On Movies & Media

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.

"... 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."

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.

#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?

"I don't think it will be winning any awards from the Christian world. ... It takes place in a universe very like ours."

This post will be updated over the next few days, so check back as this thrilling — dare I say rapturous? — cinematic occasion unfolds!

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?"