The Dead Speak!: Reading with the Jedi (Article for Mere Orthodoxy)

The Last Jedi is filled with provocative moments, but one scene is especially inflammatory—literally. Rey has just flown away to try and turn Kylo Ren back from the Dark Side. For exiled Jedi Master Luke Skywalker, who insists the Order is so morally compromised that it should end with him, this is the last straw. He brandishes a torch, intending to burn down the tree housing the ancient Jedi texts. The ghost of his own master, Yoda, appears, but doesn’t stop him. Instead, when Luke hesitates, Yoda himself calls down lightning to strike the tree—and laughs about it! As the tree burns, Luke concludes, “So, it is time for the Jedi Order to end.” But Yoda replies, “Time it is—for you to look past a pile of old books. … Wisdom they held, but that library contained nothing that the girl Rey does not already possess.”

I’m working on a PhD in literature. It bothers me that Yoda treats old books so flippantly. What’s more, I’m a Sola Scriptura Protestant. My alarm bells go off at the suggestion that people don’t need a sacred text to guide them or already possess what wisdom they need. I recall someone commenting that The Last Jedi’s jab at books and received wisdom went against everything he believed in. If this scene were the film’s final word on the subject, I would have to agree.

But the Jedi texts were not destroyed. A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot at the end of the film reveals that Rey took them aboard the Millennium Falcon. This puts Yoda’s words in a new light: it was only from a certain point of view that “[the] library contained nothing that [she] does not already possess.” That should lower the blood pressure of the booklovers and Bible-thumpers, but why the misdirection? Why does Yoda let Luke think the books were destroyed? If Rey still finds value in the books, why does he tell Luke “to look past” them?

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Black Widow (Review for FilmFisher)

First things first: It was great to be inside a movie theater again. (That business of seeing Tenet in October and having the feeling Christopher Nolan would be the death of me doesn’t, doesn’t count.) If nothing else, I can always look back fondly on Black Widow as the occasion for my celebratory return to filmgoing with a large group of friends. (We filled half a center row.) Perhaps it was even the ideal film for the occasion. It is the kind of film that is best enjoyed with a big screen, loud speakers, and an auditorium filled with an enthusiastic audience, and I got all of that. It was a fun night. If that is what you are looking for, Black Widow will do fine.

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Wonder Woman and the Bronze Serpent (Article for FilmFisher)

Richard Donner, who became the grandfather of contemporary superhero cinema with 1978’s Superman, lamented in a recent interview, “There are so many people that make superheroes so cynical, it’s depressing. When they’re dark and bleak and angry with themselves and the world, I don’t find it entertaining. I think there’s enough reality going on for that.”

Donner doesn’t entirely disapprove of the surge in superheroes films his work spawned. In fact, “When you see it done right, by my standards, it’s so fulfilling. I’m very happy and proud when I see them.” If there’s one film that made him especially happy and proud, it was Patty Jenkins’ take on Superman’s crimefighting colleague, Wonder Woman. This is not surprising, because Jenkins deliberately patterned her 2017 Wonder Woman after Donner’s Superman. (Look no further than the sequence where Diana Prince struggles with a revolving door, then stops a bullet to save Steve Trevor from thugs in an alley.) Her 2020 sequel, Wonder Woman 1984 (WW84 for short), continues in the Donner tradition of effusive earnestness, calculated campiness, euphoric flight sequences, and above all, hope for humanity.

However, there is one crucial difference between the ethos of Donner’s Superman and the ethos of Jenkins’ Wonder Woman.

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Arsenic and Old Lace (Review for FilmFisher)

“What’s your favorite film?” It’s the question every cinephile delights to hear, yet also dreads. Delights, because finally someone made this social function less awkward — and besides, who doesn’t want to extol their loves before others? Dreads, because who can pick just one movie? Asking a film-lover to choose only one favorite out of dozens is like a landlord telling the lady in Apartment 108 she can only keep one of her 36 cats — and must decide in seconds.

When I am asked this question, I may haggle with my interrogator to expand the field the five films. But this evasion only works half the time, because most people aren’t asking for an article, just one recommendation for their watchlist. (They may also be trying to size up your taste and sort you into a group. You aren’t one of those people that liked Green Book, are you?) So sometime in middle or high school, realizing I’d be dogged by the question (and awkward social functions) for the rest of my life, I decided on a standby: Frank Capra’s 1944 adaptation of the Joseph Kesselring play, Arsenic and Old Lace, starring Cary Grant.

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Anatomy of an Animated Adventure: Atlantis and Treasure Planet (Article for FilmFisher)

This article has two aims and two parts. First, I want to enumerate the many ways that Disney’s Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet are uncannily similar. Released only a year apart — Atlantis in 2001 and Treasure Planet in 2002 — both are 95-minute action-adventure animated films with a steampunk aesthetic. Both feature wonderful scores by James Newton Howard. Both are heavily influenced by Raiders of the Lost Ark (especially Atlantis) and Star Wars(especially Treasure Planet). However, what American audiences may not realize is just how much of that Spielberg-and-Lucas influence is channelled to both films through Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky. But these commonalities only scratch the surface. When the two films are analyzed side-by-side, it turns out there are few characters, elements, or story beats in the one that don’t have a counterpart in the other. The two films share the same DNA, and they are like the complementary strands of a DNA sequence. 

