Every year I hear friends bemoan the state of the film industry and lament that there were so few good movies to see. And each year I look at them, mouth slightly agape, and wonder what planet they’re from.
Granted, my situation is somewhat unique. I will probably end 2008 having seen roughly 130 films — [...]

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This is an abridged version of a review I wrote for Christianity Today Movies. To read the rest of this review, click here.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an epic, not of scale, but of time. It is the story of an infant born suffering the infirmities of old age who lives his life [...]

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There exists within science fiction a popular sub-genre that manipulates history to create alternate timelines. What would America look like today if the South had won the Civil War? What would be the contemporary repercussions had Napoleon managed to conquer England? You can’t help but imagine such scenarios while watching the film Valkyrie, which is [...]

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This review first appeared in The Colorado Springs Gazette. To read this review at its original source, click here.
“After two years of working on the special effects in The Fountain, I realized I wanted to get back to the set, get back to people. For me, it’s all about the actors,” director Darren Aronofsky (Pi, [...]

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Gran Torino was the biggest and most pleasant surprise of 2008, a film which, based on the trailer, I was not expecting to like at all. Believe it or not, despite a plot that touches on everything from racism to gang warfare, Gran Torino is that rarest of Clint Eastwood films — a comedy. “I’ve [...]

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The somber The Reader is about chance encounters and fateful decisions, promiscuous hearts and even more promiscuous bodies, living with past sin and loving present sinners. Based on a novel by German author Bernard Schlink, The Reader is a thoughtful and solitary (if glaringly imperfect) meditation on national guilt as seen through the eyes of [...]

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Have you ever been so cold that the pain you experienced actually felt like heat? Or touched something so hot, for a split second it felt freezing cold? Scientists call this phenomenon paradoxical warmth/cold. The human body often cannot distinguish between extreme hot and extreme cold, at least initially. The signals get mixed, and the [...]

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I remember getting my cat some years ago and realizing that she would be with me into my 40s. The thought, transient and unsolicited as it was, was nonetheless profound because it revealed how rapidly my life was passing and how soon events that I once thought impossibly distant would be upon me. In the [...]

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Following the press screening for Seven Pounds, several critics, some of whom you might recognize were I to name them, exited the theater grumbling about schmaltzy sentimentality and overwrought manipulation of audience emotions. While my fellow critics are certainly entitled to their opinions and represent a separate but no less informed diagnosis of the film, [...]

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Jim Carrey has been taking it slow lately. In the last five years, the funny man has made only a half dozen films, several of which he spent trying his dramatic wings and another hidden behind animation. It was probably a good thing. If you’re anything like me, you can only handle Carrey in small [...]

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