As a crime thriller and religious horror film, Longlegs is concerned with aesthetics but (perhaps) unaware of its own theological claims ..read more

I have a confession. I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor, but until two days before seeing Inside Out 2, I still hadn’t even seen the first Inside Out. I know. Malpractice. Despite the hype, Inside Out met and exceeded my expectations. The personification of the core emotions—sadness, joy, fear, anger, and disgust—were delightfully impactful (although we can argue about whether disgust is genuinely a core emotion). Even the most emotionally illiterate person can’t help but recognize their own feelings in the emotion characters and see how they try to help us out. Additionally, the representa ..read more

Spend five minutes scanning the headlines and you risk sinking into despair and cynicism. Accounts of war, corruption, hatred, and strife seem to fill the news at an ever-increasing rate. And of course, for Americans, the ever-present hum of politically related despair is fast reaching a fevered pitch thanks to the 2024 presidential election—an election that’s been awash in controversy since day one due to concerns over both candidates’ age and mental acuity, not to mention Donald Trump’s status as a convicted felon and rapist. First, God remains on the throne regardless of who holds earthly ..read more

***Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for Frank Herbert’s Dune novels and for the films Dune and Dune: Part Two.*** “For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.” – Matthew 24:24 (NIV) “You underestimate the power of faith.” Princess Irulan (Florence Pugh) utters these words as a prescient warning to her father Emperor Shaddam (Christopher Walken) in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two (2024). Like the other major characters in the film, Princess Irulan thinks of religion primarily in terms of pol ..read more

Walter Martin’s 2022 album The Bear slows the world down, turning the listener’s attention to little things like “the holes where blind moles blink” or mixing paints or a baseball’s circuit between pitcher and catcher. This fixation on little things combined with Martin’s voice (in no way “done up”) gives the album its charm. And listeners will notice that Martin routinely stumbles upon the profound; little things, after all, add up to big things. Image via Pitchfork. This is especially so in “The Song Is Never Done” where Martin sings of wanting to write the “perfect song.” But, he points out ..read more

Pam lives in the trailer on the edge of town. She drinks too much. Every night, in fact. Empty cans and six-pack plastic litter her yard. Wearing garish eye makeup and stiff curls, Pam boasts loudly about her cherished adult daughter to anyone who will listen—but, behind closed doors, she berates her and treats her little better than a maid. Her neighbors have their own problems. Elderly Evelyn and George find themselves raising their grandson after their daughter Clara’s untimely death. The local rancher, Marnie, has taken her alcoholic nephew Shane and her young niece Jas under her wing. A n ..read more

“I would rather go blind,” Etta James sings, “than to see you walk away.” The first time I heard this song I felt the pull of her powerful emotions. Yep, that’s how it feels during a break-up, I thought, though we might not actually trade our eyesight! How many parents, driven to despair, have offered their lives to God or the devil if only their child could survive? Alas, the bargain is not struck. After my daughter died, I realized the lyric isn’t just bluesy hyperbole. Many bereaved parents have pleaded with God to take them instead. A struggling child puts the lie to any Faustian fantasi ..read more

The following contains potential spoilers for In a Violent Nature. Chris Nash says his new film, In a Violent Nature, is “reciting a definition” of a slasher. The claim that it turns the subgenre on its head by showing us everything from the killer’s perspective might lead you to expect a film length point-of-view (POV) gimmick, or a masked assailant live streaming his sadistic hobby. Even if this were true, it wouldn’t constitute the next step in the “evolution of the slasher.” Being “trapped” in the head of a killer is hardly groundbreaking cinema these days. Pioneering slashers like Psycho ..read more

Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for Star Wars: Tales of the Empire. Recent installments in the Star Wars franchise have incited no small amount of heated debate. Live-action shows like Andor and The Mandalorian have rightly received critical acclaim. However, I believe a few of the animated series—Clone Wars, Bad Batch, Rebels, and the anime-style Visions, specifically—have been the greatest additions to the Star Wars grand narrative in the past decade. Tales of the Empire continues this trend. Released as part of this year’s “May the Fourth” celebration, Empire is a follow-up mi ..read more

This article contains spoilers for Dune: Part Two. The “Self-Made Man” and the Self-Veiled Woman We’ve all heard it: “Behind every great man is a great woman.” There’s more than one way to read that cliché: as a well-deserved “thank you” to the mothers who raised us or the wives who kept the home fires burning; as an affront to women’s dignity (See, we’re always relegated to the role of “support staff,” never the main event!); as a way to undermine the myth of the self-made man; as a reminder of the unpaid “second shift” that typically falls on women; as a call to gratitude. Or, as Dune: Part ..read more