— Review Coming
Arts & Faith Lists:
2020 Top 100 — #73
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…
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…
Eva: “No-one kicks you here, Bruno.” Bruno Stroszek: “Not physically, here they do it spiritually.” Stroszek is a film riddled with misfits. Its title character, the musician Bruno Stroszek, is the quintessential misfit. Director Werner Herzog sets him against characters more comfortable in their social roles and identities. Bruno is an outcast wherever he lives,…
Taking shelter from a torrential rainstorm in a demon-haunted temple, two men struggle to comprehend the story of a murder. They have witnessed crimes before, but something about this one has left them shell-shocked. One of them laments, “This time, I may finally lose my faith in the human soul.” What follows in Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon is…
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…
Though set in Texas, Tender Mercies is a poignant reflection on experiences and challenges that are universal. It moves unhurriedly through the struggle of a middle-aged man to understand why, even after he seemingly made every effort to ruin his life, God still blessed him. His struggle, like the movie itself, isn’t always pretty or smooth. When…