‘Heart of the Beast’ Explores Unconditional Love

‘Heart of the Beast’ Explores Unconditional Love

In David Ayer’s film Heart of the Beast, Brad Pitt plays James Belmont, a former Army Special Forces operator who is alone in the Alaskan wilderness with his retired combat dog, Odin. That’s just the way they both want it. Belmont and Odin, both suffering from PTSD...
‘By Any Means’: Does God Need a Hitman?

‘By Any Means’: Does God Need a Hitman?

  When your dad is an American history teacher, your class meets around the clock. My dad both lived through and taught American history.  He was a child of the civil rights era and educated my brother and me around coffee tables and turntables as he taught the...
Christopher Nolan’s Confessional

Christopher Nolan’s Confessional

I don’t know if Odysseus went to confession often, but in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, he does at least once. The long-departed, though deceased, King of Ithaca returns home to his bride, Penelope, who has waited twenty years for his return. He has fought Trojans,...
‘Disclosure Day’: An Even Closer Encounter

‘Disclosure Day’: An Even Closer Encounter

Steven Spielberg has spent fifty years looking at the sky. Close Encounters of the Third Kind looked up in wonder. E.T. looked up in longing. War of the Worlds looked up in terror. Disclosure Day, Spielberg’s latest film, looks up and then, almost immediately, looks...