The film The Two Popes stars Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict XVI and Jonathan Pryce as Cardinal Jorge Marlo Bergoglio (later Pope Frances). You don’t expect to see religion being treated with respect or insight in popular media these days. For religious people that attitude might be paranoia, though it’s helpful to recall the old maxim that you might be [...]
Abby Johnson (left) talks with the actress Ashley Bratcher who played Johnson in Unplanned, on the set of the movie. When Unplanned, the story of abortion-worker-turned-pro-life-activist Abby Johnson,premiered in March in the U.S., Canadians were left wondering when they would be allowed to see the movie. Some pro-lifers organized boycotts and petitions of theatre chains that refused to bring the [...]
HBO’s miniseries Chernobyl arrived for streaming at a crucial moment for the company, just as the hangover from the end of Game of Throneswas starting to ebb. They needed a hit, and they got it with a five-hour story about the 1986 explosion at a nuclear power plant in the Soviet Ukraine. “Chernobyl is a thorough historical analysis,” wrote Sophie Gilbert in The Atlantic, [...]
In a scene from the movie Unplanned, Abby Johnson - portrayed by Ashley Bratcher - reacts to what she is seeing on the ultrasound screen. (Catholic News Service) After being blocked from Canadian cinemas, the movie, Unplanned, will finally be released to the Canadian public on July 12. The film follows the life of Abby Johnson as she transitions from [...]
Actress Ashley Bratcher played Abby Johnson in Unplanned. The new film about pro-life activist Abby Johnson’s conversion story has already made a tremendous impact on women contemplating abortion in the real world, according to the actress who portrays Johnson. Unplannedtells the real-life story of Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood abortion facility director who converted to the pro-life cause in 2009. [...]
Which Scrooge was the best Scrooge on the silver screen? Let’s start at the beginning. On Dec. 19, 1843, the first edition of Charles Dickens’s classic tale, A Christmas Carol, appeared in store windows. It’s a beautifully written story about the miserly money-lender Ebenezer Scrooge, who showed no empathy or compassion toward his fellow man – and cared not a whit about [...]
There’s a visual shorthand you see in movies and on TV shows that’s meant to let you know you’re in the presence of Roman Catholics, and probably Irish ones. It’s a picture of John F. Kennedy hanging on the wall of someone’s bedroom, dining room or living room, or in some bar, barber shop or police chief’s office. It might be accompanied [...]
When it was released in 1976, the movie Network was publicized as an “outrageous” comedy, a satire that imagined a worst case dystopia of the near future, based on the dismal precedents being set in the horrid ‘70s. It’s a sign of how far past mere movie satire we’ve gone that it’s been turned into a musical on the London stage, starring [...]
In a summer of box office disappointments, Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk was an unexpected hit, since nobody thought that an epic film about the evacuation of British troops from Europe in the early days of World War II would be much more than a money-losing Oscar contender, meant to open deep in autumn. This would be the popular image of what was known [...]
The arrival of the first warm days brings with it the summer blockbuster, a seasonal indicator as venerable as crowded cottage weekends, sandy beach towels, the chemical cocktail of bug spray and sunscreen and the smell of gas generator exhaust and cotton candy at a fairground. The summer blockbuster has been declining with the general fortunes of Hollywood lately – this summer [...]
I have always been a sucker for the “first-contact” subgenre of sci-fi movies – films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Contact, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, District 9 and, at the very genesis of the genre, The Day The Earth Stood Still. Distinct from the usual sort of sci-fi that re-imagines westerns or war movies with ray guns and space [...]
Whit Stillman, New York City August 1990. My youngest daughter is fond of asking unanswerable questions like “what’s your favorite food?” or “who’s your favorite band?” I usually answer that I’m too old to have favorite anythings anymore, but she hasn’t asked me “who’s your favorite living movie director?” yet, and that would be easy to answer: Whit Stillman. Stillman [...]
They still make Christmas movies, as far as I can tell, but we’re a long way from Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney singing Irving Berlin tunes for a war-weary generation. This Christmas, for instance, we have the very wry Bill Murray spoofing the holiday TV special in A Very Murray Christmas, and The Night Before, a seasonal buddy film where Seth Rogen, [...]
Perhaps it’s a quirk of our family, but sitting down together for a movie regularly has always been as important as sitting down for a meal. I have spent 30 years, on and off, writing about movies and other entertainment, so I’ve always wanted to be there for those moments I remember so well from my own childhood, when something I saw [...]
It’s generally accepted that the romantic comedy went into decline at some point in the ‘90s and hasn’t quite been itself since its final heyday, with films like When Harry Met Sally and Working Girl. If the genre has any life left in it, its saviour has come in the shape of writer/director Judd Apatow, whose innovation was to scour away most [...]