More Than One Lesson

In this episode, Tyler and Reed discuss J.A. Bayona’s A Monster Calls and Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth.

In this bonus episode, Reed and Nathan break down the ending of Robert Eggers’ The Witch.

Martin Scorsese has never kept his Catholic upbringing a secret. While he has certainly never made Christian films, his lifelong internal struggle of faith has informed his work throughout his now 50 year career as a filmmaker. It is most overt in works such as Mean Streets, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Gangs of New York. But it is such a part of him that his films that don’t have at least a small piece of Christian iconography are notable for the absence of it. He is probably the only mainstream filmmaker of which that can be said. Now with Silence, Scorsese takes an unflinching look into what it means to truly be a follower of Christ under the harshest of circumstances.

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Rob Zombie frustrates me. On one hand, he’s clearly a distinct and visionary director, with a strong command of imagery and a rich understanding of the foundational horror films of the 20s and 30s. With each new film announcement from him, I’m immediately curious. I reacted the same way when his recent death-match slasher 31 was announced. However, with every film of his besides The Devil’s Rejects, I’ve walked away disappointed.

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In this episode, Reed and Nathan discuss Robert Eggers’ The Witch.

Sequels are continually regarded, however unfairly, as automatically inferior films. Recent entries in the superhero and science fiction genres have rebuked that stigma, but they’ve not abolished it. It is particularly challenging to craft a sequel to a film which is regarded as a landmark. So when William Peter Blatty set out to direct a third sequel to the legendary horror classic, The Exorcist, it seemed a matter of incredible folly.

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In this episode, Tyler and Robert discuss Stephen Frears’ Florence Foster Jenkins and Tim Burton’s Ed Wood.

Several times throughout Hidden Figures, one of the film’s three protagonists- African-American women working at NASA in the early 1960s- will walk into a room, and dozens of white co-workers will turn to look, very surprised at who they see. Some of them look skeptical, some alarmed, some distrustful, and others still, are clearly upset. While this could have become a heavy-handed visual to repeat so many times, it quietly becomes an interesting thematic idea which ties into a claim one of the three women makes during the film. The idea of how important it is to be first. This was true of the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union and it was true for the women working for their opportunity to be a part of that race. What these women find is that the first one through the door isn’t always welcome there. The first is often greeted with hostility or incredulity. To be accepted, the first can’t merely be competent. The first has to be great.

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Several New Year’s roundups noted the plethora of faith-friendly films released in 2016, including more than one positive depiction of Christians from heavyweight Hollywood directors. Perhaps the two most notable were Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge and Martin Scorsese’s Silence (if you count the latter’s limited 2016 release). Gibson, drawing from life, and Scorsese, drawing from literature, presented full-bodied Christian characters that demanded to be taken seriously. They were neither caricatures nor cardboard cut-outs, but complex men putting skin in the game for their deepest convictions. Tim Gray at Variety also noted John Hurt’s portrayal of a wise priest in the biopic Jackie. It may seem pathetic to be grateful when Hollywood gives us a priest who is neither a megalomaniac nor a pedophile, but the change is still welcome.

Despite this good news, an effectual Christian presence was lacking in one Best Picture contender, ironically one of the films where it was most sorely needed. I’m speaking about Manchester By the Sea.

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In this episode, Reed and Nathan discuss Matt Reeves’ Let Me In.