Lately I’ve been thinking about the film Hamnet and why it lingers in the heart long after the credits roll. Part of it is the luminous performance of Jessie Buckley, whose recent Best Actress Oscar felt so deeply deserved. She plays Agnes Shakespeare, the spiritual center of the story and the mother carrying so much hidden grief. In her acceptance speech, Buckley surprised Hollywood by praising her husband Freddie Sorensen and the beautiful, exhausting gift of raising their eight-month-old daughter, Isla. She spoke about the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart and even told Freddie she would have twenty thousand more babies with him. It was a disarming sincerity in a room filled with glamour and ambition, and it felt like such a rare kind of honesty.

And in a way, that moment is the heartbeat of Hamnet. The film draws us into the hidden world behind Shakespeare’s genius, but instead of dazzling us with fame, it brings us into the small, aching, holy spaces of family: Agnes, played with raw intuition by Jessie Buckley; William Shakespeare, portrayed with quiet intensity by Paul Mescal; Mary Shakespeare, given gravity by Emily Watson; and their children, especially young Hamnet, played by Jacobi Jupe, whose presence becomes both gift and wound.

One of the film’s most striking early images is Agnes walking through the forest and summoning a hawk to her glove. The hawk hovers between wildness and trust, much like Agnes herself. It becomes a symbol of her spiritual sensitivity, suggesting how closely she lives at the edge of the visible and invisible worlds, gathering herbs, sensing danger, and holding her family with a tenderness that is both fierce and otherworldly.

Every character is shaped by a love that costs something. Every joy is tinged with sacrifice. Every grief opens into a tenderness that feels almost sacred. Nowhere is that more heartbreaking than when Hamnet, seeing his twin sister Judith slipping away from plague, lies beside her and tries to confuse death into taking him instead. In his childlike love, he offers himself in her place, and the trick works. Judith recovers, while Hamnet falls ill and dies in Agnes’s arms. It is an act of pure self-giving, a child mirroring the logic of the Cross without even knowing it.

This reminds us that family, real and imperfect, is where sanctity is quietly formed. We grow through one another, stretch one another, and sometimes even break one another. Yet somehow God uses these fragile bonds to reveal Himself.

What moved me most was the thread of childlike faith woven through the story. Not childish, but the kind of faith that trusts even without understanding. You see it in Agnes’s fierce hope, in William’s longing for forgiveness, and in the way their children move through the world with openness rather than certainty. It is the same faith Jesus blesses in the Gospels, the kind that can sit in mystery without needing control.

When Agnes finally goes to London to see William’s play Hamlet, she enters the theater with her fists clenched. There is anger in her posture and a quiet fury that he would dare to use the death of their child to create such a work. It feels at first like a betrayal, an appropriation of grief that belongs to their family alone. But as the play unfolds, something begins to change. Scene by scene, the beauty of what William has created softens Agnes’s heart. She moves from resistance to attention until she finds herself standing in awe before the stage.

What she sees is not a diminishment of her son, but a form of preservation. Hamnet is not exploited or forgotten. He is portrayed with dignity, given weight and meaning in a way that allows his life to endure beyond its brief span. On the stage, their child is remembered. In that moment, Agnes realizes that love has found another way to speak. Art does not replace motherhood, but it becomes a vessel through which memory survives and suffering is given form.

Hamnet does not offer neat answers. Instead, it gives us something truer: a reminder that love and suffering often coexist, and that God dwells right there in the middle of both. The film invites us to believe that our families, our heartbreaks, our sacrifices can become places of grace. Not because we are perfect, but because God meets us in the real, hidden places where love costs us something.

That is why Hamnet belongs on a list of films Catholics should see. It whispers that the holy often begins in the ordinary, that family is a vocation of beauty and burden, and that childlike faith can carry us through more than we imagine.

To read more on Hamnet, check out our post on the Best Picture Nominees below.

This Monday, March 23, 2026, Pope Leo gave the United States of America a new Venerable: Fr. Edward Flanagan, the founder of Boys Town. Fr. Flanagan dedicated his life to serving at-risk boys, founding an institution outside of Omaha, Nebraska, which he named “Boys Town”. Here boys whom society at the time treated as unreformable would be treated as citizens, given the necessities of life but also given an elite education, training in the trades, spiritual formation, and a chance to prove themselves to be more than juvenile delinquents or reform school candidates. Fr. Flanagan encouraged them to be accountable to each other rather than enforcing strict punishments, setting up a city government with a mayor elected by the boys and even getting a branch of the United States Post Office run by the boys themselves. Fr. Flanagan’s philosophy was that boys respond to the way that they are treated: if you treat them as potential criminals, they will become criminals. If you treat them as young men and American citizens, they will prove themselves to be so. He lived by the motto “there’s no such thing as a bad boy”, and changed the lives of many American boys by treating them in that way.

His school was such a remarkable success that it attracted the attention of Hollywood. In 1938 Louis B. Mayer, MGM’s legendary studio head, launched into production what he would eventually describe as the favorite film he ever made: Boys Town, starring Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney. Boys Town is an excellent film, a true 1930s classic. It was nominated for several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and it won Spencer Tracy his second Oscar in a row for Best Actor. It feels very much like a Frank Capra picture: optimistic, patriotic, and brimming with a positive attitude toward human nature. These sorts of films were in vogue in the late 1930s: indeed, Capra’s You Can’t Take It with You defeated Boys Town in the Best Picture race in 1938 with a similar outlook on humanity. In our more cynical age, some might feel this type of movie is saccharine or naive, but I absolutely love them. I believe they capture a distinctly Catholic ethos about life, redemption, human nature, and the abiding power of selfless love. Boys Town is an excellent example of this type of picture, and now that Pope Leo has raised Fr. Flanagan to the rank of Venerable, it also counts as one of the best saint movies of all time.

The film opens with Fr. Flanagan (Tracy) meeting with a convict just about to go to the electric chair. He gives the man words of comfort, but the warden confronts him with his “debt to the state”. The man flies into a frenzy, asking what he owes the state when the state did nothing for him after his mother died but leave him on the street, starving and desperate. From his perspective, the state turned him into a criminal and then executed him for it, and this process began when he was a very young boy. Fr. Flanagan is deeply troubled by this speech, ruminating on it all the way home. As he returns to his neighborhood, he observes a large brawl between unruly boys on the streets of Omaha. Punches are thrown, food is trampled, and ultimately a window is broken, sending the crowd scattering. Fr. Flanagan is deeply affected by this scene, and remembers the words of the convict earlier: “one friend when I’m 12 years old and I don’t stand here like this!” He decides to be that one friend to these lost boys, to give them a chance to get out of their hard life and become upstanding citizens. He will let boys be boys, in a good way, by bringing them out into the country and letting them play baseball and learn and make friends. He earns the undying love of his boys because he extended that love to them, perhaps the first adult in their entire life who had done so. There were money troubles, to be sure, but at the end of the first act Fr. Flanagan seems to have triumphed without much difficulty at all.

