Looking Elsewhere: Star Wars – Episode VII, Interstellar, The Hobbit, Best U2 Punchlines, Glen West 2014, Hayao Mizyazaki, Sandworms, George Lucas, Collateral
Did you hear the one about the door of U2's private jet falling off mid-flight? Best punchline for that set-up wins...
1 Comment4 Minutes
Blaze of Gory
On Christmas Day 2012 — while Americans were still grieving for victims of the Newtown elementary-school massacre — "Django Unchained," the new film by Quentin Tarantino, opened nationwide. This week, as my community grieves the loss of lives in two recent Seattle school shootings, Tarantino's hyperviolent Western has arrived on Netflix.
1 Comment7 Minutes
Ragamuffin (2014) – A Guest Review by Martin Stillion
"... if the goal of Ragamuffin is to get viewers to reconsider the life and music of Mullins, who’s been dead these seventeen years ... : I have some of his stuff playing on YouTube right now. If the goal was for the film to be a work of art in itself, then there’s a lot more work to be done."
4 Comments8 Minutes
Deliver Us From Evil (2014)
Arriving on home video just in time for Halloween, Scott Derrickson's "Deliver Us From Evil" delivers a creative tangle of tropes and trippy special effects, aiming to do better than merely making us jump out of our seats. And it succeeds.
0 Comments23 Minutes
Battle in Seattle (2007)
#Ferguson. #WTO. #U2iPhone6 Why am I not tweeting my outrage? Have I been pummeled numb by scandal, injustice, and atrocity? Have I become hard-hearted?
1 Comment3 Minutes
Calvary (2014): A Looking Closer Film Forum
"I don't think it will be winning any awards from the Christian world. ... It takes place in a universe very like ours."
0 Comments11 Minutes
Left Behind (2014): A Looking Closer Film Forum
This post will be updated over the next few days, so check back as this thrilling — dare I say rapturous? — cinematic occasion unfolds!
19 Comments10 Minutes
The Christian Message of David Fincher’s Gone Girl . . . (Not Really)
One of my favorite writers on the subject of art, faith, and culture — Alissa Wilkinson — has seen "Gone Girl," the new film by David Fincher. Let's ask her: "What's the message of the movie?"
4 Comments9 Minutes
The Trip (2010): Or, Up for a Celebrity Impressions Road Trip?
It works as a buddy movie, as a "foodie" film, as a meditation on a mid-life crisis, as battle of brilliant improvisational comedians, and as a surprisingly dry and bittersweet comedy about celebrity.
0 Comments7 Minutes
U2’s Songs of Innocence: Not Bad for Four Guys in Their Mid-50s!
Okay, for the one reader out there who doesn't know: You can download the new U2 album for free right now on iTunes.
1 Comment1 Minutes
Q&O: What I’d Change in My Memoir. My Favorite Moviegoing Companion. Top Albums of 2014 So Far. Why You Rarely See Me Smile. More “Noah” Bashing. And More!
Who do you take to the movies? Why are you such a snob? What's your favorite album of 2014 so far? Why do you rarely smile in pictures? Questions are coming in, so... time for another Q & O = Question and Overstreet!
4 Comments24 Minutes
Snowpiercer (2014): A Few First-Impression Notes
Terry Gilliam's Brazil + Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Delicatessen + Peter Weir's The Truman Show + Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men + John McTiernan's Die Hard. Link those cars together and, wow, what a helter-skelter train!
1 Comment13 Minutes
Looking Closer with Jeffrey Overstreet
(now the ears of my ears awake andnow the eyes of my eyes are opened)
– e. e. cummings, “i thank You God for most this amazing”