored for a time by Stephen Sondheim. He eventually moved over to film work, first as an arranger (he orchestrated one scene of Return of the Jedi) and then finally a composer in his own right.

Following his first scoring credits in 1984, he worked non-stop for the next ten years before getting his first big hits: 1994’s Little Women starring Winona Ryder, and another film...

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Track: “Shawshank Prison (Stoic Theme)”

The Shawshank Redemption is in my opinion a perfect movie. I couldn’t tell you a single thing that could be done to improve it. I went in expecting greatness and I was blown away even so.

Newman’s score for Shawshank is full of big emotions: moody when it needs to be, playful when it needs to be. I love how dissonant the above track, “Shawshank Prison,” is. It features a recurring melody that sounds as plodding and monotonous as Shawshank Prison is. Just listening to the music, I can picture the grand, imposing bulk of Shawshank as we first enter it, even though I haven’t seen the movie in years.

Given that Shawshank is a perfect movie, it makes sense that it would go completely unrecognized by the Academy, right? Newman was nominated for Oscars for Best Original Score both for Shawshank and for Little Women, and he lost to Hans Zimmer for The Lion King. Understandable.

After Shawshank, Newman would do more and more high-profile projects with big-name directors, including American Beauty with Sam Mendes and Erin Brockovich with Steven Soderbergh. Not to be outdone by his cousin Randy Newman, who composed Pixar’s first four movies, Thomas would then hit a big milestone when he scored his first animated film...

Finding Nemo (2003)

Track: “Nemo Egg (Main Title)”

If you’re like me, you first heard Newman’s work in a Pixar movie. Working on Finding Nemo for director Andrew Stanton gave Newman the opportunity to write even more emotional and expressive music. If you don’t get even a little emotional listening to the track “Nemo Egg,” then there might be something wrong with you.

Finding Nemo’s score has so many of the hallmarks of a Thomas Newman score: soulful oboe solos, small piano melodies that grow and swell into great big beautiful string sections, and cool funky atmospheric sounds. A sheer delight befitting one of Pixar’s most beloved classics.

For his work on Finding Nemo, Newman was nominated for the Academy Award, but lost to Howard Shore for The Return of the King. Which - yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Sorry, Thomas. Not your year, I guess.

After several more critically acclaimed movies (including more collaborations with Mendes - don’t worry, we’ll get to Mendes later), Newman would work with Pixar and Stanton again...

WALL-E (2008)

Track: “Define Dancing”

“Define Dancing” is itself a dance: a dance that pervades the score and the whole film, between grandeur and playful funkiness. (It’s hard to listen to Daniel Pemberton’s score for Project Hail Mary and not feel like there was some inspiration from Newman). The shots of WALL-E and Eve flying around outside the ship are some of the most gorgeous that Pixar has created, and the music fits perfectly.

Newman also wrote a song with Peter Gabriel for the movie’s end credits, “Down to Earth.” WALL-E was considered a serious awards contender in 2008, even getting Best Picture buzz. Though it didn’t get that nomination, it did end up with a record-tying (for an animated movie) six nominations. Two of those were for Newman: Score and Song. He lost both to Slumdog Millionaire. Fair enough, I guess. Slumdog does have pretty awesome music.

So far, I’ve mentioned several collaborations between Newman and various directors: Mendes, Soderbergh, Stanton. The next entry is the result of the lack of a director-composer pairing, the most famous director-composer pairing in modern cinema...

Bridge of Spies (2015)

Track: “Homecoming”

Due to a health incident, John Williams was not able to compose Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies (a generally well-respected but underrated movie). So when Spielberg needed a composer, whom did he turn to? None other than Newman - after all, John Williams was a protege of Thomas’ father Alfred, and Thomas was himself a protege of Williams (cf. the aforementioned orchestration of a scene from Return of the Jedi).

And the result is a beautiful score that I listen to all the time, especially while writing - in fact, I probably listen to it more often than any other Newman score. It retains Newman’s signature style and orchestrations but also pays homage to Williams’. In “Homecoming,” for example, the track begins with a soulful horn solo - that’s Williams. Then as it progresses, you hear a soft, subtle piano melody that repeats as it builds up to a grand climax - that’s Newman. (There’s also the playful Newman oboe!) The two composers share the same big feelings that they wear (or I guess compose) on their sleeve - perfect for a Spielberg movie.

Newman was nominated for the Academy Award, as was Williams that same year (for Star Wars: The Force Awakens), and they lost to Ennio Morrison (for The Hateful Eight). It’s a shame - I probably would’ve gone with Bridge of Spies, but you can understand the desire to reward a legend like Morricone after such a long and auspicious career (with no prior Academy Award wins).

Okay it’s finally time to talk about a Sam Mendes movie.

1917 (2019)

Track: “Sixteen Hundred Men”

1917 is a monumental technical achievement and a deeply moving film. At the zenith of those two is Newman’s music. The score underlies the movie perfectly at every turn. For the first three quarters or so, the music is somewhat restrained, matching the claustrophobia and tension of the situations. Only once or twice does the music take center stage until the climactic “Sixteen Hundred Men,” where Schofield (George McKay) runs through the infantry charge to try to call off the British attack. After so much restraint, the music explodes into action epic glory, and it’s a wondrous thing to see and hear.

But this next track is just so good, I couldn’t pick only one.

Bonus track: “Come Back to Us”

After Schofield successfully delivers his message calling off the attack, he collapses in exhaustion against a tree. So the movie ends as it began, with Schofield sitting at a tree. But this time, as opposed to the overcast skies we’ve seen the entire movie, there’s a glimpse of golden sunlight (a happy accident on set, by the way). And we finally see the pictures of Schofield’s wife and children that he’s been carrying the entire time, along with the message “Come back to us.” [I’m listening to the track as I’m writing this and I just got choked up.] Some of the most beautiful string music I’ve ever heard. A perfect ending.

Newman was once again nominated for the Oscar, and once again he lost (to Hildur Guðnadóttir for Joker). I’ve been very understanding of the Oscar snubs so far, but no longer. Joker’s score is bad, and I’m tired of pretending that it’s not. It’s just the same dissonant cello music over and over again! Newman should’ve won and that’s that.

Since then, Newman has slowed down a bit, usually doing only one or two scores a year (the guy is 70 years old now). He’s continued to work with some of the same directors, including Soderbergh and Stanton. He wrote the music, with his daughter Julia, for the crime series Monsters: The Lyle and Eric Menendez Story. And in a nice full-circle moment, his next big project is Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter. I hope he keeps writing music for as long as he can, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this exploration of his career with me.

I had a blast writing this post! I’m Dominic Morlino and I’m a writer based in Northern Kentucky. I’m married, with a young son, and I enjoy movies, gardening, volleyball, and history. My three favorite movies (right now) are The Empire Strikes Back, The Fellowship of the Ring, and It’s a Wonderful Life. You can find the rest of my work here at St. Luke’s Sketchbook!

Lately I’ve been thinking about the film Hamnet and why it lingers in the heart long after the credits roll. Part of it is the luminous performance of Jessie Buckley, whose recent Best Actress Oscar felt so deeply deserved. She plays Agnes Shakespeare, the spiritual center of the story and the mother carrying so much hidden grief. In her acceptance speech, Buckley surprised Hollywood by praising her husband Freddie Sorensen and the beautiful, exhausting gift of raising their eight-month-old daughter, Isla. She spoke about the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart and even told Freddie she would have twenty thousand more babies with him. It was a disarming sincerity in a room filled with glamour and ambition, and it felt like such a rare kind of honesty.

And in a way, that moment is the heartbeat of Hamnet. The film draws us into the hidden world behind Shakespeare’s genius, but instead of dazzling us with fame, it brings us into the small, aching, holy spaces of family: Agnes, played with raw intuition by Jessie Buckley; William Shakespeare, portrayed with quiet intensity by Paul Mescal; Mary Shakespeare, given gravity by Emily Watson; and their children, especially young Hamnet, played by Jacobi Jupe, whose presence becomes both gift and wound.

