Resurrection REVIEW

Resurrection (2021)

The Bible world of Roma Downey and Mark Burnett’s LightWorkers Media productions sometimes seems not unlike a movie about Shakespeare in which you hear lines like “To be or not to be, that is the question” and “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players,” but everyone seems to have heard them already.

 Raya and the Last Dragon REVIEW

Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)

If Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon seems familiar, that might be because … well, because of echoes of a lot of things, really.

 Christopher Plummer, the cross, and the swastika ARTICLE

Christopher Plummer, the cross, and the swastika

“That damn movie follows me around like an albatross,” Christopher Plummer once fumed about the one film for which — despite a prolific, varied, successful career in film, television, and theater — he would always be best known.

 SDG’s top films, 2000 – 2020 ARTICLE

SDG’s top films, 2000 – 2020

21 years. That’s how long I’ve been at this. A film list 21 years in the making. 21 top films. 21 runners-up. 21 honorable mentions.

 Wonder Woman 1984 REVIEW

Wonder Woman 1984 (2020)

Wonder Woman 1984 is bonkers in a way that superhero movies these days don’t have the nerve to be.

 Soul REVIEW

Soul (2020)

Pete Docter’s Soul is Pixar’s third straight original feature, following Coco and Onward, that is explicitly about death, finality, and, in some way, what lies beyond.

 Mulan REVIEW

Mulan (2020)

At this point it seems pretty clear that the kiss of death, creatively speaking, for Disney’s new line of live-action/CGI remakes is a Broadway musical.

 Fátima REVIEW

Fátima (2020)

Marco Pontecorvo’s Fátima is the first screen version of the Marian apparitions at Fátima and the “Miracle of the Sun” I’ve seen that feels like the characters are living through the story’s events in the present tense.

 Words on Bathroom Walls REVIEW

Words on Bathroom Walls (2020)

Halfway through I found myself rooting for the film to be the best version of itself, a sign that a film is working even when it’s not completely successful.

 Filming Fátima: Interview With Filmmaker Marco Pontecorvo ARTICLE

Filming Fátima: Interview With Filmmaker Marco Pontecorvo

The cowriter and director of a new film about Our Lady of Fátima talks about why he was drawn to the story and how he tried to realize the miraculous, from a very human Virgin Mary to surreal visions of war and hell.