[National Review Online, April 5, 2005]
You'd be excused for thinking that the storyline of “Millions,” while appealing, is not all that exceptional. A pair of brothers have recently lost their mom, and moved with their dad to a home in a brand-new development. The younger boy, Damian (Alexander Etel), a charmer with a freckled, open face, is playing in a grassy field near his home when a gym bag thrown from a passing train crashes through his cardboard fort. The bag contains a lot of lot of cash.
[National Review Online, March 14, 2005]
Towards the end of “Robots,” a character resembling the Tin Man of Oz clutches his chest and says, “Now I know I have a heart, because I can feel it breaking.”
Better check again. This animated feature has just about every pounding, clanking, or squeaking mechanism imaginable, but nothing in the shape of a heart. What it's mostly got going for it is an extraordinary look, and that look is undeniably a humdinger. This movie's visual style is so appealing you can't gobble up the screen fast enough.
[National Review Online, March 4, 2005]
Every once in awhile a comedy comes along that is bright and quirky enough that it lingers companionably in the mind a long time after. “Get Shorty” (1995) was one of those movies; the first time I saw it, I spent the ending credits wearing a big grin, thinking back over delicious scenes and wishing I could see more of those characters. They were reliably, satisfyingly odd, in the way that only someone who has a lot of complicated past history can be. What you saw on the screen had a tip-of-the-iceberg quality.
[National Review Online, February 18, 2004]
A cute little girl with no mommy, a shaggy dog with no home, a preacher-daddy, and a sleepy southern town peopled with adorable eccentrics - who could ask for anything more?
Those who are moved to beg for much, much less will want to steer clear of “Because of Winn-Dixie,” a film based on the beloved children's novel by the same title, authored by Newberry Award winner Kate DiCamillo. Yet the film has surprising charm, and yields some unexpected insights. While the prime audience will always be kids and their tag-along grownups (an audience that will find this film more than satisfying), the occasional grumpy outsider who wanders in will also find plenty to enjoy.
[Washington Examiner, February 1, 2005]
Feeling nostalgic for the good old days, when popular entertainment was full of good old-fashioned values? No nudity, teen sex, or potty jokes. Instead, there was lots of adultery.
That's not the usual take on our cultural history. Instead, commentators keep insisting that popular entertainment used to be pure, and now it's garbage.
[National Review Online, January 31, 2005]
Clint Eastwood's “Million Dollar Baby” has won a basketful of Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. If they gave one for Best Kept Secret, it might win that as well. There's a twist in the plot of “Million Dollar Baby.” It's not a whiplash turn, like that “Sixth Sense” or “The Usual Suspects.” It's more of an unexpected plot morph that turns it from one kind of movie into another.
[Christianity Today, February 2005]
Anyone who's been on a college campus lately will confirm the depressing report delivered by Vigen Guroian in his essay [about sex on campus]. As someone who does a lot of campus speaking, I've seen my fair share of posters announcing sex-toy workshops, transgender celebrations, and, on one Ivy League campus, an open invitation to a “naked party.” What's a naked party? Anybody who wants can attend, but you have to take off all your clothes to stay.
It makes you want to weep for the children, for girls in particular, who deserve to be protected from this carnival of leering and molestation.
[National Review Online, January 28, 2005]
“In Good Company” opened the same week that Academy Award nominations were announced. Top honors went to movies about big-shouldered men: a crazy-brilliant inventor and filmmaker, a man who saved a thousand people from machete-wielding Hutus, the quiet genius who invented Peter Pan. Now comes Dennis Quaid as Dan Foreman, a suburban fifty-something who sells ad space in a sports magazine. Can this man be a hero?
[NPR, “Morning Edition,” January 22, 2005]
The other night a couple of dozen young professionals and college students, mostly Eastern Orthodox Christians, crowded into my house for dinner. We played a current events party game. We divided the group in two and assigned one side to favor, and the other to oppose, five controversial issues.
At the end of the discussion we went around the room and voted. One after another, these twenty- and thirty-somethings said that one issue was more important to them than any other. They were strongly opposed to abortion.
[Christianity Today Online, December 28, 2004]
If you close your eyes and picture a housewife with a bucket of hot water and a bristle brush, scrubbing away at her front doorstep, the small line of type at the lower corner of your imagination reads “The Netherlands.” That's the Dutch: tidy, polite, reasonable and compassionate.
“Tidy” and “compassionate” can intersect in a strange way, however, when it comes to handling the tragedies of life. Three years ago, the Dutch Parliament shocked the world by passing a law allowing “mercy killing” under certain circumstances.
