Drawing upon a semi-autobiographical novel of the same name, Isao Takahata’s animated masterwork Grave of the Fireflies tells the story of two orphans caught in the middle of the firebombing that decimated the cities of Japan in the final months of World War Two. Seita is in many ways an ideal big brother, adoring and protecting his…
Chariots of Fire, based on the story of British Olympians Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell, won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1981. The film stretches the boundaries of both the biopic and sports genres as it presents a series of vignettes from the lives of these two athletes in the years and months…
Appreciation coming. Directed by: Lech Majewski Produced by: Lech Majewski Written by: Michael Francis Gibson Lech Majewski Music by: Lech Majewski Józef Skrzek Cinematography by: Lech Majewski Adam Sikora Editing by: Lech Majewski Norbert Rudzik Release Date: 2011 Running Time: 92 Language: English, Spanish, Flemis Arts & Faith Lists: 2020 Top 100 — #60
On a Top 100 list that threatens top-heaviness with clergy, saints, and organized religion, Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a welcome outlier. Its writer/director, Werner Herzog, professes no interest in God or religion, except as a subject for cultural exploration, a manifestation of our humanity. Yet his films, across a career spanning almost 60 years, are suffused with…
Appreciation coming. Directed by: Kirsten Johnson Produced by: Written by: Doris Baizely Lisa Freedman Music by: Cinematography by: Editing by: Release Date: 2016 Running Time: 102 Language: English Arts & Faith Lists: 2020 Top 100 — #58
A Catholic pilgrimage underscored by a Lutheran chorale, a nun abandoning her duties to have an affair, a skeptic receiving a miraculous cure ahead of more devout pilgrims. A cliché I can’t stand says “God moves in mysterious ways,” and while it is possible to take that away from Jessica Hausner’s Lourdes, I think what’s more…
Kon Ichikawa’s deeply humane, spiritually resonant masterpiece is routinely but reductionistically described as “pacifist” or “anti-war.” War, though, is the occasion for the central theme, not the theme itself, which is nothing less than the intractable mystery of suffering and evil, affirmation of spiritual values, and the challenge to live humanely in evil circumstances. Adapted…
The shift from Yi Yi to A Brighter Summer Day is one of the more surprising changes to the 2020 version of the Arts & Faith Top 100. The former was on every previous version of the Arts & Faith list. The latter, initially released in 1991, had not been on any previous version. Given that the 2020 list…
Rick Deckard: She’s a replicant, isn’t she?Dr. Eldon Tyrell: I’m impressed. How many questions does it usually take to spot one?Deckard: I don’t get it, Tyrell.Tyrell: How many questions?Deckard: Thirty, forty, cross-referenced.Tyrell: It took more than a hundred for Rachael, didn’t it?Deckard: She doesn’t know.Tyrell: She’s beginning to suspect, I think.Deckard: Suspect? How can it…
Appreciation coming. Directed by: Tim Robbins Produced by: Jon Kilik Tim Robbins Rudd Simmons Written by: Helen Prejean Tim Robbins Music by: David Robbins Cinematography by: Roger Deakins Editing by: Lisa Zeno Churgin Ray Hubley Release Date: 1995 Running Time: 122 Language: English Arts & Faith Lists: 2005 Top 100 — #15 2006 Top 100…