One of the film’s most striking early images is Agnes walking through the forest and summoning a hawk to her glove. The hawk hovers between wildness and trust, much like Agnes herself. It becomes a symbol of her spiritual sensitivity, suggesting how closely she lives at the edge of the visible and invisible worlds, gathering herbs, sensing danger, and holding her family with a tenderness that is both fierce and otherworldly.

Every character is shaped by a love that costs something. Every joy is tinged with sacrifice. Every grief opens into a tenderness that feels almost sacred. Nowhere is that more heartbreaking than when Hamnet, seeing his twin sister Judith slipping away from plague, lies beside her and tries to confuse death into taking him instead. In his childlike love, he offers himself in her place, and the trick works. Judith recovers, while Hamnet falls ill and dies in Agnes’s arms. It is an act of pure self-giving, a child mirroring the logic of the Cross without even knowing it.

This reminds us that family, real and imperfect, is where sanctity is quietly formed. We grow through one another, stretch one another, and sometimes even break one another. Yet somehow God uses these fragile bonds to reveal Himself.

What moved me most was the thread of childlike faith woven through the story. Not childish, but the kind of faith that trusts even without understanding. You see it in Agnes’s fierce hope, in William’s longing for forgiveness, and in the way their children move through the world with openness rather than certainty. It is the same faith Jesus blesses in the Gospels, the kind that can sit in mystery without needing control.

When Agnes finally goes to London to see William’s play Hamlet, she enters the theater with her fists clenched. There is anger in her posture and a quiet fury that he would dare to use the death of their child to create such a work. It feels at first like a betrayal, an appropriation of grief that belongs to their family alone. But as the play unfolds, something begins to change. Scene by scene, the beauty of what William has created softens Agnes’s heart. She moves from resistance to attention until she finds herself standing in awe before the stage.

What she sees is not a diminishment of her son, but a form of preservation. Hamnet is not exploited or forgotten. He is portrayed with dignity, given weight and meaning in a way that allows his life to endure beyond its brief span. On the stage, their child is remembered. In that moment, Agnes realizes that love has found another way to speak. Art does not replace motherhood, but it becomes a vessel through which memory survives and suffering is given form.

Hamnet does not offer neat answers. Instead, it gives us something truer: a reminder that love and suffering often coexist, and that God dwells right there in the middle of both. The film invites us to believe that our families, our heartbreaks, our sacrifices can become places of grace. Not because we are perfect, but because God meets us in the real, hidden places where love costs us something.

That is why Hamnet belongs on a list of films Catholics should see. It whispers that the holy often begins in the ordinary, that family is a vocation of beauty and burden, and that childlike faith can carry us through more than we imagine.

To read more on Hamnet, check out our post on the Best Picture Nominees below.

This Monday, March 23, 2026, Pope Leo gave the United States of America a new Venerable: Fr. Edward Flanagan, the founder of Boys Town. Fr. Flanagan dedicated his life to serving at-risk boys, founding an institution outside of Omaha, Nebraska, which he named “Boys Town”. Here boys whom society at the time treated as unreformable would be treated as citizens, given the necessities of life but also given an elite education, training in the trades, spiritual formation, and a chance to prove themselves to be more than juvenile delinquents or reform school candidates. Fr. Flanagan encouraged them to be accountable to each other rather than enforcing strict punishments, setting up a city government with a mayor elected by the boys and even getting a branch of the United States Post Office run by the boys themselves. Fr. Flanagan’s philosophy was that boys respond to the way that they are treated: if you treat them as potential criminals, they will become criminals. If you treat them as young men and American citizens, they will prove themselves to be so. He lived by the motto “there’s no such thing as a bad boy”, and changed the lives of many American boys by treating them in that way.

His school was such a remarkable success that it attracted the attention of Hollywood. In 1938 Louis B. Mayer, MGM’s legendary studio head, launched into production what he would eventually describe as the favorite film he ever made: Boys Town, starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney. Boys Town is an excellent film, a true 1930s classic. It was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and it won Spencer Tracy his second Oscar in a row for Best Actor. It feels very much like a Frank Capra picture: optimistic, patriotic, and brimming with a positive attitude toward human nature. These sorts of films were in vogue in the late 1930s: indeed, Capra’s You Can’t Take It with You defeated Boys Town in the Best Picture race in 1938 with a similar outlook on humanity. In our more cynical age, some might feel this type of movie is saccharine or naive, but I absolutely love them. I believe they capture a distinctly Catholic ethos about life, redemption, human nature, and the abiding power of selfless love. Boys Town is an excellent example of this type of picture, and now that Pope Leo has raised Fr. Flanagan to the rank of Venerable, it also counts as one of the best saint movies of all time.

The film opens with Fr. Flanagan (Tracy) meeting with a convict just about to go to the electric chair. He gives the man words of comfort, but the warden confronts him with his “debt to the state”. The man flies into a frenzy, asking what he owes the state when the state did nothing for him after his mother died but leave him on the street, starving and desperate. From his perspective, the state turned him into a criminal and then executed him for it, and this process began when he was a very young boy. Fr. Flanagan is deeply troubled by this speech, ruminating on it all the way home. As he returns to his neighborhood, he observes a large brawl between unruly boys on the streets of Omaha. Punches are thrown, food is trampled, and ultimately a window is broken, sending the crowd scattering. Fr. Flanagan is deeply affected by this scene, and remembers the words of the convict earlier: “one friend when I’m 12 years old and I don’t stand here like this!” He decides to be that one friend to these lost boys, to give them a chance to get out of their hard life and become upstanding citizens. He will let boys be boys, in a good way, by bringing them out into the country and letting them play baseball and learn and make friends. He earns the undying love of his boys because he extended that love to them, perhaps the first adult in their entire life who had done so. There were money troubles, to be sure, but at the end of the first act Fr. Flanagan seems to have triumphed without much difficulty at all.

And then he meets Whitey. Whitey (Rooney) stretches Fr. Flanagan’s faith in his maxim that “there is no bad boy”. He’s pompous, self-centered, loves a joke at the expense of others but can’t stand one at his own expense, and is already hardened by several years of living in the criminal underworld. When he gets to Boys Town he scoffs at its impressive features and immediately tries to leave, drawn back only by the lunch bell. He tries to bully his way to the top of the mayor’s race, and after losing foolishly challenges an older boy to a boxing match which he loses as well. He has charisma, for sure, but is using that talent for the wrong reasons. Fr. Flanagan is sure he can be reformed, but after Whitey flees Boys Town and is shot as a bystander in a bank robbery, Fr. Flanagan’s faith is shaken. Whitey refuses to rat out the bank robbers (one of whom is his brother), and the consequence is sure to be the closure of Boys Town. Fr. Flanagan breaks a little and seems to give up on Whitey: “it was a bad, sad day when I brought you here”. But even through Fr. Flanagan’s dark night of the soul, he still welcomes a new boy to Boys Town, one who has hitch hiked for days to get to this place of promise. Until the doors are forcibly closed on him, Fr. Flanagan will complete his mission.

Of course, this story is destined to have a happy ending and vindicate it’s optimistic premise: “there is no bad boy”. In a thrilling climax the robbers are caught, Whitey is proven innocent and learns his lesson, and Boys Town remains as strong a force for good as ever. Fr. Flanagan’s optimism is vindicated, as is his refusal to let a bad beginning determine a bad end. None of these boys are predestined to sin; through his sacrifice and love, Fr. Flanagan is able to draw them into virtue and (as we see implicitly throughout) closer to Christ. There’s no force, no coercion, no harshness at Boys Town; Fr. Flanagan merely shows Christlike love to his boys and they respond in kind. Spencer Tracy is magnificent in showing these different sides of Fr. Flanagan: the stubborn, determined, hard edges that he shows when pursuing his mission, and the jolly, kindly love he gives to each one of his boys. His performance shows Fr. Flanagan as saintly, but human; prone to doubt, anger, pigheadishness and even despair, but still pushing through anyway, completing his mission with grace, charm, and love. Films like Boys Town and the films of Frank Capra push us to be better, more optimistic, more loving people ourselves, to imitate the joyous service of Fr. Flanagan and to look for the best in those around us as we seek to call them to be better. We, like Fr. Flanagan, are called to love our neighbor at all times; after all, in God’s eyes, there is no bad boy.