And then he meets Whitey. Whitey (Rooney) stretches Fr. Flanagan’s faith in his maxim that “there is no bad boy”. He’s pompous, self-centered, loves a joke at the expense of others but can’t stand one at his own expense, and is already hardened by several years of living in the criminal underworld. When he gets to Boys Town he scoffs at its impressive features and immediately tries to leave, drawn back only by the lunch bell. He tries to bully his way to the top of the mayor’s race, and after losing foolishly challenges an older boy to a boxing match which he loses as well. He has charisma, for sure, but is using that talent for the wrong reasons. Fr. Flanagan is sure he can be reformed, but after Whitey flees Boys Town and is shot as a bystander in a bank robbery, Fr. Flanagan’s faith is shaken. Whitey refuses to rat out the bank robbers (one of whom is his brother), and the consequence is sure to be the closure of Boys Town. Fr. Flanagan breaks a little and seems to give up on Whitey: “it was a bad, sad day when I brought you here”. But even through Fr. Flanagan’s dark night of the soul, he still welcomes a new boy to Boys Town, one who has hitch hiked for days to get to this place of promise. Until the doors are forcibly closed on him, Fr. Flanagan will complete his mission.

Of course, this story is destined to have a happy ending and vindicate it’s optimistic premise: “there is no bad boy”. In a thrilling climax the robbers are caught, Whitey is proven innocent and learns his lesson, and Boys Town remains as strong a force for good as ever. Fr. Flanagan’s optimism is vindicated, as is his refusal to let a bad beginning determine a bad end. None of these boys are predestined to sin; through his sacrifice and love, Fr. Flanagan is able to draw them into virtue and (as we see implicitly throughout) closer to Christ. There’s no force, no coercion, no harshness at Boys Town; Fr. Flanagan merely shows Christlike love to his boys and they respond in kind. Spencer Tracy is magnificent in showing these different sides of Fr. Flanagan: the stubborn, determined, hard edges that he shows when pursuing his mission, and the jolly, kindly love he gives to each one of his boys. His performance shows Fr. Flanagan as saintly, but human; prone to doubt, anger, pigheadishness and even despair, but still pushing through anyway, completing his mission with grace, charm, and love. Films like Boys Town and the films of Frank Capra push us to be better, more optimistic, more loving people ourselves, to imitate the joyous service of Fr. Flanagan and to look for the best in those around us as we seek to call them to be better. We, like Fr. Flanagan, are called to love our neighbor at all times; after all, in God’s eyes, there is no bad boy.

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I just saw Project Hail Mary earlier today and had a blast: I already have tickets to see it again (this time in 70MM IMAX) next weekend. If you haven’t already, check out my friend Alejandro’s review we put out last week!

If you, like me, enjoyed the film, here’s a list of five movies that you’ll probably also like! (Note: I didn’t include Interstellar and Arrival because it feels like we have written about those movies ad nauseam and clearly many of you have watched them considering how high they ranked on our list of the best movies of the 21st century. But you should definitely watch those if you haven’t!)

Gravity (2013)

Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón

Starring: Sandra Bullock and George Clooney

This one feels like a no-brainer: it’s a survival-in-space movie. Still, despite Project Hail Mary’s astounding effects and cinematography, I don’t think any movie has captured the overwhelming, terrifying vastness of space more than this film. It’s truly a miracle of a movie that was actually the first movie I ever saw in IMAX, and would love to be able to see in theaters again someday. The cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki is- as always- astounding, and the VFX work is second-to-none. Bullock is a powerhouse in this. (It’s also #19 on our list!)

First Man (2018)

Directed by: Damien Chazelle

Starring: Ryan Gosling

The other movie that sends Ryan Gosling into space. This one is a lot sadder, but still a fantastic watch nonetheless. Gosling plays the one and only Neil Armstrong, detailing the lead-up to the Apollo 11 mission and exploring the psychology of the first man to step foot on the Moon. Justin Hurwitz’s haunting, contemplative score is perfect, especially for the jaw-dropping space scenes. Like Project Hail Mary, this movie eschewed greenscreen for onset LED screens, adding to the film’s immersive quality and it actually won that year’s Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009)

Directed by: Phil Lord and Chris Miller

Starring: Bill Hader, Anna Faris, James Caan

It’s likely that Project Hail Mary wasn’t your first Lord and Miller film. They directed The Lego Movie, 21 and 22 Jump Street (and part of Solo), and produced the Spider-Verse films. But if you want to see their first film, check out this zany animated film they made with Sony back in 2009. Loosely based on the children’s book of the same name, the movie follows Flint Lockwood (Hader) as he tries to save his island town of Chewandswallow from a diet of only sardines by creating a device that turns water into food: resulting in hamburgers, pizza, spaghetti and more falling from the sky. It’s a great example of Lord and Miller’s creativity and humor: a lot of the jokes in Project Hail Mary involving translation errors abound in this film with Flint and his pet Monkey, Steve. I can quote this one from front to back.

Life of Pi (2013)

Directed by: Ang Lee

Starring: Suraj Sharma

Like First Man and Gravity, this one was also a winner of the Best Visual Effects Oscar. Where the comparison to Project Hail Mary comes in is that a large part of this visually breathtaking film is in a confined space with a creature who can’t speak (in this case, a tiger), where the protagonist must survive. This one’s got a pretty crazy twist ending as well.

The Martian (2015)

Directed by: Ridley Scott

Written by: Drew Goddard

Starring: Matt Damon

There’s no Project Hail Mary without The Martian. Based on Andy Weir’s first book, this one is one of my all-time favorite science-fiction movies. Directed by Ridley Scott (Alien, Blade Runner) and written by Drew Goddard (who wrote Project Hail Mary), this one is a blast of an ensemble piece with a cast including Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Sean Bean, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeff Daniels, Donald Glover and more. But the real star of the show is Damon, who performs the majority of the scenes by himself (no alien counterpart in this one) as he uses every trick in the book to survive on Mars while waiting for rescue. If there’s one movie on this list that I will absolutely guarantee you’ll like on this list if you liked Project Hail Mary, it’s this one! (But I think you’ll like them all).

With the Oscars coming up on Sunday, now seems like no better time than to review the best picture nominees, and of course, rank them. Because I had some free time and a movie theater within walking distance of my house, I was (mostly) fortunate enough to have seen every Best Picture-nominated film for the 2026 Oscars. I feel comfortable recommending all of these films except the number 10 entry, for the reasons stated. 2025 was a remarkably fruitful year for Cinema and felt like one of the best years since 2019 (not a crazy statement considering the crop has been less than stellar since COVID, mostly).

