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Strongest Impressions of 2011, Part 2
It happens every January—movie ads fill up with boasts about awards they’ve won. Soon, those boasts will include Oscar nominations. And The Artist is currently the most boastful of all. Filmmaker Michael Hazanavicius’s tribute to Hollywood’s silent film era is stirring up enthusiasm among audiences and critics alike. Me, I enjoyed it. It was playful, funny, a hoot. Hazanavicius showed guts when he committed....
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Strongest Impressions of 2011, Part 1
It’s that time again: Time to share my favorite films of 2011. Today, I’ll share twenty-one silver medal winners—movies I admired very much. Tomorrow—the gold medalists—the top ten. I was asked to share this list on a Pittsburgh radio program last week. But we got sidetracked. The show hosts asked questions about a celebrity controversy (Sean Penn’s criticism of The Tree of Life) and then asked why I hadn’t....
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Tree of Life, Tree of Light
Ever since Greg Wolfe started a Facebook thread about the movie, I’ve been thinking about Tree of Life—particularly the section depicting the birth of the universe. At first it appears to be a cinematic non-sequitur, and it seems also never to end. It does end, after almost twenty minutes away from the narrative. The big bang gets it started, then galaxies form—gaseous explosions of color and light, giving birth....
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War Horse: A War Story for Everyone
Was there a horse story in your childhood? My wife Anne cherished Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty, C.W. Anderson’s The Blind Connemara, and Marguerite Henry’s Stormy and White Stallion of Lipizza. When she wasn’t reading about horses, she was riding them. In the saddle by the time she was in elementary school, Anne rode both English and Western. My favorite photograph from her childhood....
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A Fortune Right in Front of Me
Tonight, I’m paying attention to one of my “essentials.” You probably have a movie like this one—a movie that repairs you, that restores your spirits, that put everything into perspective. (If you do, leave a comment so we can all check it out.) But let me tell you what I’m watching. I see a black-robed man, a red bible in his hand, standing in a cabbage patch....
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Current Issue
Issue 71
Fiction by Larry Woiwode, interview with Joe Henry, art by Fabian Debora, essay by Barry Moser.
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