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I just saw Project Hail Mary earlier today and had a blast: I already have tickets to see it again (this time in 70MM IMAX) next weekend. If you haven’t already, check out my friend Alejandro’s review we put out last week!

If you, like me, enjoyed the film, here’s a list of five movies that you’ll probably also like! (Note: I didn’t include Interstellar and Arrival because it feels like we have written about those movies ad nauseam and clearly many of you have watched them considering how high they ranked on our list of the best movies of the 21st century. But you should definitely watch those if you haven’t!)

Gravity (2013)

Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón

Starring: Sandra Bullock and George Clooney

This one feels like a no-brainer: it’s a survival-in-space movie. Still, despite Project Hail Mary’s astounding effects and cinematography, I don’t think any movie has captured the overwhelming, terrifying vastness of space more than this film. It’s truly a miracle of a movie that was actually the first movie I ever saw in IMAX, and would love to be able to see in theaters again someday. The cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki is- as always- astounding, and the VFX work is second-to-none. Bullock is a powerhouse in this. (It’s also #19 on our list!)

First Man (2018)

Directed by: Damien Chazelle

Starring: Ryan Gosling

The other movie that sends Ryan Gosling into space. This one is a lot sadder, but still a fantastic watch nonetheless. Gosling plays the one and only Neil Armstrong, detailing the lead-up to the Apollo 11 mission and exploring the psychology of the first man to step foot on the Moon. Justin Hurwitz’s haunting, contemplative score is perfect, especially for the jaw-dropping space scenes. Like Project Hail Mary, this movie eschewed greenscreen for onset LED screens, adding to the film’s immersive quality and it actually won that year’s Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)

Directed by: Phil Lord and Chris Miller

Starring: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan

It’s likely that Project Hail Mary wasn’t your first Lord and Miller film. They directed The Lego Movie, 21 and 22 Jump Street (and part of Solo), and produced the Spider-Verse films. But if you want to see their first film, check out this zany animated film they made with Sony back in 2009. Loosely based on the children’s book of the same name, the movie follows Flint Lockwood (Hader) as he tries to save his island town of Chewandswallow from a diet of only sardines by creating a device that turns water into food: resulting in hamburgers, pizza, spaghetti and more falling from the sky. It’s a great example of Lord and Miller’s creativity and humor: a lot of the jokes in Project Hail Mary involving translation errors abound in this film with Flint and his pet Monkey, Steve. I can quote this one from front to back.

Life of Pi (2013)

Directed by: Ang Lee

Starring: Suraj Sharma

Like First Man and Gravity, this one was also a winner of the Best Visual Effects Oscar. Where the comparison to Project Hail Mary comes in is that a large part of this visually breathtaking film is in a confined space with a creature who can’t speak (in this case, a tiger), where the protagonist must survive. This one’s got a pretty crazy twist ending as well.

The Martian (2015)

Directed by: Ridley Scott

Written by: Drew Goddard

Starring: Matt Damon

There’s no Project Hail Mary without The Martian. Based on Andy Weir’s first book, this one is one of my all-time favorite science-fiction movies. Directed by Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner) and written by Drew Goddard (who wrote Project Hail Mary), this one is a blast of an ensemble piece with a cast including Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Sean Bean, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeff Daniels, Donald Glover and more. But the real star of the show is Damon, who performs the majority of the scenes by himself (no alien counterpart in this one) as he uses every trick in the book to survive on Mars while waiting for rescue. If there’s one movie on this list that I will absolutely guarantee you’ll like on this list if you liked Project Hail Mary, it’s this one! (But I think you’ll like them all).

With the Oscars coming up on Sunday, now seems like no better time than to review the best picture nominees, and of course, rank them. Because I had some free time and a movie theater within walking distance of my house, I was (mostly) fortunate enough to have seen every Best Picture-nominated film for the 2026 Oscars. I feel comfortable recommending all of these films except the number 10 entry, for the reasons stated. 2025 was a remarkably fruitful year for Cinema and felt like one of the best years since 2019 (not a crazy statement considering the crop has been less than stellar since COVID, mostly).

Starting with #10…

#10. One Battle After Another (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director (PTA), Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), Best Actress (Teyana Taylor), Best Supporting Actor (Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro), Best Adapted Screenplay (PTA), Best Original Score (Jonny Greenwood), Best Cinematography (Michael Bauman), Best Sound, Best Production Design, Best Film Editing, Best Casting

Easily the worst of the Best Picture nominees and the worst Paul Thomas Anderson film, One Battle After Another is a snapshot in history of everything wrong with 2020s American politics and filmmaking. As I do not feel like writing “One Review After Another” on this unenjoyable “relevant social commentary”, I will link to the full review I wrote upon its release.

#9: Sinners (dir. Ryan Coogler)

Nominated for: Pretty much everything (broke the record for nominations with 16).

Coogler’s follow-up to his Black Panther saga was definitely a step in the right direction. The box office hit of 2025 has a lot going for it. Quality performances, a fantastic score, a fascinating setting, and perhaps the best post-credit scene to ever be featured in a film, Coogler demonstrated that he will be around in the Hollywood scene for a long time.

Sinners’ strongest aspects are its music and performances for sure. Michael B Jordan revives the twin act that has been seen in films such as Adaptation (an Oscar-worthy double performance from Nic Cage) to tell the story of two criminal brothers running away from a wretched past. The story is told from the somewhat pedestrian standpoint of an aspiring guitarist who bears a striking resemblance to the mythical and legendary Delta blues guitarist Robert Johnson. The Blues has been one of my favorite genres of music since I was a child, and I was welcome to seeing it treated with reverence. The noteworthy post-credit scene features beloved legendary musician Buddy Guy and was a delightful way to sound off a pretty over-the-top film.

Sinners’ largest problem is that, despite its best efforts to appear original, at the end of the day it’s a borderline remake of Robert Rodriguez’s 1996 cult classic From Dusk Till Dawn. It uses the same “two criminal brothers getting trapped in a vampire trap/nightclub that have to survive the night with others” premise to explore racial injustice of the Prohibition era. It struggles with taking itself super seriously despite its obvious camp, and does not shy away from vulgarity.

Sinners is an overall enjoyable and raunchy homage to the genre that defined music in the 20th century and shaped the heart of America. It definitely is worth checking out and will be considered a horror classic from this point on.

Available to stream on HBO Max

#8: Frankenstein (dir. Guillermo del Toro)

Frankenstein was an oddly beautiful film that felt like a return to form for Del Toro. Perhaps his best work since Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro tells a heartwarming and beautiful story about parenthood (which happens to be the most recurring theme amongst the nominees). Del Toro, despite some flaws, is able to ultimately pay respect to a classic novel that has been adapted many times with a fresh perspective.

Oscar Isaac and the rising star Jacob Elordi stand at the center of this beautiful and haunting tale of father-son relationships. Having only seen Elordi in the Kissing Booth films (absolutely dreadful Netflix movies), I was highly skeptical of him as the creature, but I was pleasantly blown away. Elordi was fantastic and vanished under many hours of makeup and prosthetics into the role of Frankenstein’s monster. Oscar Isaac finally returns to roles outside of the horrendous Disney Star Wars sequel trilogy in a more dramatic role that he is better suited for. Isaac plays an obsessed and twisted man who will do anything to achieve fame and validation with ease. Many montages of dismembering deceased bodies into the harvesting of limbs really drive home one of the most crucial questions that lie at the center of the movie: who is the real monster? The answer most certainly seems to be Dr. Frankenstein for most of it, until we are given the option that neither has to be the monster, or maybe there is none at all.