Starting with #10…

#10. One Battle After Another (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director (PTA), Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), Best Actress (Teyana Taylor), Best Supporting Actor (Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro), Best Adapted Screenplay (PTA), Best Original Score (Jonny Greenwood), Best Cinematography (Michael Bauman), Best Sound, Best Production Design, Best Film Editing, Best Casting

Easily the worst of the Best Picture nominees and the worst Paul Thomas Anderson film, One Battle After Another is a snapshot in history of everything wrong with 2020s American politics and filmmaking. As I do not feel like writing “One Review After Another” on this unenjoyable “relevant social commentary”, I will link to the full review I wrote upon its release.

#9: Sinners (dir. Ryan Coogler)

Nominated for: Pretty much everything (broke the record for nominations with 16).

Coogler’s follow-up to his Black Panther saga was definitely a step in the right direction. The box office hit of 2025 has a lot going for it. Quality performances, a fantastic score, a fascinating setting, and perhaps the best post-credit scene to ever be featured in a film, Coogler demonstrated that he will be around in the Hollywood scene for a long time.

Sinners’ strongest aspects are its music and performances for sure. Michael B Jordan revives the twin act that has been seen in films such as Adaptation (an Oscar-worthy double performance from Nic Cage) to tell the story of two criminal brothers running away from a wretched past. The story is told from the somewhat pedestrian standpoint of an aspiring guitarist who bears a striking resemblance to the mythical and legendary Delta blues guitarist Robert Johnson. The Blues has been one of my favorite genres of music since I was a child, and I was welcome to seeing it treated with reverence. The noteworthy post-credit scene features beloved legendary musician Buddy Guy and was a delightful way to sound off a pretty over-the-top film.

Sinners’ largest problem is that, despite its best efforts to appear original, at the end of the day it’s a borderline remake of Robert Rodriguez’s 1996 cult classic From Dusk Till Dawn. It uses the same “two criminal brothers getting trapped in a vampire trap/nightclub that have to survive the night with others” premise to explore racial injustice of the Prohibition era. It struggles with taking itself super seriously despite its obvious camp, and does not shy away from vulgarity.

Sinners is an overall enjoyable and raunchy homage to the genre that defined music in the 20th century and shaped the heart of America. It definitely is worth checking out and will be considered a horror classic from this point on.

Available to stream on HBO Max

#8: Frankenstein (dir. Guillermo del Toro)

Frankenstein was an oddly beautiful film that felt like a return to form for Del Toro. Perhaps his best work since Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro tells a heartwarming and beautiful story about parenthood (which happens to be the most recurring theme amongst the nominees). Del Toro, despite some flaws, is able to ultimately pay respect to a classic novel that has been adapted many times with a fresh perspective.

Oscar Isaac and the rising star Jacob Elordi stand at the center of this beautiful and haunting tale of father-son relationships. Having only seen Elordi in the Kissing Booth films (absolutely dreadful Netflix movies), I was highly skeptical of him as the creature, but I was pleasantly blown away. Elordi was fantastic and vanished under many hours of makeup and prosthetics into the role of Frankenstein’s monster. Oscar Isaac finally returns to roles outside of the horrendous Disney Star Wars sequel trilogy in a more dramatic role that he is better suited for. Isaac plays an obsessed and twisted man who will do anything to achieve fame and validation with ease. Many montages of dismembering deceased bodies into the harvesting of limbs really drive home one of the most crucial questions that lie at the center of the movie: who is the real monster? The answer most certainly seems to be Dr. Frankenstein for most of it, until we are given the option that neither has to be the monster, or maybe there is none at all.

The only major glaring flaw of this film is the bizarre romance between Mia Goth’s character and the creature. As well-made and intricately constructed as the rest of the relationships are in this tale, this strange deviation from the book feels more closely akin to an internet fanfic than it does to a major screenplay. It feels forced and uncharacteristic for the world in which it takes place, and the borders on cringe at times. Aside from this minor gripe, Frankenstein is a great addition to del Toro’s incredible filmography.

Available to stream on Netflix

#7: The Secret Agent (dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best International Feature, Best Actor (Wagner Moura, pictured above), Best Casting

The last film that I had to complete for this list, The Secret Agent, is a quality film that has just enough flaws to prevent it from being upgraded from a good to a great film. Similar to the Brazilian masterpiece City of God, The Secret Agent is a fictitious story that takes place against the backdrop of a real historical setting. Wagner Moura plays a technology specialist who has fled for unknown reasons to a different part of Brazil, trying to establish a new life. As the film unfolds, we learn more about his mysterious life actively through watching his story and passively through historians listening to audio tapes about him during our time.

The Secret Agent’s strengths lie in its presentation and its acting. Director Kleber Mendonça Filho shot the film using Panavision lenses and on vintage film equipment to bring 1977 Brazil to life with vibrant color. A small army of vintage Volkswagen Beetles and excellent set design throws the viewer right back in time. Never once did this film feel out of place, cheap, or tacky. Sometimes I found myself wondering if I was watching a film and thinking that I was watching something more of a documentary, which was aided by the excellent performance from Wagner Moura.

Wagner Moura is the definitive star of this film. His Golden Globe win was well-earned and offers steep competition to Jordan and Chalamet for best actor. Moura plays several characters without being obvious about it with masterful restraint. He does not rely on yelling and shouting and crying, but rather emphasizes the mastery of his craft through the subtlety of his actions. Music, editing and cinematography all complement his performance , delivering a solid entry from the international scene.

The only major flaw of the secret agent is its pacing. At 161 minutes, it is the second-longest film on this list by a minute, only behind the worst film on this list. Unfortunately, this 2-hour and 40-minute run time feels, if not a little longer than this. Some scenes could have definitely been trimmed down a bit, especially with the random bits of sexual content that seem to serve no purpose to the story. While they aren’t enough to ruin the film or are frequent enough to warrant not watching it, they definitely don’t help it.

Available to stream on Hulu

#6: Bugonia (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Actress (Emma Stone), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score (Jersin Fendrix)

When the phrase “relevant social commentary” is ever associated with a film, it generates an eye roll and a vague feeling of dread in me. Too many films in the modern era strive for this and end up saying the same things every other film for the last decade has said. Yorgos Lanthimos has also thrown his two bits in for social commentary throughout his bizarre filmography. As someone who did not care too much for the content and subject matter of The Favourite and Poor Things, it was nice to see something from Lanthimos that sparked my interest without all the problematic content. Bugonia is much more in line with films like The Killing of a Sacred Deer and The Lobster (both of which are fantastic Greek Weird Wave films in their own right), offering a dense, disturbing, and satirical view of the terminally online “blackpilled” world we currently live in.

Bugonia is a remake of the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet, maintaining the core premise. Two conspiracy theory-obsessed young men kidnap a wealthy executive under the firm belief that he is an alien sent here to destroy the planet. While the premise may seem straightforward, Yorgos Lanthimos can create a tense and nightmarish scenario that keeps you guessing at every corner up until the very end, and expertly never lets us, the audience, see the full hand until the very end. It is also able to maintain a politically neutral stance and condemns the shallow activism that most corporations tend to participate in nowadays.

