Category: Culture watch
Risen: The Resurrection as Mystery
by Ted Giese Before the film Risen, there was the Oscar Award-winning film The Robe (1953) in which Richard Burton played the fictional Roman tribune, Marcellus, a soldier present at Jesus’ crucifixion who becomes a believer. In Kevin Reynolds’ film Risen, Joseph Fiennes plays a…
Hail Caesar: A serious comedy in time for Lent
by Ted Giese On a storyline spectrum, Joel and Ethan Coen (aka the Coen Brothers) make films ranging from hard-boiled crime to whimsically quirky comedies. Their new film Hail Caesar! is firmly on the comedy side of things, although it leans toward their more serious…
Relationships in a galaxy far, far away — Star Wars: The Force Awakens
SPOILER ALERT: The following review includes significant spoilers about Star Wars: The Force Awakens. For a spoiler-free first look at the film, read this article instead. by Ted Giese By downplaying Luke Skywalker in the trailers of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, director/writer J.J. Abrams…
The Force Awakens: Worth the Wait
Editor’s note: Rev. Ted Giese has since written a more in-depth (including spoilers) review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens here. by Ted Giese Write something spoiler-free about Star Wars: The Force Awakens? Challenging, it is. But here we go! Set 30 years after the…
Honouring Your Father: Star Wars and the Fourth Commandment
by Ted Giese At this point, writing anything about Star Wars is like adding a drop of water into the ocean. Even so, as people welcome Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Episode VII), it’s worth taking a look at the previous films, particularly the original…
Respecting life on Mars: The Martian in review
by Ted Giese Space exploration is dangerous, as Ridley Scott’s new sci-fi film The Martian illustrates. The movie tells the fictional story of astronaut Mark Watney, left for dead on the surface of Mars during an emergency evacuation of a NASA science mission. The stranded…