The only major glaring flaw of this film is the bizarre romance between Mia Goth’s character and the creature. As well-made and intricately constructed as the rest of the relationships are in this tale, this strange deviation from the book feels more closely akin to an internet fanfic than it does to a major screenplay. It feels forced and uncharacteristic for the world in which it takes place, and the borders on cringe at times. Aside from this minor gripe, Frankenstein is a great addition to del Toro’s incredible filmography.

Available to stream on Netflix

#7: The Secret Agent (dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best International Feature, Best Actor (Wagner Moura, pictured above), Best Casting

The last film that I had to complete for this list, The Secret Agent, is a quality film that has just enough flaws to prevent it from being upgraded from a good to a great film. Similar to the Brazilian masterpiece City of God, The Secret Agent is a fictitious story that takes place against the backdrop of a real historical setting. Wagner Moura plays a technology specialist who has fled for unknown reasons to a different part of Brazil, trying to establish a new life. As the film unfolds, we learn more about his mysterious life actively through watching his story and passively through historians listening to audio tapes about him during our time.

The Secret Agent’s strengths lie in its presentation and its acting. Director Kleber Mendonça Filho shot the film using Panavision lenses and on vintage film equipment to bring 1977 Brazil to life with vibrant color. A small army of vintage Volkswagen Beetles and excellent set design throws the viewer right back in time. Never once did this film feel out of place, cheap, or tacky. Sometimes I found myself wondering if I was watching a film and thinking that I was watching something more of a documentary, which was aided by the excellent performance from Wagner Moura.

Wagner Moura is the definitive star of this film. His Golden Globe win was well-earned and offers steep competition to Jordan and Chalamet for best actor. Moura plays several characters without being obvious about it with masterful restraint. He does not rely on yelling and shouting and crying, but rather emphasizes the mastery of his craft through the subtlety of his actions. Music, editing and cinematography all complement his performance , delivering a solid entry from the international scene.

The only major flaw of the secret agent is its pacing. At 161 minutes, it is the second-longest film on this list by a minute, only behind the worst film on this list. Unfortunately, this 2-hour and 40-minute run time feels, if not a little longer than this. Some scenes could have definitely been trimmed down a bit, especially with the random bits of sexual content that seem to serve no purpose to the story. While they aren’t enough to ruin the film or are frequent enough to warrant not watching it, they definitely don’t help it.

Available to stream on Hulu

#6: Bugonia (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Actress (Emma Stone), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score (Jersin Fendrix)

When the phrase “relevant social commentary” is ever associated with a film, it generates an eye roll and a vague feeling of dread in me. Too many films in the modern era strive for this and end up saying the same things every other film for the last decade has said. Yorgos Lanthimos has also thrown his two bits in for social commentary throughout his bizarre filmography. As someone who did not care too much for the content and subject matter of The Favourite and Poor Things, it was nice to see something from Lanthimos that sparked my interest without all the problematic content. Bugonia is much more in line with films like The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Lobster (both of which are fantastic Greek Weird Wave films in their own right), offering a dense, disturbing, and satirical view of the terminally online “blackpilled” world we currently live in.

Bugonia is a remake of the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet, maintaining the core premise. Two conspiracy theory-obsessed young men kidnap a wealthy executive under the firm belief that he is an alien sent here to destroy the planet. While the premise may seem straightforward, Yorgos Lanthimos can create a tense and nightmarish scenario that keeps you guessing at every corner up until the very end, and expertly never lets us, the audience, see the full hand until the very end. It is also able to maintain a politically neutral stance and condemns the shallow activism that most corporations tend to participate in nowadays.

The word “Bugonia” comes from Greek and refers to an ancient Mediterranean myth that bees are spontaneously born from the carcasses of dead oxen. This title is rather unique but offers a unique insight into the film. Bugonia heavily focuses on bees, their nature, and their role within the natural order. While the film clearly uses bees as an allegory for humanity, their importance within the ecosystem is always at the core of every discussion around them. Humanity in this microcosm of a film is shown as deeply flawed and sometimes even beyond mad, but this is not by default. The environment in which mankind deteriorates and grows resentful is in isolation, where resentment and anger are left to fester and inevitably explode at the cost of others. Bugonia teaches that you can either choose to doom yourself about everything (in which case you might as well die since there’s no point in moving forward), or you can live out your life and do the things that make us human and connect with others. There are aspects of humanity that are not great, as seen in the film and in the ending montage, but there is never a reason to give up on mankind. To give up on it is to die, and the world along with it. While Jesse Plemons’ character is sick and twisted, there is a part of him that is extremely empathetic and calling out desperately for something more and searching for a higher calling, which is unique to humans.

Jesse Plemons gives one of the greatest performances of the year in this film. Despite sharing many scenes with the brilliant Emma Stone, he often steals the show and is nothing short of captivating. Within a single scene, you can witness him physically, psychologically, and spiritually deteriorate when confronted with old trauma that threatens his worldview. At the same time, you have Emma Stone giving one of her more enigmatic performances, which keeps the audience on the edge of their seats, wondering if what Plemons’ character says is true or not. Stone brings a physicality to this role that is somewhat disturbing at times (in a good way), while adding enough nuance to her emotional performance to draw us in deeper to her own turmoil and struggles with the situation that she’s been put in. It is worth noting that producer Ari Aster requested that the role of the rich bureaucrat be changed from a male to a female, and while normally this would just be seen as a lazy attempt to Westernize a story, this change gave us Emma Stone (who shaved her head for the role) in one of her more intense roles, and I am incredibly thankful for it.

The other parts that really excel within this film are the cinematography and the score. Bugonia marks the fourth collaboration between Yorgos Lanthimos and Robbie Ryan, who decided to shoot the film on 8-perf 35mm film stock using VistaVision cameras. The film’s shot composition is as enigmatic as it is captivating, pulling us deeper and deeper into this maddening Tale of isolation and disdain. Ryan can shoot in dark environments and capture the grittiness of the environment as well as the rawness of intense emotions. This, paired with my personal favorite score of the year so far, creates a nightmarish and surreal piece of art that will stay with me for a very long time. The score by Jerskin Fendrix feels like a blend between the classical era and a more contemporary Stravinsky piece. Fendrix is able to capture the bipolar nature of this film within his intense and sometimes beautiful score, and we genuinely hope we get to hear more of this artist as time passes.

Bugonia is up there with Weapons (unfairly snubbed from this list) for one of the best films of the year, and is very much cut from the same cloth. It is a dense and disturbing look into the damage of isolation from others and how dangerous the era of information can be. Lanthimos is able to bounce back from his previous dud and reestablish himself as one of the more unique voices working in the industry currently, and I can’t wait to see what he has in store next.

Available to stream on Peacock

#5: F1 (dir. Joseph Kosinski)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing

If you enjoyed Top Gun: Maverick, you will absolutely love F1. It is also quite similar to the excellent and riveting Grand Prix (1966), but it differentiates itself substantially through its era and messaging.

F1 is driven by its high-quality characters, all of whom feel complex. Brad Pitt gives an excellent portrayal of a faded race car driver motivated by the thrill of racing, alongside Damson Idris as his young and cocky counterpart. The conflict between these two is key to the film, and despite the ease with which other characters could have been neglected for this drama, Kosinski decided to flesh them out as well. F1 gives the space needed to allow all characters to go on the journey that shapes the film, and it is quite frankly wholesome to watch. With such great characters, this film manages to keep things light-hearted and approachable for the masses, but does know when to get serious and sentimental in all the right places.

The pacing in this film is nothing short of fantastic, perfectly blending action and drama without making it feel like the “slow parts” are unnecessary. They are quite essential and add some much-needed depth and stakes to the story. While some racing films struggle with feeling boring when they are not on the track, F1 never feels boring and, quite frankly, flies by.

Apple spared no expense in actually having the actors work with modified F2 cars and classic filming techniques to capture awe-inspiring racing footage. Kosinski’s focus on using as many practical effects as possible and blending them with minimal CG is the way things should be done. This is not a film to watch on a phone or small TV, but the largest IMAX or Dolby format you can possibly see it on, as it is easily one of the most intense racing films ever made. Spectacular sets, incredible sound design, and wonderful cinematography all create what will easily be the most immersive theatrical experience of 2025 that MUST be seen on a large screen.

