Reading Time: 7 minutes Some of the best science fiction illuminates our stark reality: We are here now, in this present moment, and we have a choice to live, and grow, and learn, and love. Or to give up on all that and destroy ourselves and each other. The scenario is not great, but the choice seems obvious.
Film/TV
Exploring the world of film and television from a secular perspective.
Posted inFilm/TV
‘Hilda’ captures the magic and wonder of childhood
Reading Time: 3 minutes The rare kids’ show that hits the trifecta: it’s gorgeous but has rich depths of story, imaginative yet grounded, and handles heavy themes deftly.
Posted inPsychology
Peter Weir’s ‘Fearless’: Grief, the superpower nobody wants
Reading Time: 5 minutes Jamie Raskin’s got it. Nick Cave, too. I’ve got it. And in Peter Weir’s 1993 classic, Fearless, Max Klein has it. Thanks to trauma and loss, we are, like the movie title says, fearless. But we’d relinquish this superpower in a heartbeat, if our lives could rewind. When US Representative Jamie Raskin was in the […]
Posted inNews
Mel Gibson gets fired
Reading Time: 4 minutes Mel Gibson was fired Sunday night. The noted actor and antisemite was scheduled to be one of the grand marshals of one of the yearly Mardi Gras parades. And the fact that he was even slated to be one of the two grand marshals will strike many of you odd because, well, Mel Gibson is […]
Posted inFilm/TV
An ESPN analyst’s gratuitous on-air prayers won’t help Damar Hamlin
Reading Time: 5 minutes In the days since Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapsed during a football game and had to be taken to a hospital in Cincinnati, some people have used his near-fatal injury as a vessel to spread their particular flavor of Christianity via prayers, distracting from more pressing issues and denying credit from the medical personnel […]
Posted inFilm/TV
In ‘Wildcat,’ who’s rescuing who?
Reading Time: 3 minutes This isn’t your kid’s Disney nature documentary. Nothing against that genre: I enjoy watching cute cavorting penguins or monkeys, accompanied by perky music. But Wildcat is something better, something deeper. In this excellent documentary by first-time feature directors Trevor Frost and Melissa Lesh, the stakes are higher. Survival of the eponymous ocelot isn’t guaranteed, and […]
Posted inFilm/TV
Perfect empathy: Deep Space Nine and the most fantastical concept in all of fiction
Reading Time: 5 minutes A series that brought the optimism of Star Trek to the threshold of the 21st century ended with the message that empathy is the solution to all conflict. A generation later, that concept is much harder to accept.
Posted inFilm/TV
‘Aftersun’ perfectly captures the grief-memory connection
Reading Time: 6 minutes Some coincidences you can’t make up. On the day I watched Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, her masterful film on grief and memory, my daughter sent me a video of my now-deceased son Josh. He was laughing as we watched a silly YouTube cartoon on Christmas Eve a few years back. Oh, the mix of emotions this […]
Posted inFilm/TV
Underneath its pretty skin, ‘Glass Onion’ is spoiled produce
Reading Time: 3 minutes I’ll admit, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery was mostly fun to watch. The flashbacks and twists were playful and clever. It offers some genuine laughs. The cameos were a nice surprise, and its costumes are delicious eye candy. But then I started thinking about what I’d just seen. Way to kill the mood, brain. […]
Posted inFilm/TV
The five Christmas films you meet in hell
Reading Time: 15 minutes How can one properly make a list of bad Christmas films? Is it even possible? When I took on the task of narrowing down a list of films that soften your brain and have the audacity to call it Christmas spirit, I had assumed that certain films would stand out from the rest. I assumed […]