For that reason, the second part of this article aims to make the case that Treasure Planet can be viewed as a revised and improved version of Atlantis. While Atlantis is still a very good film, it has some weaknesses and limitations that Treasure Planet sidesteps and transcends. Did the two films develop interdependently, with the writers and directors sharing notes? Did the team making Treasure Planet see problems emerging as Atlantis developed that they deliberately avoided in their own project? I don’t know. But in any case, comparing the two films is an instructive lesson in storytelling. The films present two different ways to tell almost the same story, and anyone with an interest in filmmaking or film criticism could benefit from comparing their relative strengths and weaknesses. 

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What About Oscar? Some Thoughts on the Academy Awards (Article for FilmFisher)

It seems to happen every year now. After the Academy Awards telecast has ended and the names of the Oscar winners cease to echo across the internet a few days later, I make a belated New Year’s resolution I only half intend to keep: I will swear off Oscar-watching this year. 

By Oscar-watching, I mean much more than watching the awards ceremony itself. For many film critics, Oscar-watching is a year-round guessing game, much like how a political analyst would follow presidential primaries. But unlike the professionals who are paid to do so, I have no good reason for the absurd amounts of time I tend to devote to this game. I probably shouldn’t be playing at all, for although I have a decent track record when guessing the winners, accurately predicting the nominees is far more difficult — and more costly. It requires an obsessive amount of attention that borders on the unhealthy, and it takes far more than it could ever give back. No matter how attuned I might become to the winds and waves that sway voters, when the Academy announces its list of nominees every January, there are always shocking snubs and baffling inclusions. And that is usually the moment each year when I finally wake up. 

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Spider-Man: Far From Home (Review for FilmFisher)

Over the course of the past 15 months, I have written four FilmFisher articles — now five — on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Previously, I reviewed Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and Avengers: Endgame, and I co-wrote a dialogue on the MCU with Timothy Lawrence). Obviously, I have devoted an absurd amount of hours (and pages!) to seriously considering and evaluating the MCU’s strengths and weaknesses. From the beginning of this long-term critical project until now, I have always sought to be both rigorously critical and persistently charitable, and I hope this has been evident to friends and foes of the franchise alike. I stand by what I said in my Infinity War review: “I so want this scrappy series of films to succeed.”

I begin with this apologetic disclaimer and review of my track record, because this review will be shorter than the previous ones, and my tone in it may well come across as exasperated or unforgiving.

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A Toy's Telos, Chapter 2: How the Vision Was Won, and Lost (Article for FilmFisher)

Thesis and Antithesis

In “A Toy’s Telos, Chapter 1,” I argued that the Toy Story trilogy presents a moral vision for what it means to be a toy, and I outlined the key tenets of this vision as they are embodied by Woody in his relationships with Andy and Buzz. Woody has a vertical telos: to be there for Andy. He also has a horizontal telos: to be there for Buzz and other toys so that they too can be there for Andy. But Toy Story, as a story, presents this moral vision through narrative, not exposition, and narratives require conflict and resolution. The films establish their moral vision through the challenges Woody faces as he seeks to live according to his telos. It is through Woody’s resilience in the midst of these challenges that the films vindicate the idea of a toy’s telos. Another way to put this is that Woody has a thesis, an argument. In each film, he is presented with an antithesis, a counter-argument. His ability to repudiate these objections are what prove the strength — and what is more, the goodness and beauty — of his argument.

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A Toy's Telos, Chapter 1: The Moral Vision of Toy Story (Article for FilmFisher)

Woody

We need to talk about Woody. No, not Woody Allen. Enough people have been talking about him. I mean Sheriff Woody. The Woody who is an intricately-crafted doll, complete with a cow-skin vest, a red bandana, a cowboy hat, and a voice box activated by a pull string. The Woody who displays a child’s name written in Sharpie on the sole of his plastic boot: ANDY — with the “N” written backwards. The Woody who is not just a toy but a soul, a soul that is fiercely devoted to this Andy. The Woody who is voiced by Tom Hanks, with a passion and gravitas that makes Woody rival his finest in-the-flesh performances. The Woody who is the star and beating heart at the center of Pixar’s signature cultural contribution, Toy Story, a film series that has been a staple of American animation (and American childhoods) for a quarter century.

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Avengers: Endgame (Review for FilmFisher)

One of the many, many things the Marvel Cinematic Universe has severely lacked is a sense of poetry — visually, verbally, thematically, or otherwise. But what strikes me about Avengers: Endgame is that it is a small but significant step toward reversing that trend. The film contains a surprising number of poetic touches and grace notes, and it also — in a “meta” move fitting for a time-travel movie — retroactively casts the rest of the MCU into something of a poetic form. Of course, like so many of its predecessors in this massive franchise of franchises, Endgame is still a seriously flawed film — and likely never could have been anything but flawed. Even so, I would argue Endgame is one of the finest films in the MCU, mainly because of its poetry.

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Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (Review for FilmFisher)

I have dreaded writing this review ever since I left the theater, and don’t think I will get much enjoyment out of it. There is no pleasure to be had in speaking against a group of artists whose work you have always enjoyed — and even been shaped by — in the past. Some take out their frustration on a bad film by hurling ever more clever and cruel epithets at it and its creators, as if to try and get even for an offense. I can relate, and I’m guilty, too. Bad films tend to insult my intelligence, offend my beliefs, take advantage of my goodwill, or all the above. But while I could easily respond with similar invectives, I will refrain out of my respect for writer J. K. Rowling, director David Yates, and their company of talented cast and crew members. I know they have done great work in the past, and I maintain the hope that they may yet do better — at least better than this. (Indeed, as a Christian called to love all his neighbors as God’s image-bearers unconditionally, I should refrain from heaping scorn on any artist, regardless of whether I esteem their previous work or not.)

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