32 Books for 32 Years

In 2018, I announced I would celebrate 25 years of life by publishing “lists of my 25 favorite films, books, and albums.” That year I only succeeded in writing a “25 Films for 25 Years” list and lost the time and motivation to finish the project before I turned 26. Then, in 2023, I began the attempt again, publishing “30 Films for 30 Years.” The sequel arrived a year late, hence it was called “31 Albums for 31 Years.” I’m close enough now to turning 32 that I’ll complete the sequence with “32 Books for 32 Years.” If I ever attempt to repeat this three-part project, it will not be until I turn forty. It took far more time and effort than it was probably worth. But I do love to champion the works that have been most formative for me as a viewer, listener, and reader, and in the process of writing this books list, I’ve enjoyed reminiscing about the contexts in which I was introduced to each of these texts.

Read More

31 Albums for 31 Years

When I turned 25, I planned to write a series of articles on my 25 favorite films, 25 favorite albums, and 25 favorite books. I only finished the film article; the album article stalled and I gave up on it. Then, when I turned 30 last year, I attempted to complete the series again—now with 20% more items—but it took so long to finish the album article that I’m not 30 anymore. So here are the 31 albums that are the nearest and dearest to me. (Well, there are 32, at least, depending on how you count things.)

Read More

30 Films for 30 Years

I turned 30 this past year, and just like when I turned 20 and 25, attaining the significant-sounding number has put me in a retrospective mood. (Then again, I am an obsessive list-maker, so almost any excuse will do for cataloguing my favorite things.) As the title suggests, what follows are the films, one per year I’ve been alive, that I most value. (Actually, there are 34 films, besides the 5 honorable mentions.)

There were three criteria for selection. One, I consider each of the “30” films to be a masterclass in screenwriting or storytelling, a masterclass in filmmaking, or both. Two, inspired by an essay Timothy Lawrence wrote a few years ago, I count them among my “Film Friends.” Three, I would strongly recommend these films to just about anyone.

Read More

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?

READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT MERE ORTHODOXY.

Looking for Bedford Falls ... in The Terminal

In a previous essay, I made the case that Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998) is a dystopian reimagining of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Christof, the show’s creator, tries and fails to make Truman Burbank a version of George Bailey and the town of Seahaven a version of Bedford Falls. Comparing the two films and understanding why Christof fails reveals some of the challenges that modern American life, represented in an extreme form by Seahaven, poses for genuine, flourishing community as represented by the Bedford Falls ideal. Toward the end of that article, I began to ponder how we could sustain community even in the midst of those challenges. To that end, I now propose looking to a third film, Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal (2004). 

Read More

Looking for Bedford Falls ... on The Truman Show

One third into Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998), Truman Burbank, the unwitting star of a reality TV show, is made by his fictive wife and fake mom to sit down and watch television. The program on air is “Golden Oldies,” a spoof of Turner Classic Movies. Tonight’s entertainment, the host announces, is “the enduring, much-loved classic, Show Me the Way to Go Home: a hymn of praise to small town life, where we learn that you don’t have to leave home to discover what the world’s all about, and that no one is poor who has friends.”

For anyone who has ever been within earshot of cable TV in December, this synopsis should sound familiar: Show Me the Way to Go Home is a knock-off of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life (1946).

Read More

Introduction to Bruised Reeds

Growing up in a music-loving household full of CDs and cassette tapes, I long thought it would be fun to create an album. On July 10th of this year, that long-envisioned album finally went out into the world under the title of Bruised Reeds.

The seeds for the shape the album would take began to be planted ten years ago, when Grant Dicks and I collaborated on a score for the film Deepstill in 2012. That was my first time composing a body of music and making it available to others, an experience so satisfying I’ve been making music as a hobby ever since. With the creation of the tie-in single, “A Song for Deepstill,” that collaboration also marked the first time I wrote and sang my own lyrics, and I soon began to think up more songs. But whereas in the following years I would make a few more acoustic instrumentals with Grant (see The Jabberwocky Years), film scores for student short films at Biola University (The Undergraduate), a short album of settings of George Herbert’s poems (Mend My Rhyme), and a collection of digital instrumentals (RE:), it wouldn’t be until the pandemic year of 2020 that I finally set out to realize the singer-songwriter project in earnest. Most of the work was done in the Spring and Summer of 2021, but it took another year for me to put on the finishing touches.

Read More

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.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON FILMFISHER.

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.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON FILMFISHER.

A Prayer for Inauguration Day, Revisited

On January 19, 2017, the day before Donald Trump’s inauguration, I published an article written in the form of a corporate prayer to help Christians—myself especially—think theologically about politics and pray for the new president in a biblically-informed manner. Now, on January 19, 2021, on the eve of Joe Biden’s inauguration, I am republishing that prayer verbatim. I have not made any changes to the wording, not because I wrote it perfectly the first time—it could be tightened and simplified here and there—but because the content of the prayer is as true and applicable and challenging today as it was four years ago. Aside from some typographical corrections, I have left the prayer untouched to emphasize that continuity and affirm that I still stand by every word. I wanted to write something that the saints residing in the United States of America could always pray, regardless of whether they were under a Republican or a Democratic administration, because the words would reflect eternal realities and not the fleeting circumstances of a four-year term. Now that I have been able pray it for two very different presidents, I think this prayer passes that test.

Read More

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.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON FILMFISHER.

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. 

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON FILMFISHER.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars Finale (Review for FilmFisher)

This short appreciation of The Clone Wars finale was written as my contribution to the FilmFisher staff article, “What’s the Best Movie You’ve Seen During Quarantine?”, published on May 31, 2020. The rest of the article can be read here.

A case could be made that the final four episodes of The Clone Wars, released on Disney+ across the month leading up to Star Wars Day, qualify as a film. The initial episodes of Season 7 were fairly standard for the show, but everything about this four-part arc, from the cinematic visuals and ring structure down to the opening title cards, shows it’s in a category all its own and meant to be viewed as a unit. Besides, if a few passable episodes from the show’s first season could be cobbled into a movie back in 2008 — and if coronavirus hadn’t come for the theatrical model like everything else — there’s no reason why these four exceptional episodes shouldn’t be together on the big screen.

Read More

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. 

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON FILMFISHER.

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.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON FILMFISHER.

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.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON FILMFISHER.

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.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON FILMFISHER.

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.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ON FILMFISHER.