Passion Fish 1992 Chantelle first appears on the side of a road in the departing dust of a Greyhound bus. An ordinary suitcase sits at …
Passion Fish and Elevated Voices
Twisters and the Love of the Chase
Twisters 2024 When Kate the storm-chasing genius tells Tyler the tornado wrangler that she never got the chance to execute her plan to stop a …
Pee-Wee Herman as Joy-Finder and Joy-Giver
Pee Wee’s Big Adventure 1985 Pee-Wee Herman as funmaster and prankster of wild joy. Pee-Wee Herman as one who looks at the desolate moment and …
Justice, Law, and Mercy Across an Onscreen Century
In Shakespeare’s play Measure for Measure, one character says to another : “The law hath not been dead, though it hath slept.” That line is …
A Hero and the Weight of His Mountain
A Hero – 2021 This writeup can also be found at Arts & Faith’s new list of the top 25 films on Crime and Punishment. …
An Open Letter to Elmer Gantry
Elmer Gantry – 1960 Dear Elmer Gantry, meet me at the revival meeting. Do not sit in the preacher’s seat and do not sit in …
The Eight Mountains on a Small Scale
The Eight Mountains – 2022 We are supposed to dream big when we imagine a 2 ½ hour film based on an award-winning Italian novel …
Dreamin’ Wild While It Lasted
Dreamin’ Wild – 2022 What do you remember from your teen years? What if the things you forgot are suddenly remembered by everyone else you …
Into the West and Movie Love Coming to Life
How did you first love the movies? Did you begin to love them because you had a special moviegoing experience with a person whom you …
Godland and the Fog of Alienation
What do we do with films that are defiantly strange? Is strangeness justified in art? It seems right to grapple with that question as we …