A century and a half ago, Jules Verne wrote Around the World in Eighty Days, and readers began to imagine that the world might be shrinking a wee bit. The new...
TV and film
The French Dispatch Directed by Wes Anderson (American Empirical Pictures, 2021) The French Dispatch is a paean to highbrow, narrative journalism. With poetic...
Cyrano Directed by Joe Wright (United Artists Releasing, 2022) If I had to pick one word to describe Cyrano, it would be human. The thrill of first love, the...
By now it’s become a cliché that the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed social and economic ills that America long swept under the rug. Low wages, weak workplace...
Who were you before you were born? Who will you be after you die? In church circles the responses to these questions might quickly move in the direction of...
The Fallout Directed by Megan Park (SSS Entertainment, 2021) “I feel so empty,” 16-year-old Vada (Jenna Ortega) tells her father in The Fallout, writer and...
In the Disney film Encanto, the Madrigal family’s story begins when Abuela and Abuelo flee civil war in their home country of Colombia. Abuelo sacrifices...
Luca Directed by Enrico Casarosa (Disney/Pixar, 2021) With Disney/Pixar dominating mainstream theatrical releases for the past 20 years, you likely are not...
Midnight Mass Directed by Mike Flanagan (Netflix, 2021) The scariest thing about Midnight Mass isn’t the blood or creatures. It’s the people. The miniseries...
Ted Lasso is teaching boys how to be men and men how to be good people. Right there on television, where the opposite usually happens. The American...