I was pleasantly surprised and immersed by the world-building present throughout. F1 does an excellent job of explaining certain rules and incidents to the audience without ever belittling us, and instead invites us to enjoy and appreciate the story on a more technical level. Even when its rules and incidents already make sense to racing enthusiasts, the movie finds a way to inform without babysitting.

F1 is an absolute triumph of the 90s summer blockbuster that many viewers have longed for the return of. It’s a film that retreads some familiar ground, but goes its own way to tell something fresh. With a fantastic cast to give us great characters, intense action, and quality storytelling, this film is something special to be experienced not just once but several times in the theater with friends.

Available to stream on Apple TV

#4: Hamnet (dir. Chloe Zhao)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Actress (Jessie Buckley), Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Casting, Best Production Design, Best Original Score (Max Richter), Best Costume Design

Hamnet is absolutely worth the hype. Chloe Zhao stepped up to the plate to give an incredibly moving tale of love and loss that knows precisely how to play its cards. It is a master class in emotional storytelling and a wonderfully immersive experience.

I have been following Jesse Buckley’s career since her supporting role in Chernobyl and her starring role in Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. She was sensational in both of those, and I figured it was only a matter of time until she would get Academy recognition. I would be genuinely shocked if she does not win the best lead actress Academy Award this Sunday, seeing as her role as Agnes was magnificent. Buckley displays the full range of human emotion with both intensity and subtlety, firmly cementing her as one of the finest actresses in the business today.

Paul Mescal and Emily Watson are able to carry their own weight with brilliant performances of their own. Perhaps the largest snub at the Academy Awards this year was none other than Jacobi Jupe for Best Supporting Actor. Rare is it that a child actor can be good, let alone great, in a role, even in a major Hollywood film. Jupe was phenomenal and has gotten practically no award recognition for perhaps the best child performance since Sean Baker’s The Florida Project. The costumes and the marvelously reconstructed Globe Theater help complement this masterful acting extravaganza.

The film addresses the use of art as a love language and a way to venerate those whom we love, as well as the crucial role parents play in their children’s lives. Zhao (and many other filmmakers in the past few years) drifts into the spiritual realm not with the coldness that many films of the earlier 21st century have had. She does not say “There is nothing out there” but rather asks, “I know there is something out there, but what is it?” Fortunately, Catholicism has this answer, and it’s nice to see others are starting to open up a little about it.

Available to stream on Peacock

#3: Train Dreams (dir. Clint Bentley)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Song (“Train Dreams” by Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner)

We now hit the part of the list where we begin discussing the excellent films.

These are the must-sees of 2025, beginning with Clint Bentley’s incredibly moving Train Dreams. While its inspiration from Terrence Malick is undeniable, Bentley avoids the “diet Malick” accusations by telling a truly compelling story.

Train Dreams most reminds me of the life of Saint Joseph. A humble and quiet man living a humble and quiet life. The film is a love letter to the unsung workers and heroes of the American frontier. And homage to an era and a generation of men who lived ordinary lives to build an extraordinary nation. It is more than just a period piece, but rather a recognition of what we have taken for granted. Joel Edgerton is perhaps the most-snubbed actor from the Best Actor category. He melts into the role of Robert Grainier to be a standard for all of the hard-working men who sacrificed so much to live ordinary lives, pursue the American dream, and to strive for the simple life of a wife, kid, and land.

Train Dreams is a lifetime lived in 102 minutes. One isn’t the same when they finished it, but merely invited to reflect on a world that seems so far away, yet all around us now. The truth of the matter is that most people are not exceptional. Most of us will not be world famous or do incredible feats of athleticism, scientific discovery, or inventions that change the world. When talking about Train Dreams and reflecting on it, I believe the quote from the late great GK Chesterton is what lies at this film’s heart:

The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.

I assure you that Train Dreams is well worth the time it takes to watch it and then some. It may seem boring to some at first, but in reality, it is easily one of the most beneficial films to see out of this list. I have every intention of revisiting this marvelous and simple film regularly.

Available to stream on Netflix

#2: Sentimental Value (dir. Joachim Trier)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best International Feature, Best Director, Best Actress (Renata Reinsve), Best Actor (Stellan Skarsgård), Best Supporting Actress (Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing

One of only two five-star ratings I gave this entire year was to Joachim Trier’s outstanding Sentimental Value. Trier’s follow-up to The Worst Person in the World is a masterful homage to European Masters such as Bergman and Tarkovsky. Telling the story of a fictitious well-renowned film director trying to reconnect with his estranged daughters, sentimental value offers an in-depth and mature look at the traumas of divorce, the importance of fatherhood, and the importance of forgiveness.

Sentimental Value feels like a late-stage Bergman film, such as Scenes from a Marriage or Fanny and Alexander. The hard cuts between some segments of the film give it an almost episodic feel, and add a layer of rawness. Stellan Skarsgård, Renate Reinsve, and every other member of the cast bring their absolute best in a bona fide Scandinavian classic. Emphasis is placed on every emotional beat, every facial twitch, every body movement, and every word. I found myself utterly lost in this maze of characters and wanting to know everything I possibly could about all the characters.

The cinematography was flat-out amazing. Frequently, I recognized homages to other classics of European Cinema without it completely taking me out of the film. Scenes are shot in a complementary fashion to help draw as much meaning out of a scene as possible. There are multiple extraordinarily long takes, with one lasting maybe around five or six minutes, that I didn’t realize hadn’t been cut until the very end of it, where I was left speechless.

Too often do films focus on the short-term effects and fallout of divorce and broken homes, but almost never do we see the true long-term effects reflected upon with such maturity. It is not viewed as an “Oh well, it’s probably for the best” perspective, but from the very real and ugly truth that it does extreme long-term harm to everyone, especially children. I can damage their ability to form meaningful and in-depth relationships with others, to open up and be vulnerable. The importance of fatherhood and the trauma that its absence can cause lies at the core of Trier’s empathetic tale of reconciliation. Yes, some may hurt us, but it is important to forgive as Christ calls us to.

#1: Marty Supreme (dir. Josh Safdie)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet), Best Original Screenplay, Best Casting, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design

Timothée Chalamet steals the show in the best film of the 2026 Best Picture race. Josh Safdie has proven once again the incredibly captivating power that cinema can have. Marty Supreme is chaotic, charming, stressful, and above all, heartfelt. It is one of those films that has hit me at the precise moment in my life when I needed to hear it most.

Marty Supreme is first and foremost about growing up. It perfectly encapsulates all of the different aspects from every film on this list into one singular message: that what truly matters to a man is becoming a father. Being there for a significant other and child and taking this burden upon yourself is the highest honor any man can take on. It takes the entire length of the film for Marty to realize this, but as is the case in Brideshead Revisited, he comes to his senses in the end. Seeing Chalamet’s moving moment at the end while “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is blaring was my favorite movie moment of 2025, and it lives rent-free in my mind since seeing it. Another positive side note was the respect for life in this film. When a character has an unexpected pregnancy, there is never the discussion of whether the baby should be “kept” or not, but instead that the baby simply is. Too often, films treat 1950s America as if every time someone was pregnant, the abortion question was asked. It’s simply not even discussed as an option, and it’s quite reassuring to see.

Chalamet gives my personal recommendation for the best actor performance for the Oscars this year. He became this character who is sort of fictitious. Every member of the star-studded cast does an amazing job, but Timothée truly does steal the show. Marty Supreme is a little raunchy at times, and no doubt has its fair share of colorful language, but it is able to capture that chaotic style that the Safdie Brothers have become notorious for. This was the most engrossing I felt in a film all year, and time absolutely flew by. The sets and costumes allowed me to be utterly lost in a post WWII world in a way I haven’t been in a long time. The score and soundtrack brilliantly complement this chaotic and convoluted tale of immaturity. I’m a personal massive fan of the Tears for Fears vibe that is present throughout, and it works shockingly well with the setting.