The word “Bugonia” comes from Greek and refers to an ancient Mediterranean myth that bees are spontaneously born from the carcasses of dead oxen. This title is rather unique but offers a unique insight into the film. Bugonia heavily focuses on bees, their nature, and their role within the natural order. While the film clearly uses bees as an allegory for humanity, their importance within the ecosystem is always at the core of every discussion around them. Humanity in this microcosm of a film is shown as deeply flawed and sometimes even beyond mad, but this is not by default. The environment in which mankind deteriorates and grows resentful is in isolation, where resentment and anger are left to fester and inevitably explode at the cost of others. Bugonia teaches that you can either choose to doom yourself about everything (in which case you might as well die since there’s no point in moving forward), or you can live out your life and do the things that make us human and connect with others. There are aspects of humanity that are not great, as seen in the film and in the ending montage, but there is never a reason to give up on mankind. To give up on it is to die, and the world along with it. While Jesse Plemons’ character is sick and twisted, there is a part of him that is extremely empathetic and calling out desperately for something more and searching for a higher calling, which is unique to humans.

Jesse Plemons gives one of the greatest performances of the year in this film. Despite sharing many scenes with the brilliant Emma Stone, he often steals the show and is nothing short of captivating. Within a single scene, you can witness him physically, psychologically, and spiritually deteriorate when confronted with old trauma that threatens his worldview. At the same time, you have Emma Stone giving one of her more enigmatic performances, which keeps the audience on the edge of their seats, wondering if what Plemons’ character says is true or not. Stone brings a physicality to this role that is somewhat disturbing at times (in a good way), while adding enough nuance to her emotional performance to draw us in deeper to her own turmoil and struggles with the situation that she’s been put in. It is worth noting that producer Ari Aster requested that the role of the rich bureaucrat be changed from a male to a female, and while normally this would just be seen as a lazy attempt to Westernize a story, this change gave us Emma Stone (who shaved her head for the role) in one of her more intense roles, and I am incredibly thankful for it.

The other parts that really excel within this film are the cinematography and the score. Bugonia marks the fourth collaboration between Yorgos Lanthimos and Robbie Ryan, who decided to shoot the film on 8-perf 35mm film stock using VistaVision cameras. The film’s shot composition is as enigmatic as it is captivating, pulling us deeper and deeper into this maddening Tale of isolation and disdain. Ryan can shoot in dark environments and capture the grittiness of the environment as well as the rawness of intense emotions. This, paired with my personal favorite score of the year so far, creates a nightmarish and surreal piece of art that will stay with me for a very long time. The score by Jerskin Fendrix feels like a blend between the classical era and a more contemporary Stravinsky piece. Fendrix is able to capture the bipolar nature of this film within his intense and sometimes beautiful score, and we genuinely hope we get to hear more of this artist as time passes.

Bugonia is up there with Weapons (unfairly snubbed from this list) for one of the best films of the year, and is very much cut from the same cloth. It is a dense and disturbing look into the damage of isolation from others and how dangerous the era of information can be. Lanthimos is able to bounce back from his previous dud and reestablish himself as one of the more unique voices working in the industry currently, and I can’t wait to see what he has in store next.

Available to stream on Peacock

#5: F1 (dir. Joseph Kosinski)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing

If you enjoyed Top Gun: Maverick, you will absolutely love F1. It is also quite similar to the excellent and riveting Grand Prix (1966), but it differentiates itself substantially through its era and messaging.

F1 is driven by its high-quality characters, all of whom feel complex. Brad Pitt gives an excellent portrayal of a faded race car driver motivated by the thrill of racing, alongside Damson Idris as his young and cocky counterpart. The conflict between these two is key to the film, and despite the ease with which other characters could have been neglected for this drama, Kosinski decided to flesh them out as well. F1 gives the space needed to allow all characters to go on the journey that shapes the film, and it is quite frankly wholesome to watch. With such great characters, this film manages to keep things light-hearted and approachable for the masses, but does know when to get serious and sentimental in all the right places.

The pacing in this film is nothing short of fantastic, perfectly blending action and drama without making it feel like the “slow parts” are unnecessary. They are quite essential and add some much-needed depth and stakes to the story. While some racing films struggle with feeling boring when they are not on the track, F1 never feels boring and, quite frankly, flies by.

Apple spared no expense in actually having the actors work with modified F2 cars and classic filming techniques to capture awe-inspiring racing footage. Kosinski’s focus on using as many practical effects as possible and blending them with minimal CG is the way things should be done. This is not a film to watch on a phone or small TV, but the largest IMAX or Dolby format you can possibly see it on, as it is easily one of the most intense racing films ever made. Spectacular sets, incredible sound design, and wonderful cinematography all create what will easily be the most immersive theatrical experience of 2025 that MUST be seen on a large screen.

I was pleasantly surprised and immersed by the world-building present throughout. F1 does an excellent job of explaining certain rules and incidents to the audience without ever belittling us, and instead invites us to enjoy and appreciate the story on a more technical level. Even when its rules and incidents already make sense to racing enthusiasts, the movie finds a way to inform without babysitting.

F1 is an absolute triumph of the 90s summer blockbuster that many viewers have longed for the return of. It’s a film that retreads some familiar ground, but goes its own way to tell something fresh. With a fantastic cast to give us great characters, intense action, and quality storytelling, this film is something special to be experienced not just once but several times in the theater with friends.

Available to stream on Apple TV

#4: Hamnet (dir. Chloe Zhao)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Actress (Jessie Buckley), Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Casting, Best Production Design, Best Original Score (Max Richter), Best Costume Design

Hamnet is absolutely worth the hype. Chloe Zhao stepped up to the plate to give an incredibly moving tale of love and loss that knows precisely how to play its cards. It is a master class in emotional storytelling and a wonderfully immersive experience.

I have been following Jesse Buckley’s career since her supporting role in Chernobyl and her starring role in Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things. She was sensational in both of those, and I figured it was only a matter of time until she would get Academy recognition. I would be genuinely shocked if she does not win the best lead actress Academy Award this Sunday, seeing as her role as Agnes was magnificent. Buckley displays the full range of human emotion with both intensity and subtlety, firmly cementing her as one of the finest actresses in the business today.

Paul Mescal and Emily Watson are able to carry their own weight with brilliant performances of their own. Perhaps the largest snub at the Academy Awards this year was none other than Jacobi Jupe for Best Supporting Actor. Rare is it that a child actor can be good, let alone great, in a role, even in a major Hollywood film. Jupe was phenomenal and has gotten practically no award recognition for perhaps the best child performance since Sean Baker’s The Florida Project. The costumes and the marvelously reconstructed Globe Theater help complement this masterful acting extravaganza.

