movie review


Hollywood Movie Insights III

by Rachel MacNair   This is the third in a series of short reviews of different movies. For the others, see:  Hollywood Movie Insights I (The Giver, The Whistleblower, and The Ides of March)  Hollywood Movie Insights II (Never Look Away, The Report, and Dark Waters)  She Said Opposing sexual abuse because it’s horrific without needing to take anything else into…


Seeing the Humanity of “the Enemy”: Movies to Provoke Thought and Discussion

by John Whitehead One of the many pernicious effects of war and other violent conflicts is how they push people into demonizing people on the other side of a conflict. Once people become identified as “the enemy” in a conflict, they become one-dimensional figures of evil or otherwise less than human in their opponents’ eyes….


The Movie “Wicked”: Making a Real Person of the Witch of the West

by Rachel MacNair   Act 1 of Wicked is now out in theaters, but instead of a 15-minute intermission as happens in the Broadway play, we get a year of intermission.  Act 2 comes out November 21, 2025. The play is a musical based on the book by Gregory Maguire. The movie is mainly based…


A Complex Man’s Complex Legacy: What the Movie Rustin Leaves Out

by John Whitehead The great civil rights activist and thinker Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) has received renewed attention thanks to the recently released movie Rustin. The movie is an engrossing look at Rustin’s role as an advisor to Martin Luther King and the organizer of the 1963 March for Jobs and Freedom in Washington, DC. Rustin…


Movie Review: Oppenheimer

by Rachel MacNair   Oppenheimer is a biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb.” According to its director’s custom, it has three different threads of stories that weave throughout. One tells the story of his early years and the development of the atomic bomb with care for historic accuracy, and the…


Movie Review: Sound of Freedom

by Rachel MacNair   The movie Sound of Freedom is causing quite a stir. It depicts the real-life Tim Ballard, who’s portrayed doing Hollywood-movie style rescues to get children out of the grips of pedophilic sex trafficking. As a drama, it’s well done. This would be the approach that would be taken by a movie…


Displaced and Brought Together by War: The Tale of Giovanni’s Island

  by John Whitehead The many ways war and its aftermath can devastate people’s lives, but also the bonds that can form among those enduring such hardships, is the subject of Giovanni’s Island, an animated movie produced by Japanese studio Production I.G. Although originally released in 2014, the movie became available in North America for…


The Violence That Didn’t Happen

by Julia Smucker   “As long as you can look at them as anything but human, you won’t have any problems.” This is what Richard “Mac” McKinney recalls being told in his Marine Corps training, recounted in the Oscar-nominated documentary short film “Stranger at the Gate.” (You can watch it here.) McKinney describes how this…


Seeing Is Believing: Films to Inspire a Consistent Life Viewpoint

by Mary Liepold   I want war, and preparations for war, to be unthinkable. I want abortion to be unthinkable, as well as racism, capital punishment, and all other offenses against human dignity. The Consistent Life Network’s statement of purpose says, “We seek a revolution in thinking and feeling.” In a time of deepening division,…


Hollywood Movie Insights II

by Rachel MacNair See our previous Hollywood Movie Insights post, offering comments on several movies.   Never Look Away An Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film and winner of other awards, the story spans the life of an artist as a boy in Nazi Germany and a man in East Germany. He flees to…