If I had to pin the theme of Marty Supreme down with a single quote, it would absolutely be 1st Corinthians 13:11:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Judging by Timothée Chalamet’s recent rhetoric about him wanting to settle down and be a dad, I do not doubt that he and Josh both want to convey this in this rather unorthodox, incredibly organized chaos. It is my personal favorite of the 2026 Best Picture Oscar race, and will be rewatched in the future for sure.

This past week, I cracked open the newspaper where I attend graduate school, to find an article titled “Young people yearn for physical media. Here’s why that’s a good thing”. A few hours later, I opened YouTube to find a segment from the TODAY show titled “Burdened by Tech, Gen Z is Flocking to DVDs and VHSs”. These are just a few examples of what is becoming a critical cultural moment, one that has been stewing for several years amidst a growing dissatisfaction with the promises of technology and the corporate “own nothing and be happy” mentality. As Catholics, we can find our own place in this movement as well as critique some of its shortcomings.

The first question you may be asking yourself is “what is physical media?” This moniker extends to any type of media that is…tangible and contained within itself, which includes books, Blu-Rays, board games, some boxed video games, vinyl, and so on. There are several motivators for the interest in physical media, the most obvious of which being nostalgia.

As a kid, my family would drive once a month from our home at the time in Buffalo to visit family in Pittsburgh. While I did read a lot in the car, the most memorable part was watching DVDs on a portable player tied to the back of the front seat. On these trips, I built up a lineup of movies I watched over and over and over again- Wizard of Oz, Back to the Future, the live-action Scooby-Doo, and the Eddie Murphy-starring Haunted Mansion among others. The latter film was repeated so many times that I am pretty sure it is now a permanent section of my psyche. I remember not only watching the movies, but also poring through the special features and looking over the cases.

DVDs as a medium allowed for this possibility, not only through their tangibility, but because of their limitedness. Television does the same thing. My brother, who was born seven years after me, was never in an environment where repeated viewings were a natural thing. He has always had almost limitless choice.

Nostalgia, though, is quite a drug. The VHS and DVD era had many problems of their own. The gap in quality between theatrical release and home video was much bigger. Companies often did poor transfer jobs with many films, especially foreign ones, receiving the dreaded “pan-and-scan” treatment that cut off parts of the image. And even in comparison to high prices today, VHS tapes were especially expensive at the time and did not come with the bevy of special features and commissioned art we have now. The limitedness I mentioned before made it harder to see a wider range of films and many great films were more likely to be unnoticed or unreleased.

Nostalgia is absolutely a major cause of this moment. Yet, to leave it at that would be missing something. That something would be a cottage industry that is rapidly expanding and improving at the same time the Internet gets worse and subscription costs go up.

It is a little hard to imagine now the excitement around streaming at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020. Disney+ launched with the phenomenon that was The Mandalorian and marked the end to the “Disney Vault” era where physical and theatrical re-releases were strictly limited. You could and still can watch just about every movie the studio ever made at any time. HBO Max launched with an incredible array of content that includes all of HBO, many classic movies under the Turner Classic Movies banner, all of Studio Ghibli’s work, and a lot of animation from Looney Tunes to Cartoon Network. The moment was so powerful that I even had a subscription to the doomed Quibi service, which deserved much better.

As the pandemic era wound down, the dream started to fade. Netflix original movies became more of a pejorative term. Disney+, Paramount+, and HBO Max started to remove large amounts of content, including shows and movies that were completely unavailable elsewhere. Warner Bros took it a step farther by cancelling projects that were finished as a tax write-off. The excuse was poor quality, but anyone who has seen The Day The Earth Blew Up knows that is wrong. And the prices, oh the prices. Disney+ launched in 2019 at $6.99 per month. Today, the same plan costs $18.99 per month. Simultaneously, companies have figured out that it is not a great long-term solution to spend huge amounts on original content. So as the price increases, the quality and quantity of content declines.

The subscription model has become increasingly dominant outside of media and people are getting tired of it. You might even be paying one to read this. Wallets are getting tight, too. Consumers can only afford to have one or two services at once, which makes streaming frankly a difficult enterprise for any company not named Netflix.

While streaming crashes and burns, physical media, at least for movies, is doing extremely well. Criterion Collection sales have become an event and people waited for hours to walk inside the famed Criterion Closet. There are now many companies regularly releasing high-quality versions of films from every era. I will get into some recommendations for that later in the article. DVDs and VHS tapes are, for now, pretty cheap. New releases can be expensive, but there is a near limitless supply of older content to consume for cheaper. Within a few miles of me, there are about four or five stores that have hundreds of DVDs and Blu-Rays for sale for a few dollars a piece.

Disillusionment about streaming and current economic conditions are another motivator for physical media, but the picture is not fully complete. Owning media physically is also a form of preservation and resistance against ownership-free technocracy.

Imagine Netflix were to shut down tomorrow and every piece of original content that was never released physically (which is most) is now only available illegally. Over the next few years, some companies might pick up the rights to some popular content for their own digital platforms. Still, much of the library goes untouched. This may seem extreme, but the exact scenario has already happened in another medium, video games.

Video games have been trending in the digital-only direction for years with many games never receiving a physical release. This has created a major preservation problem. In 2019, Nintendo shut down the digital store for the Wii. In 2023, they shut down the stores for the Wii U and the 3DS. The Xbox 360 store was closed in 2024. This left hundreds, if not thousands, of games unplayable unless they had already been purchased prior to closure. Today, only a small fraction of them have been released on newer platforms. Things are only getting worse as consoles begin to remove the disc drive and Nintendo sells physical cartridges that only act as a pass to download the game digitally.

While physical media does not last forever, it usually lasts longer than digital storefronts and can often be legally copied. Because of this, I have tried to track down my favorite films that never got full releases. The epic horror film The Empty Man was only released on DVD via Redbox. Netflix original White Noise, a perfect candidate for owning because it is both amazing and not well-known, was only put on Blu-Ray as a screener for awards voters.

As great as physical media may seem, there is a dark side: overconsumption. This world is not our home and all of our possessions ultimately mean little for our salvation. “Life does not consist in an abundance of possession” (Luke 12:15). It is a waste of time and money that could be used for better purposes to collect an inordinate amount of physical media for no reason beyond collecting itself and nostalgia. The latter can become an unhealthy dwelling on the past that can get in the way of our present responsibilities. “Do not say ‘why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). Physical media can easily fall into the “throwaway culture” Pope Francis identified. Today’s digital subscription-based model is bad, yet that does not make any response okay. We have recently seen the rise in “graded” VHS tapes, which exist solely for speculation. Unless you are working in an archive, movies are meant to be watched and shared.

As Catholics, we should be responsible consumers. In 2023, Pope Francis spoke to the patrons of the arts in the Vatican Museums and identified in them the “conviction that each generation has a collective responsibility to cherish and preserve the priceless heritage with which we have been entrusted”. While we are not working for the Vatican Museums, we can pass on important and enriching art to our communities and future generations. Physical media can be a way of doing that.

If you do want to join the craze, I have a few tips and companies to check out. Format is a big deal and can be a little confusing to newcomers. DVDs are the commonly-used term, but are actually an older format that is low-quality by today’s standards. There are still plenty of reasons to collect DVDs as they are usually very cheap and many films have not been released on better formats. The successor to the DVD is the Blu-Ray, which has now been succeeded by the 4K Blu-Ray. The latter is still relatively niche, and most films are released on all three formats.

I highly recommend 4K discs despite the rarity of cheap ones. They are the best possible way to watch a film at home and look far better than 4K films on streaming, which are constrained by network rates. If you own a PlayStation 5 or an Xbox Series X that has a disc drive, you can play them. It is also possible to pick up used players for $100 or less. They also play regular Blu-Rays and DVDs.

As for companies releasing films, the best place to start is the Criterion Collection, which has been around since laserdisc. Their goal is to create high-quality releases of the best films ever made. The trade-off is that they are the most expensive with 4Ks going for as much as $50 new. I only buy from them during their 24-hour sales, which usually happen in late March and November, or the annual Barnes & Noble 50% off event.