The film addresses the use of art as a love language and a way to venerate those whom we love, as well as the crucial role parents play in their children’s lives. Zhao (and many other filmmakers in the past few years) drifts into the spiritual realm not with the coldness that many films of the earlier 21st century have had. She does not say “There is nothing out there” but rather asks, “I know there is something out there, but what is it?” Fortunately, Catholicism has this answer, and it’s nice to see others are starting to open up a little about it.

Available to stream on Peacock

#3: Train Dreams (dir. Clint Bentley)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Original Song (“Train Dreams” by Nick Cave and Bryce Dessner)

We now hit the part of the list where we begin discussing the excellent films.

These are the must-sees of 2025, beginning with Clint Bentley’s incredibly moving Train Dreams. While its inspiration from Terrence Malick is undeniable, Bentley avoids the “diet Malick” accusations by telling a truly compelling story.

Train Dreams most reminds me of the life of Saint Joseph. A humble and quiet man living a humble and quiet life. The film is a love letter to the unsung workers and heroes of the American frontier. And homage to an era and a generation of men who lived ordinary lives to build an extraordinary nation. It is more than just a period piece, but rather a recognition of what we have taken for granted. Joel Edgerton is perhaps the most-snubbed actor from the Best Actor category. He melts into the role of Robert Grainier to be a standard for all of the hard-working men who sacrificed so much to live ordinary lives, pursue the American dream, and to strive for the simple life of a wife, kid, and land.

Train Dreams is a lifetime lived in 102 minutes. One isn’t the same when they finished it, but merely invited to reflect on a world that seems so far away, yet all around us now. The truth of the matter is that most people are not exceptional. Most of us will not be world famous or do incredible feats of athleticism, scientific discovery, or inventions that change the world. When talking about Train Dreams and reflecting on it, I believe the quote from the late great GK Chesterton is what lies at this film’s heart:

The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.

I assure you that Train Dreams is well worth the time it takes to watch it and then some. It may seem boring to some at first, but in reality, it is easily one of the most beneficial films to see out of this list. I have every intention of revisiting this marvelous and simple film regularly.

Available to stream on Netflix

#2: Sentimental Value (dir. Joachim Trier)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best International Feature, Best Director, Best Actress (Renata Reinsve), Best Actor (Stellan Skarsgård), Best Supporting Actress (Elle Fanning and Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing

One of only two five-star ratings I gave this entire year was to Joachim Trier’s outstanding Sentimental Value. Trier’s follow-up to The Worst Person in the World is a masterful homage to European Masters such as Bergman and Tarkovsky. Telling the story of a fictitious well-renowned film director trying to reconnect with his estranged daughters, sentimental value offers an in-depth and mature look at the traumas of divorce, the importance of fatherhood, and the importance of forgiveness.

Sentimental Value feels like a late-stage Bergman film, such as Scenes from a Marriage or Fanny and Alexander. The hard cuts between some segments of the film give it an almost episodic feel, and add a layer of rawness. Stellan Skarsgård, Renate Reinsve, and every other member of the cast bring their absolute best in a bona fide Scandinavian classic. Emphasis is placed on every emotional beat, every facial twitch, every body movement, and every word. I found myself utterly lost in this maze of characters and wanting to know everything I possibly could about all the characters.

The cinematography was flat-out amazing. Frequently, I recognized homages to other classics of European Cinema without it completely taking me out of the film. Scenes are shot in a complementary fashion to help draw as much meaning out of a scene as possible. There are multiple extraordinarily long takes, with one lasting maybe around five or six minutes, that I didn’t realize hadn’t been cut until the very end of it, where I was left speechless.

Too often do films focus on the short-term effects and fallout of divorce and broken homes, but almost never do we see the true long-term effects reflected upon with such maturity. It is not viewed as an “Oh well, it’s probably for the best” perspective, but from the very real and ugly truth that it does extreme long-term harm to everyone, especially children. I can damage their ability to form meaningful and in-depth relationships with others, to open up and be vulnerable. The importance of fatherhood and the trauma that its absence can cause lies at the core of Trier’s empathetic tale of reconciliation. Yes, some may hurt us, but it is important to forgive as Christ calls us to.

#1: Marty Supreme (dir. Josh Safdie)

Nominated for: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Timothée Chalamet), Best Original Screenplay, Best Casting, Best Production Design, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design

Timothée Chalamet steals the show in the best film of the 2026 Best Picture race. Josh Safdie has proven once again the incredibly captivating power that cinema can have. Marty Supreme is chaotic, charming, stressful, and above all, heartfelt. It is one of those films that has hit me at the precise moment in my life when I needed to hear it most.

Marty Supreme is first and foremost about growing up. It perfectly encapsulates all of the different aspects from every film on this list into one singular message: that what truly matters to a man is becoming a father. Being there for a significant other and child and taking this burden upon yourself is the highest honor any man can take on. It takes the entire length of the film for Marty to realize this, but as is the case in Brideshead Revisited, he comes to his senses in the end. Seeing Chalamet’s moving moment at the end while “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is blaring was my favorite movie moment of 2025, and it lives rent-free in my mind since seeing it. Another positive side note was the respect for life in this film. When a character has an unexpected pregnancy, there is never the discussion of whether the baby should be “kept” or not, but instead that the baby simply is. Too often, films treat 1950s America as if every time someone was pregnant, the abortion question was asked. It’s simply not even discussed as an option, and it’s quite reassuring to see.

Chalamet gives my personal recommendation for the best actor performance for the Oscars this year. He became this character who is sort of fictitious. Every member of the star-studded cast does an amazing job, but Timothée truly does steal the show. Marty Supreme is a little raunchy at times, and no doubt has its fair share of colorful language, but it is able to capture that chaotic style that the Safdie Brothers have become notorious for. This was the most engrossing I felt in a film all year, and time absolutely flew by. The sets and costumes allowed me to be utterly lost in a post WWII world in a way I haven’t been in a long time. The score and soundtrack brilliantly complement this chaotic and convoluted tale of immaturity. I’m a personal massive fan of the Tears for Fears vibe that is present throughout, and it works shockingly well with the setting.

If I had to pin the theme of Marty Supreme down with a single quote, it would absolutely be 1st Corinthians 13:11:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

Judging by Timothée Chalamet’s recent rhetoric about him wanting to settle down and be a dad, I do not doubt that he and Josh both want to convey this in this rather unorthodox, incredibly organized chaos. It is my personal favorite of the 2026 Best Picture Oscar race, and will be rewatched in the future for sure.

This past week, I cracked open the newspaper where I attend graduate school, to find an article titled “Young people yearn for physical media. Here’s why that’s a good thing”. A few hours later, I opened YouTube to find a segment from the TODAY show titled “Burdened by Tech, Gen Z is Flocking to DVDs and VHSs”. These are just a few examples of what is becoming a critical cultural moment, one that has been stewing for several years amidst a growing dissatisfaction with the promises of technology and the corporate “own nothing and be happy” mentality. As Catholics, we can find our own place in this movement as well as critique some of its shortcomings.

