Tag: War

  • Oscars 2020 — Who Should Win (Part Two)

    Oscars 2020 — Who Should Win (Part Two)

    Welcome to part two of our Oscar picks! Here’s part one if you missed it: Oscars 2020 – Who Should Win? (Part One) Remember, these aren’t the movies that will win, these are the movies that should win. Here are our picks for the most coveted categories of the night…   Best Supporting Actress  …

  • Novitiate / Hostiles / Call Me by Your Name

    Novitiate / Hostiles / Call Me by Your Name

    Welcome to another edition of Mini-Review Roundup where we present smaller reviews of several movies at once. Up this month: Novitiate, Hostiles, and Call Me by Your Name.   Novitiate   Nothing scares me more than a movie about faith. I’ll take a tank full of sharks over watching the foundation of my life butchered…

  • First They Killed My Father

    First They Killed My Father

    Most people living today have only a vague memory of the Vietnam War, or none at all.  As a teenager growing up in a very conservative area my memories were taken from Walter Cronkite’s TV reports, my local paper, and a few radio broadcasts. We were told America was sending soldiers to Southeast Asia to…

  • Dunkirk

    Dunkirk

    As Hollywood obsesses over superhero movies, power has shifted from directors to producers. Just ask Edgar Wright and Patty Jenkins — two veteran directors who dropped blockbuster projects after learning Marvel Studios was in charge, not them. But there is one director who continues to buck the trend and maintain his legacy as a true…

  • Song to Song

    Song to Song

    Chances are high that you haven’t seen Terrence Malick’s new film Song to Song. Few people have. It’s only grossed $421,856 since opening in limited release a month ago. The critical reception has been equally poor. Things weren’t always this way for Malick. Six years ago, he released The Tree of Life to universal acclaim…

  • The Innocents

    The Innocents

    Faith is twenty four hours of doubt, and one minute of hope. Serene liturgical music fills the ears as the film opens, the voices of women, nuns in a contemplative convent. And we are held there, just long enough, long enough to feel the way a sacred space can open something within us, can deepen…

  • True/False Film Festival 2017 Day 1

    True/False Film Festival 2017 Day 1

    Unfortunately, my first day of True/False 2017 wasn’t as long as I’d have hoped. In past years, I was a student at the University of Missouri, and the only boundaries between the delights of True/False and I were classes and homework. They could always be pushed to the side for my favorite weekend of the…

  • Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

    Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk

    Many of us have ambivalent feelings about the wars our country fights. Even if we have concerns for the justifications given to our troops to be in harm’s way overseas, we cringe at the potential damages to their physical and mental health, let alone the chance that they may pay the “ultimate price.” When we…

  • Copperhead

    Copperhead

    For the most part we in the Northern states look upon the Civil War as a tragic but noble and necessary episode to preserve the Union. And most of us rank Abraham Lincoln as one of the greatest, if not the greatest of U.S. presidents. But we gloss over how much opposition to the war…

  • The Good Lie

    The Good Lie

    In 1983 a civil war broke out in Sudan between the North and South regions. This was settled, but then followed by a second civil war in 1987. More than 2 million people have died in this conflict but, like so much war in the world today, the stories of human tragedy and suffering are…