I would also recommend Kino Lorber, which has a huge catalog from new indie films to the silent era. They have been putting out 4K discs of movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the original Pink Panther, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and more. Their catalog is also full of great non-4K disc releases. The special features offered are usually less than that of Criterion and some other companies, but more than the studios themselves tend to offer.

There are many, many companies and I will shout out two more. Flicker Alley puts out a small handful of releases each year that are remastered well and full of special features. For example, they recently put out Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings, which includes an audio commentary, three different scores, and a variety of making-of videos. The movies they choose tend to be from the silent and early sound eras. Finally, there is Arrow Video, which is basically the Criterion Collection of blockbusters. In addition to hours of special features, they will often release alternative cuts of films never or rarely seen before. They have good sales a few times a year.

Physical media is a fad and that means it will likely fade out of the mainstream soon. What then? Will the digital and subscription model still win out? We cannot know. What we can do now as Catholics is to engage in the culture to help guide it towards the dignity of the person and the glory of God. Sometimes, that may require owning the Criterion of The Tree of Life.

Got a sick physical media collection you’d like to share? Send pictures to 100catholicmovies@gmail.com with your name (just first name is okay), place of residence (optional) and a paragraph describing it. If we get enough, we’ll do a whole post presenting them!

Over the course of my Faith journey, Lent has become one of my favorite liturgical seasons. The incredible spiritual and formative impact of Lent is undeniable. Given that, in recent years, using art to meditate has started to re-enter the mainstream again, I figured now would be as good a time as ever to put this list out.

In 2021, as I was on a Catholic cinematic journey, I decided to create a Lenten watchlist to deepen the season. The current list being shared is a slightly updated version, but still retains the core principle of the original. It is a cinematic meditation designed to help an individual get the most out of Lent. While daily scripture should be the primary focus, each of these has been selected as a companion/meditative piece and can enhance the season. Sundays were originally skipped when I composed this list, as it was seen that they are to be dedicated to the Holy Mass. Upon considering that Sunday is a day of rest and spiritual development, Sunday film recommendations have been added. Notes next to each film have relevant scripture from that daily reading, with each film tying into the overall themes of each day.

The list is quite easy to use.

1. Click on the link, which will take you to Letterboxd

2. At the top of the list on the right side under the “Sort by List Order” button, there will be an orange button with glasses that says “Read Notes”. Click on the orange button.

3. Simply scroll down and find the film for the day. Each film will have the corresponding day of the liturgical calendar and a daily reading quote.

Before jumping headfirst into this list, a few things need to be addressed:

1. Due to the seriousness of Lent, many of these films are quite heavy.

2. It is not mandatory that every film be seen, as 47 films is a lot.

3. Not all of these films are suitable for younger audiences, such as Schindler’s List or The Passion of the Christ, so viewer discretion is advised (the parents’ guide on IMDb is a wonderful tool).

4. Some of these are quite long and maybe a bit artsy for some, but give them a chance to take you somewhere you’re not used to being taken.

5. Not every film needs to be seen, just important that whatever you choose to watch fits the day (although some like the Dekalog are quite difficult to find, so it is understandable).

6. Some of these can be quite difficult to find, so don’t sweat it. Many can be found on HBO, Criterion, or Amazon Prime.

7. The Dekalog is only accessible to my understanding if you rent it on Amazon or own the physical copy.

While not everything on here can be seen, there are a few films on the list that I recommend as almost mandatory for viewing during Lent.

These films are:

• Andrei Rublev (#47)

• The Mission (#57)

• The Seventh Seal (#9)

• The Lord of the Rings (#50)

• A Hidden Life (#29)

• The Tree Of Life (#2)

• The Shawshank Redemption (#62)

• The Passion Of Joan of Arc (#34)

• Babette’s Feast (#37)

• The Passion Of the Christ (#53)

(Editor’s Note: Please remember that entries from our list of 100 Movies are not ranked)

If you have your own recommendations, please share with us some of your favorite Lenten films in the comments below!

Have a blessed and fruitful Lent.

As a film professor of over 50 years (Duke University Divinity School, the College of William and Mary, Regent University, Wheaton College, and Virginia Wesleyan University), I joined several colleagues (director Stu Minnis, screenwriter Steve Sylvester, and producer Vickie Bronaugh) in making a documentary movie about diverse prayers in films. Based on a book on I did for New York University Press (God on the Big Screen), we started with the potent silent films of Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford and ended up with inspirational 21^st century movies like Harriet. Amazed at how many prayers populated Hollywood films, we wanted to see what they might be teaching audiences about praying.

C. S. Lewis thought the best way to reach a pagan culture was to sneak past the watchful dragons, both secularists and fundamentalist. And Hollywood, however unwittingly, accomplished the task of teaching people how to pray, sneaking prayers into mainstream cinema.

Our film, Hollywood, Teach Us to Pray, available on YouTube for those wandering the wilderness of the internet, offers a roller coaster ride of praying experiences, hypocritical, superficial, questioning, hoping, and transcendent, all ways of trying to communicate with a Father in Heaven.

The recognizable comic prayers of Meet the Parents, Talladega Nights, or Tyler Perry films elicit laughter, even as they hold up a mirror to our own selfish prayers. The desperate prayers of Ben-Hur or Hacksaw Ridge move us as they echo our own fears and pain. Embedded, even hidden, in mainstream cinema, we find films alter the narrative trajectory in unexpected ways. When Katherine Hepburn’s Rose prays that God would open His heavens to rescue her and Humphrey Bogart’s character in African Queen, the answer comes immediately, with rain lifting them out of a swamp. In fact, in a study by Fraser and Brown, God answers prayers more quickly and definitively in movies than in real life, with over 80% of cinematic petitions being answered in 90 minutes of screen time.

The gap between the secular Hollywood establishment and the potential religious market was best captured in an apocryphal tale told by biographer Bob Thomas about Columbia Studio’s legendary Cohn brothers. The two producers debated the prospect of making a religious film. Harry challenged his brother Jack, claiming that he knew nothing about religion.

“What the hell do you know about the Bible, Jack? I’ll bet you fifty bucks you don’t even know the Lord’s Prayer,” said Harry.

“Oh, yes I do,” boasted Jack.

“Well then, let’s hear it,” prodded his brother.

Jack started: “Now I lay me down to sleep…”

“Okay, okay,” conceded Harry. “You win,” and handed over the fifty bucks.

This comic anecdote in which Jack mistakes a common children’s bedtime prayer for Jesus’s instructions on prayer in the Gospels offers two insights. First, that Hollywood did not know much about praying and, second, that it nevertheless knew that religion in film mattered. Cinematic prayers would come to be significant elements of film, intentionally scripted and embedded in Hollywood narrative paradigms, almost like religious product placements.

From just calling out God’s name, the film explores how the movies have shaped our prayers (especially for those who forget their catechism). One crucial moment defines the whole film. It captures the central parable of movie prayers.

In Easy A (Will Gluck, 2010), Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) goes into a church looking for a minister, a reverend, even a wizard. Earlier, she had gone into a bookstore to find a Bible. A bookstore clerk tells her it is in bestsellers, right next to Twilight.

She plays a reverse hypocrite, seeking to appear wicked when she remains quite wholesome. As she pretends to be Hester (from Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter), a friend admonishes her with “I hope for your sake, God has a sense of humor”.

“Oh”, she responds, “I have seventeen years worth of anecdotal proof that He does”.

The key moment, however, occurs when she sits in a confessional booth. She whispers, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I think that’s how you’re supposed to start these things. I’m only going on what I’ve seen in the movies”.

Featuring directors like David Anspaugh (Rudy, Hoosiers), Robert Benton (Places in the Heart), and Michael Schulz (Car Wash, Which Way is Up?), critics like Leonard Maltin and Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang, and religious leaders like Father James Martin, Professor Robert Johnston, and Sister Helen Prejean, the film addresses questions about prayer, about suffering, silence, pain, and thanksgiving for meals like hot dogs.

