The initial success of Brannon Braga and Adam Simon’s series “Salem” (2015-2017) and the staggering impact of Robert Eggers’ “The Witch” seems to have made American Puritans into high fashion for horror entertainment. Director Martin Koolhoven and producer Els Vandevorst had, for several years before the releases of the aforementioned titles, been producing their own…
For her fun fictionalized memoir of sorts, Greta Gerwig has painted a coming-of-age tale almost entirely in shades of grey. Lady Bird is the writer/director’s gentle, through passionately prickly look at the haze that lies just beyond adolescence, with Saoirse Ronan (“The Grand Budapest Hotel”) playing Christine, the also titular protagonist who must navigate the…
Young adults Hannah (Janessa Floyd), Andrew (Aidan Hart) and Colin (Jeffrey Brabant) are heading into the remote Maryland woods to attend a Bible retreat. Hannah and Andrew are signed-up Christians. Colin is a skeptic, wishing to document their experience, and he holds their one and only camera. We’re in found footage country, folks. The initiates…
Adam is a man (although not the first) living with his wife in the congested holy city of Nazareth. He is a member of the Christian Arab community, which is a population in decline in these parts. As the Angel Gabriel descended on Nazareth to announce the coming of the Messiah, Holy Air opens with…
It’s a crime how rarely cinema objectively explores religion. While there remains plenty of lighthearted, faith-based fare tailored to specific churchgoing demographics, very rarely are audiences exposed to the challenging theological perspectives that lie buried underneath Lifetime-flavored fluff and grim, pessimistic horror clichés. Thankfully, in lieu of a fictionalized analysis, we have Deliver Us (Libera…
The Hasidic tradition that a child must be raised in a household where there is both a mother and a father is one of the cultural issues brought to the fore in Joshua Z Weinstein’s bittersweet film, Menashe. Co-written by Alex Lipschultz and Musa Syeed (“A Stray”) and set in the Hasidic community in the…
Can an independent comedy about 14th-century religious debauchery involving naughty nuns be a legitimate rib-tickler in a sluggish summer movie season of wacky, yet toothless, farces (e.g., “The House”)? Refreshingly it can be, especially if it is writer-director Jeff Baena’s boisterous and bawdy The Little Hours, a corruptible comedy that brings its satirical cynicism to…