The first question you may be asking yourself is “what is physical media?” This moniker extends to any type of media that is…tangible and contained within itself, which includes books, Blu-Rays, board games, some boxed video games, vinyl, and so on. There are several motivators for the interest in physical media, the most obvious of which being nostalgia.

As a kid, my family would drive once a month from our home at the time in Buffalo to visit family in Pittsburgh. While I did read a lot in the car, the most memorable part was watching DVDs on a portable player tied to the back of the front seat. On these trips, I built up a lineup of movies I watched over and over and over again- Wizard of Oz, Back to the Future, the live-action Scooby-Doo, and the Eddie Murphy-starring Haunted Mansion among others. The latter film was repeated so many times that I am pretty sure it is now a permanent section of my psyche. I remember not only watching the movies, but also poring through the special features and looking over the cases.

DVDs as a medium allowed for this possibility, not only through their tangibility, but because of their limitedness. Television does the same thing. My brother, who was born seven years after me, was never in an environment where repeated viewings were a natural thing. He has always had almost limitless choice.

Nostalgia, though, is quite a drug. The VHS and DVD era had many problems of their own. The gap in quality between theatrical release and home video was much bigger. Companies often did poor transfer jobs with many films, especially foreign ones, receiving the dreaded “pan-and-scan” treatment that cut off parts of the image. And even in comparison to high prices today, VHS tapes were especially expensive at the time and did not come with the bevy of special features and commissioned art we have now. The limitedness I mentioned before made it harder to see a wider range of films and many great films were more likely to be unnoticed or unreleased.

Nostalgia is absolutely a major cause of this moment. Yet, to leave it at that would be missing something. That something would be a cottage industry that is rapidly expanding and improving at the same time the Internet gets worse and subscription costs go up.

It is a little hard to imagine now the excitement around streaming at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020. Disney+ launched with the phenomenon that was The Mandalorian and marked the end to the “Disney Vault” era where physical and theatrical re-releases were strictly limited. You could and still can watch just about every movie the studio ever made at any time. HBO Max launched with an incredible array of content that includes all of HBO, many classic movies under the Turner Classic Movies banner, all of Studio Ghibli’s work, and a lot of animation from Looney Tunes to Cartoon Network. The moment was so powerful that I even had a subscription to the doomed Quibi service, which deserved much better.

As the pandemic era wound down, the dream started to fade. Netflix original movies became more of a pejorative term. Disney+, Paramount+, and HBO Max started to remove large amounts of content, including shows and movies that were completely unavailable elsewhere. Warner Bros took it a step farther by cancelling projects that were finished as a tax write-off. The excuse was poor quality, but anyone who has seen The Day The Earth Blew Up knows that is wrong. And the prices, oh the prices. Disney+ launched in 2019 at $6.99 per month. Today, the same plan costs $18.99 per month. Simultaneously, companies have figured out that it is not a great long-term solution to spend huge amounts on original content. So as the price increases, the quality and quantity of content declines.

The subscription model has become increasingly dominant outside of media and people are getting tired of it. You might even be paying one to read this. Wallets are getting tight, too. Consumers can only afford to have one or two services at once, which makes streaming frankly a difficult enterprise for any company not named Netflix.

While streaming crashes and burns, physical media, at least for movies, is doing extremely well. Criterion Collection sales have become an event and people waited for hours to walk inside the famed Criterion Closet. There are now many companies regularly releasing high-quality versions of films from every era. I will get into some recommendations for that later in the article. DVDs and VHS tapes are, for now, pretty cheap. New releases can be expensive, but there is a near limitless supply of older content to consume for cheaper. Within a few miles of me, there are about four or five stores that have hundreds of DVDs and Blu-Rays for sale for a few dollars a piece.

Disillusionment about streaming and current economic conditions are another motivator for physical media, but the picture is not fully complete. Owning media physically is also a form of preservation and resistance against ownership-free technocracy.

Imagine Netflix were to shut down tomorrow and every piece of original content that was never released physically (which is most) is now only available illegally. Over the next few years, some companies might pick up the rights to some popular content for their own digital platforms. Still, much of the library goes untouched. This may seem extreme, but the exact scenario has already happened in another medium, video games.

Video games have been trending in the digital-only direction for years with many games never receiving a physical release. This has created a major preservation problem. In 2019, Nintendo shut down the digital store for the Wii. In 2023, they shut down the stores for the Wii U and the 3DS. The Xbox 360 store was closed in 2024. This left hundreds, if not thousands, of games unplayable unless they had already been purchased prior to closure. Today, only a small fraction of them have been released on newer platforms. Things are only getting worse as consoles begin to remove the disc drive and Nintendo sells physical cartridges that only act as a pass to download the game digitally.

While physical media does not last forever, it usually lasts longer than digital storefronts and can often be legally copied. Because of this, I have tried to track down my favorite films that never got full releases. The epic horror film The Empty Man was only released on DVD via Redbox. Netflix original White Noise, a perfect candidate for owning because it is both amazing and not well-known, was only put on Blu-Ray as a screener for awards voters.

As great as physical media may seem, there is a dark side: overconsumption. This world is not our home and all of our possessions ultimately mean little for our salvation. “Life does not consist in an abundance of possession” (Luke 12:15). It is a waste of time and money that could be used for better purposes to collect an inordinate amount of physical media for no reason beyond collecting itself and nostalgia. The latter can become an unhealthy dwelling on the past that can get in the way of our present responsibilities. “Do not say ‘why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). Physical media can easily fall into the “throwaway culture” Pope Francis identified. Today’s digital subscription-based model is bad, yet that does not make any response okay. We have recently seen the rise in “graded” VHS tapes, which exist solely for speculation. Unless you are working in an archive, movies are meant to be watched and shared.

As Catholics, we should be responsible consumers. In 2023, Pope Francis spoke to the patrons of the arts in the Vatican Museums and identified in them the “conviction that each generation has a collective responsibility to cherish and preserve the priceless heritage with which we have been entrusted”. While we are not working for the Vatican Museums, we can pass on important and enriching art to our communities and future generations. Physical media can be a way of doing that.

If you do want to join the craze, I have a few tips and companies to check out. Format is a big deal and can be a little confusing to newcomers. DVDs are the commonly-used term, but are actually an older format that is low-quality by today’s standards. There are still plenty of reasons to collect DVDs as they are usually very cheap and many films have not been released on better formats. The successor to the DVD is the Blu-Ray, which has now been succeeded by the 4K Blu-Ray. The latter is still relatively niche, and most films are released on all three formats.

I highly recommend 4K discs despite the rarity of cheap ones. They are the best possible way to watch a film at home and look far better than 4K films on streaming, which are constrained by network rates. If you own a PlayStation 5 or an Xbox Series X that has a disc drive, you can play them. It is also possible to pick up used players for $100 or less. They also play regular Blu-Rays and DVDs.

