Disclosure Day
Steven Spielberg is one of the best filmmakers of all time. Jaws, E.T. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, Schindler’s List, and Saving Private Ryan are bona fide classics. But it’s…
Latest Podcasts
Backrooms
When Kane Parsons was a teenager he posted videos to YouTube. A few years later he became the youngest director in A24 history. Welcome to the revolution taking Hollywood…
Send Help
Sam Raimi is best known for the Evil Dead franchise which established his signature dance between horror and comedy. Send Help is a welcome return to those roots. It’s a thrill ride…
Project Hail Mary
Christopher Miller and Phil Lord are best known for The Lego Movie. But they’re also known for something more: making movies that appeal to everyone. That’s a hard task, but…
Goodbye 2025
The Oscars were on March 15 which means another year of film is officially over. Before moving on, Jon and Tim take a look back at all the highlights…
Sentimental Value
The Oscar nominations are out and Sentimental Value is up for nine of them. That’s the most nominations ever for a Norwegian film, and the honors are richly deserved. It’s…
Latest Articles
Backrooms, frontrooms and the search for meaning
“Liminal.” There. I’ve said it. Now let’s talk about Backrooms without using that word or concept, because there’s so much more to say. During my first job, I was fortunate…
Oscars 2026 — Who Should Win? (Part Four)
Welcome to our final Oscar picks! Here’s part three in case you missed it: Oscars 2026 — Who Should Win? (Part Three) Remember, these aren’t the movies that will win,…
Oscars 2026 — Who Should Win? (Part Three)
Welcome to part three of our Oscar picks! Here’s part two in case you missed it: Oscars 2026 — Who Should Win? (Part Two) Remember, these aren’t the movies that…
Oscars 2026 — Who Should Win? (Part Two)
Welcome to part two of our Oscar picks! Here’s part one in case you missed it: Oscars 2026 — Who Should Win? (Part One) Remember, these aren’t the movies that…
Oscars 2026 — Who Should Win? (Part One)
Do the Oscars still matter? Ethan Hawke recently defended them on the Keep It! podcast. His argument was that the Oscars are important because they’re good for movies: “What’s great…
Grace in the Grey: Finding Redemption in Morally Complex Films
Let’s be honest — most of us don’t live in clear moral categories. We want to believe we do. We want our stories, our theology, our art to give us…
Black Lives Matter
The Book of Clarence
The opening shot of Jeymes Samuel’s Book of Clarence shows several criminals nailed to crosses per the first century Roman method of capital punishment. In the foreground, a white figure…
Just Mercy
Reproductive justice. Climate justice. Food justice. Social justice. Append the word “justice” to any other word and you’ve got a ready-made brand platform for niche activism. As cultural forces shape…
The Last Black Man in San Francisco
At the end of the day, we’re all just looking for a place to call home. Movies have long wrestled with this sentiment and not just in a physical sense….
A Hero Ain’t Nothin’ But a Sandwich
Politicians, journalists and experts rarely agree, but they have all named the current opioid situation a plague. It’s an appropriate word, with historical and biblical connotations; in every generation, our…
If Beale Street Could Talk
Barry Jenkins and Damien Chazelle both directed Oscar-nominated movies this year. The last time that happened was in 2017 when Chazelle’s La La Land was mistakenly announced as the Best…
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
My Spider-Man was the 1981 “Spider-Friends” version, complete with invented sidekicks, incomprehensible Saturday morning subplots, shoddy animation, and a little dog too (spoiler: they were all killed off by a…
Claudine
“I have known this woman all my life,” Diahann Carroll writes in her autobiography.* “We grew up together in the same neighborhood.” Lest someone might interpret that statement as metaphorical,…
Sapphire
“We’re all the children of God,” a black sophisticate remarks to her boyfriend, after he has interacted with the police. “Forget it.” The exchange is brief — the actor isn’t…
Black Panther
I didn’t expect to feel tears stream down my face so shortly into Black Panther, but within the first few minutes of the film, I was already impacted heavily. In…