After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake in which the city was devastated and hundreds lost their lives, a group of survivors sing “Nearer my God to Thee”, a prayer of need in San Francisco (W. S. Van Dyke, 1936). Barbary Coast’s “Paradise” saloonkeeper, the roguish Blackie Norton (Clark Gable) surveys the wreckage of the catastrophe. Having lost everything, except his beloved Mary, (Jeannette MacDonald), an opera imp, he turns to his friend, the conscientious priest Father Tim Mullen (Spencer Tracy) and asks. “I want to thank god. What do I have to say?” Father Mullin responds, “Just say what’s on your heart.”

Norton kneels and says, “Thanks, God. Thanks! I really mean it.”

The climactic scene just before the titles situates Denzel Washington (The Book of Eli, Albert and Allen Hughes, 2010) in hostile territory with a young woman sent to extract secrets from his spiritual journey, namely the possession of a sacred book. In one of the most pedagogically direct moments of teaching one how to pray, Eli tells the would-be seductress to sit down with him and share some food at table: “Give me your hands. Close your eyes. ‘Thanks for warm bed Thank you for the gift of companionship. Amen’. Now we eat.”

With prayers for Roman Catholics (The Gaucho, Silence) and for Protestants (Hell’s Hinges, Bruce Almighty), the hundreds of films (with so many other titles left on the cutting room floor) will not only resonate, but awaken one to rediscover how one can learn from fiction and enter a more authentic relation with the One Who wants to commune with us.

Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, captured a fragile and transcendent moment of “Beata Beatrix” praying. His poetry suggested that one “Give honor unto Luke Evangelist; / For he it was (the aged legends say) / Who first taught Art / To hold her hands and pray.”

So, giving honor to the One Who teaches us to pray, we made a documentary feature that we think challenges, inspires, amuses, and helps us remember how God snuck into all the great Hollywood films, when we thought He was absent. How sneaky.

This is a continuation of the series "The Rise and Fall (and Rise?) of the MCU". To check out the intro post for the series, click here.

In 2004, Bob Dylan spoke on 60 Minutes of how he conjured up the lyrics to “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”…

Bob: ”I don’t know how I got to write those songs… Those early songs were, like, almost magically written.”

[He proceeds to recite some of the lyrics: ”Darkness at the break of noon, shadows even the silver spoon. A handmade blade, a child’s balloon eclipses…”]

Bob: [continued] ”Well, try to sit down and write something like that. There’s a magic to that and it’s not Siegfried & Roy kind of magic, you know? It’s a different kind of a penetrating magic.”

Dylan wasn’t the only artist who bore these sentiments about art being much deeper than an idea formed by mere humans. Painters like Paul Klee believed art was an exploration of the metaphysical, while Michelangelo took refuge in a sculpture already existing within a marble block — it was only his job to chisel away and reach it. Art is a reflection of the divine, and expresses emotions in inexplicable ways. A true artist just knew that there was more to his work than meets the eye. The divine has to be behind the creation, influencing the artist to be moved and to move others through his individuality and honesty in expression. That divine push is that kind of a penetrating magic.

As reverie in entertainment continues via watching movies on our phones, laptops and tablets instead of going to one’s local theater, it might (or does for people like me) seem like a devolution. A devolution of this art — the medium of film. As visual creativity has devolved from the likes of Bernini’s sculptures in the Vatican or Frederic Remington’s oil paintings of the American West, and into risible performance “art” — ranging from wall scribbling to dropping ping pong balls on a staircase in New York City’s art exhibits, it cannot be helped but for my own tired eyes to see, somewhat, this same path towards thoughtful expression’s diminishment in the realm of motion pictures.

We can try and pinpoint where the quality decrease in movies began in the 21st century. For example, Netflix and Apple TV have taken the cake in producing truckloads of new entertainment, which supersedes the public’s desire to see a movie in theaters. Generally, any film nominated now in these annoyingly pontificating elitist award shows is a project no one has heard of, and honestly doesn’t hold interest to watch (for me, at least).

What is popular now? What would us plebeians hit up several movie theaters to see?

Besides the yearly horror film, eccentric dark comedy, or appetizing nostalgia through Tom Cruise sprinting, leaping, and soaring through the air (that’s worth the price of admission now over much else), it’s the popular screen portrayals of comic book characters. As figures of what ideally should be a new American mythology, superheroes on film are now on a downward spiral of quality — and speaking of nostalgia, that now seems to be the only ingredient left to keep these Marvel movies standing on two legs (the return of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Hugh Jackman’s comeback as the iconic Logan in Deadpool and Wolverine, for example).

This downward spiral arguably began circa the 2010s in Kevin Feige’s long standing Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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In 1999, Bryan Singer began shooting a film that would change the course of cinematic history. The movie was X-Men. Singer was famously (or infamously) not a fan of the comics and strove to create something that was more grounded and less fantastical, and forbade anyone on set from bringing any comics.

There was one man who defied him. A young, ballcap wearing assistant producer named Kevin Feige, who would sneak “Wolverine” actor and future franchise star Hugh Jackman comics and even fought Singer to keep a scene where Jackman- true to the character- calls someone “bub”.

This story is practically Hollywood legend by now, and is indicative of the future that was to come for the assistant producer, who quickly rose to co-producer for the sequel, X2 and subsequently an executive producer on the third film, The Last Stand.

Almost two decades later, Feige became so successful at making Marvel movies that he led the fledgling Marvel Studios into the greatest box office run in history, making him the highest-grossing producer of all time. In 2009 the Walt Disney Company bought Marvel Studios for $4 billion, and after a decade of Feige-produced hits they were in a position to buy out the entirety of 20th Century Fox Studios.

Feige- who once fought just to give Hugh Jackman a comic-accurate haircut- was now the “Bruce Wayne” of the producing world.

However, like any successful person, business, or entity, it’s only a matter of time before chinks begin to appear in the armor.

Even Kevin Feige, the most powerful man in Tinseltown, is still subject to dramatic exits and entrances of leadership, something that has plagued Walt Disney Studios since the death of its beloved founder. Under Bob Chapek, all film divisions reported to an intermediary instead of reporting straight to the top, and it’s clear from the slate that got put out that Feige began to have increasingly less control over the final product.

Upon Iger’s return, Feige now reports directly to him and based on this year’s Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four the quality difference from what came before is notable, but the world still wonders if superhero fatigue hasn’t done this whole enterprise in. It may end up being that, once again, it’s up to Wolverine and the X-Men to save the day.

All eyes are now on Avengers: Doomsday to see if Marvel still has it, but predictions on that front will be for the tail end of this series.

With this series my friend Kevin (our video essayist supreme) and I will be exploring:

• Why the MCU succeeded where previous Marvel entries didn’t

• Why the firing of James Gunn and Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox had disastrous effects on the overall storyline post-Endgame

• How Feige’s methods running the studio are actually extremely similar to Old Hollywood methods

• How I would have planned out the MCU post-Endgame, and how it could still be saved

Hope you enjoy this new series, and if you have suggestions on specific movies or topics within the MCU that you want to see covered, sound off in the comments below!

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Brothers Eddie and Charlie Scott tackle one of their favorite filmmakers with Quentin Tarantino’s complete overhaul and completion of his Kill Bill movies, combining them into a 4 and a half-hour epic titled “Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair”. In theaters now.

“It’s Like Re-Discovering the Mona Lisa”

By Eddie Scott

The Whole Bloody Affair is Tarantino’s original vision for Kill Bill, being both first and second movies put into one long epic. However, Tarantino’s editing extends beyond simply stitching the two halves together, but rather features a complete project more closely resembling his original vision, adding scenes and even going as far as to negate studio changes made for censors and runtime.

Now, typically I refrain from speaking about myself in reviews in an effort to keep them focused on the film’s nature rather than myself. However, I cannot write this review without acknowledging you, the reader, and call attention to my personal viewing experience. Everyone’s perception of this matter will be different, however I will do my best to segment my perspective into relatable and understandable terms and perspectives.

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