As for companies releasing films, the best place to start is the Criterion Collection, which has been around since laserdisc. Their goal is to create high-quality releases of the best films ever made. The trade-off is that they are the most expensive with 4Ks going for as much as $50 new. I only buy from them during their 24-hour sales, which usually happen in late March and November, or the annual Barnes & Noble 50% off event.

I would also recommend Kino Lorber, which has a huge catalog from new indie films to the silent era. They have been putting out 4K discs of movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the original Pink Panther, The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and more. Their catalog is also full of great non-4K disc releases. The special features offered are usually less than that of Criterion and some other companies, but more than the studios themselves tend to offer.

There are many, many companies and I will shout out two more. Flicker Alley puts out a small handful of releases each year that are remastered well and full of special features. For example, they recently put out Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings, which includes an audio commentary, three different scores, and a variety of making-of videos. The movies they choose tend to be from the silent and early sound eras. Finally, there is Arrow Video, which is basically the Criterion Collection of blockbusters. In addition to hours of special features, they will often release alternative cuts of films never or rarely seen before. They have good sales a few times a year.

Physical media is a fad and that means it will likely fade out of the mainstream soon. What then? Will the digital and subscription model still win out? We cannot know. What we can do now as Catholics is to engage in the culture to help guide it towards the dignity of the person and the glory of God. Sometimes, that may require owning the Criterion of The Tree of Life.

Got a sick physical media collection you’d like to share? Send pictures to 100catholicmovies@gmail.com with your name (just first name is okay), place of residence (optional) and a paragraph describing it. If we get enough, we’ll do a whole post presenting them!

Over the course of my Faith journey, Lent has become one of my favorite liturgical seasons. The incredible spiritual and formative impact of Lent is undeniable. Given that, in recent years, using art to meditate has started to re-enter the mainstream again, I figured now would be as good a time as ever to put this list out.

In 2021, as I was on a Catholic cinematic journey, I decided to create a Lenten watchlist to deepen the season. The current list being shared is a slightly updated version, but still retains the core principle of the original. It is a cinematic meditation designed to help an individual get the most out of Lent. While daily scripture should be the primary focus, each of these has been selected as a companion/meditative piece and can enhance the season. Sundays were originally skipped when I composed this list, as it was seen that they are to be dedicated to the Holy Mass. Upon considering that Sunday is a day of rest and spiritual development, Sunday film recommendations have been added. Notes next to each film have relevant scripture from that daily reading, with each film tying into the overall themes of each day.

The list is quite easy to use.

1. Click on the link, which will take you to Letterboxd

2. At the top of the list on the right side under the “Sort by List Order” button, there will be an orange button with glasses that says “Read Notes”. Click on the orange button.

3. Simply scroll down and find the film for the day. Each film will have the corresponding day of the liturgical calendar and a daily reading quote.

Before jumping headfirst into this list, a few things need to be addressed:

1. Due to the seriousness of Lent, many of these films are quite heavy.

2. It is not mandatory that every film be seen, as 47 films is a lot.

3. Not all of these films are suitable for younger audiences, such as Schindler’s List or The Passion of the Christ, so viewer discretion is advised (the parents’ guide on IMDb is a wonderful tool).

4. Some of these are quite long and maybe a bit artsy for some, but give them a chance to take you somewhere you’re not used to being taken.

5. Not every film needs to be seen, just important that whatever you choose to watch fits the day (although some like the Dekalog are quite difficult to find, so it is understandable).

6. Some of these can be quite difficult to find, so don’t sweat it. Many can be found on HBO, Criterion, or Amazon Prime.

7. The Dekalog is only accessible to my understanding if you rent it on Amazon or own the physical copy.

While not everything on here can be seen, there are a few films on the list that I recommend as almost mandatory for viewing during Lent.

These films are:

• Andrei Rublev (#47)

• The Mission (#57)

• The Seventh Seal (#9)

• The Lord of the Rings (#50)

• A Hidden Life (#29)

• The Tree Of Life (#2)

• The Shawshank Redemption (#62)

• The Passion Of Joan of Arc (#34)

• Babette’s Feast (#37)

• The Passion Of the Christ (#53)

(Editor’s Note: Please remember that entries from our list of 100 Movies are not ranked)

If you have your own recommendations, please share with us some of your favorite Lenten films in the comments below!

Have a blessed and fruitful Lent.

As a film professor of over 50 years (Duke University Divinity School, the College of William and Mary, Regent University, Wheaton College, and Virginia Wesleyan University), I joined several colleagues (director Stu Minnis, screenwriter Steve Sylvester, and producer Vickie Bronaugh) in making a documentary movie about diverse prayers in films. Based on a book on I did for New York University Press (God on the Big Screen), we started with the potent silent films of Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford and ended up with inspirational 21^st century movies like Harriet. Amazed at how many prayers populated Hollywood films, we wanted to see what they might be teaching audiences about praying.

C. S. Lewis thought the best way to reach a pagan culture was to sneak past the watchful dragons, both secularists and fundamentalist. And Hollywood, however unwittingly, accomplished the task of teaching people how to pray, sneaking prayers into mainstream cinema.

Our film, Hollywood, Teach Us to Pray, available on YouTube for those wandering the wilderness of the internet, offers a roller coaster ride of praying experiences, hypocritical, superficial, questioning, hoping, and transcendent, all ways of trying to communicate with a Father in Heaven.

The recognizable comic prayers of Meet the Parents, Talladega Nights, or Tyler Perry films elicit laughter, even as they hold up a mirror to our own selfish prayers. The desperate prayers of Ben-Hur or Hacksaw Ridge move us as they echo our own fears and pain. Embedded, even hidden, in mainstream cinema, we find films alter the narrative trajectory in unexpected ways. When Katherine Hepburn’s Rose prays that God would open His heavens to rescue her and Humphrey Bogart’s character in African Queen, the answer comes immediately, with rain lifting them out of a swamp. In fact, in a study by Fraser and Brown, God answers prayers more quickly and definitively in movies than in real life, with over 80% of cinematic petitions being answered in 90 minutes of screen time.

The gap between the secular Hollywood establishment and the potential religious market was best captured in an apocryphal tale told by biographer Bob Thomas about Columbia Studio’s legendary Cohn brothers. The two producers debated the prospect of making a religious film. Harry challenged his brother Jack, claiming that he knew nothing about religion.

“What the hell do you know about the Bible, Jack? I’ll bet you fifty bucks you don’t even know the Lord’s Prayer,” said Harry.

“Oh, yes I do,” boasted Jack.

“Well then, let’s hear it,” prodded his brother.

Jack started: “Now I lay me down to sleep…”

“Okay, okay,” conceded Harry. “You win,” and handed over the fifty bucks.

