Witness

To witness The Passion of Joan of Arc is to glimpse the soul of a saint in her hour of trial. The film is more than a dramatization, more than a biopic, more than a documentary: It is a spiritual portrait, almost a mystical portrait, of a Christ-like soul sharing in the sufferings of Christ. At the…

This dark comedy from Joel & Ethan Coen is a distillation of some of the duo’s most potent themes. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is our Job figure, a physics professor in suburban Minneapolis who finds his life falling apart both personally and professionally. The principle of uncertainty, introduced early in the film via Schroedinger’s famous…

Appreciation coming.  Directed by: William Wyler Produced by: Samuel GoldwynLester Koenig Written by: Robert E. SherwoodMacKinlay Kantor Music by: Hugo Friedhofer Cinematography by: Greg Toland Editing by: Daniel Mandell Release Date: 1946 Running Time: 170 Language: English Arts & Faith Lists: 2020 Top 100 — #48

What is the relationship between military duty and human emotion? Clare Denis explores this dichotomy in her film Beau Travail, an adaption of the Herman Melville’s novel Billy Budd transported to post-colonial Africa.  Beau Travail tells the story of Galoup, an officer leading a troop of the French Foreign Legion in Djibouti, East Africa. He is a career military…

Steely with conviction, luminous with wisdom and wit, Fred Zinnemann’s impeccable film of Robert Bolt’s play about the life of Thomas More explores what defines a man, or what is left to a man who has no defining center that cannot be bought or coerced. Successful, urbane, gregarious, ridiculously talented and accomplished, Thomas More was the…

— Review Coming Directed by: Joshua Oppenheimer Anonymous Christine Cynn Produced by: Anne Köhncke Signe Byrge Sørensen Michael Uwemedimo Written by: Music by: Cinematography by: Anonymous Carlos Arango de Montis Lars Skree Editing by: Release Date: 2012 Running Time: 117 Language: Indonesian, English Arts & Faith Lists: 2020 Top 100 — #73