“And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime. Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning” — Wilfred Owen, “Dulce Et Decorum Est” The lives of World War I English poets Siegfried Sassoon (Jack Lowden (“Dunkirk”) and Wilfred Owen (Matthew Tennyson, “Making Noise Quietly”)…
We are part of a fortunate and collective audience. Through films, we can go back in time and we be part of history by the recreation of our past, as dark and uncomfortable as it may be. I believe the exposure to our past — especially by younger audiences — is essential. By exploring the…
The second of his 12 plays dramatizing the Black experience in America during the twentieth century, August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is a haunting and powerful experience that focuses on Gertrude “Ma Rainey” (Viola Davis, “Widows”), known as “The Mother of the Blues,” one of the first popular Black blues singers to gain acceptance…
“. . . something is happening here but you don’t know what it is? Do you, Mr. Jones?” — Bob Dylan Mr. Jones, directed by Agnieszka Holland (“Julie Walking Home”) from a screenplay (Holland’s first) is based on the real life story of Gareth Jones (flawlessly played by James Norton, “Little Women”), a young Welsh…
The Von Trapp family singing their way across the Alps from Austria to Switzerland in “The Sound of Music” is an iconic image in cinema history. While it has its devoted fans, “The Sound of Music” also attracts criticism for its sugar-coating of one of the darkest chapters in human history. A more somber tale…
Most Christian faith-based films mean well and have the best of intentions in terms of the inspiration it preaches to its targeted audiences. However, filmmaking brothers Andrew and Jon Erwin (“I Can Only Imagine”) go so much further, delivering with odd conviction, a saccharine-coated, religious-themed love story that taps more sap than that found in…
“Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today” — Ernest Hemingway In its depiction of the life of an Austrian farmer who refused to sign an oath of loyalty to Hitler…