This comic anecdote in which Jack mistakes a common children’s bedtime prayer for Jesus’s instructions on prayer in the Gospels offers two insights. First, that Hollywood did not know much about praying and, second, that it nevertheless knew that religion in film mattered. Cinematic prayers would come to be significant elements of film, intentionally scripted and embedded in Hollywood narrative paradigms, almost like religious product placements.

From just calling out God’s name, the film explores how the movies have shaped our prayers (especially for those who forget their catechism). One crucial moment defines the whole film. It captures the central parable of movie prayers.

In Easy A (Will Gluck, 2010), Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) goes into a church looking for a minister, a reverend, even a wizard. Earlier, she had gone into a bookstore to find a Bible. A bookstore clerk tells her it is in bestsellers, right next to Twilight.

She plays a reverse hypocrite, seeking to appear wicked when she remains quite wholesome. As she pretends to be Hester (from Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter), a friend admonishes her with “I hope for your sake, God has a sense of humor”.

“Oh”, she responds, “I have seventeen years worth of anecdotal proof that He does”.

The key moment, however, occurs when she sits in a confessional booth. She whispers, “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. I think that’s how you’re supposed to start these things. I’m only going on what I’ve seen in the movies”.

Featuring directors like David Anspaugh (Rudy, Hoosiers), Robert Benton (Places in the Heart), and Michael Schulz (Car Wash, Which Way is Up?), critics like Leonard Maltin and Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang, and religious leaders like Father James Martin, Professor Robert Johnston, and Sister Helen Prejean, the film addresses questions about prayer, about suffering, silence, pain, and thanksgiving for meals like hot dogs.

After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake in which the city was devastated and hundreds lost their lives, a group of survivors sing “Nearer my God to Thee”, a prayer of need in San Francisco (W. S. Van Dyke, 1936). Barbary Coast’s “Paradise” saloonkeeper, the roguish Blackie Norton (Clark Gable) surveys the wreckage of the catastrophe. Having lost everything, except his beloved Mary, (Jeannette MacDonald), an opera imp, he turns to his friend, the conscientious priest Father Tim Mullen (Spencer Tracy) and asks. “I want to thank god. What do I have to say?” Father Mullin responds, “Just say what’s on your heart.”

Norton kneels and says, “Thanks, God. Thanks! I really mean it.”

The climactic scene just before the titles situates Denzel Washington (The Book of Eli, Albert and Allen Hughes, 2010) in hostile territory with a young woman sent to extract secrets from his spiritual journey, namely the possession of a sacred book. In one of the most pedagogically direct moments of teaching one how to pray, Eli tells the would-be seductress to sit down with him and share some food at table: “Give me your hands. Close your eyes. ‘Thanks for warm bed Thank you for the gift of companionship. Amen’. Now we eat.”

With prayers for Roman Catholics (The Gaucho, Silence) and for Protestants (Hell’s Hinges, Bruce Almighty), the hundreds of films (with so many other titles left on the cutting room floor) will not only resonate, but awaken one to rediscover how one can learn from fiction and enter a more authentic relation with the One Who wants to commune with us.

Pre-Raphaelite poet and painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, captured a fragile and transcendent moment of “Beata Beatrix” praying. His poetry suggested that one “Give honor unto Luke Evangelist; / For he it was (the aged legends say) / Who first taught Art / To hold her hands and pray.”

So, giving honor to the One Who teaches us to pray, we made a documentary feature that we think challenges, inspires, amuses, and helps us remember how God snuck into all the great Hollywood films, when we thought He was absent. How sneaky.

This is a continuation of the series "The Rise and Fall (and Rise?) of the MCU". To check out the intro post for the series, click here.

In 2004, Bob Dylan spoke on 60 Minutes of how he conjured up the lyrics to “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”…

Bob: ”I don’t know how I got to write those songs… Those early songs were, like, almost magically written.”

[He proceeds to recite some of the lyrics: ”Darkness at the break of noon, shadows even the silver spoon. A handmade blade, a child’s balloon eclipses…”]

Bob: [continued] ”Well, try to sit down and write something like that. There’s a magic to that and it’s not Siegfried & Roy kind of magic, you know? It’s a different kind of a penetrating magic.”

Dylan wasn’t the only artist who bore these sentiments about art being much deeper than an idea formed by mere humans. Painters like Paul Klee believed art was an exploration of the metaphysical, while Michelangelo took refuge in a sculpture already existing within a marble block — it was only his job to chisel away and reach it. Art is a reflection of the divine, and expresses emotions in inexplicable ways. A true artist just knew that there was more to his work than meets the eye. The divine has to be behind the creation, influencing the artist to be moved and to move others through his individuality and honesty in expression. That divine push is that kind of a penetrating magic.

As reverie in entertainment continues via watching movies on our phones, laptops and tablets instead of going to one’s local theater, it might (or does for people like me) seem like a devolution. A devolution of this art — the medium of film. As visual creativity has devolved from the likes of Bernini’s sculptures in the Vatican or Frederic Remington’s oil paintings of the American West, and into risible performance “art” — ranging from wall scribbling to dropping ping pong balls on a staircase in New York City’s art exhibits, it cannot be helped but for my own tired eyes to see, somewhat, this same path towards thoughtful expression’s diminishment in the realm of motion pictures.

We can try and pinpoint where the quality decrease in movies began in the 21st century. For example, Netflix and Apple TV have taken the cake in producing truckloads of new entertainment, which supersedes the public’s desire to see a movie in theaters. Generally, any film nominated now in these annoyingly pontificating elitist award shows is a project no one has heard of, and honestly doesn’t hold interest to watch (for me, at least).

What is popular now? What would us plebeians hit up several movie theaters to see?

Besides the yearly horror film, eccentric dark comedy, or appetizing nostalgia through Tom Cruise sprinting, leaping, and soaring through the air (that’s worth the price of admission now over much else), it’s the popular screen portrayals of comic book characters. As figures of what ideally should be a new American mythology, superheroes on film are now on a downward spiral of quality — and speaking of nostalgia, that now seems to be the only ingredient left to keep these Marvel movies standing on two legs (the return of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Hugh Jackman’s comeback as the iconic Logan in Deadpool and Wolverine, for example).

This downward spiral arguably began circa the 2010s in Kevin Feige’s long standing Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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In 1999, Bryan Singer began shooting a film that would change the course of cinematic history. The movie was X-Men. Singer was famously (or infamously) not a fan of the comics and strove to create something that was more grounded and less fantastical, and forbade anyone on set from bringing any comics.

There was one man who defied him. A young, ballcap wearing assistant producer named Kevin Feige, who would sneak “Wolverine” actor and future franchise star Hugh Jackman comics and even fought Singer to keep a scene where Jackman- true to the character- calls someone “bub”.

This story is practically Hollywood legend by now, and is indicative of the future that was to come for the assistant producer, who quickly rose to co-producer for the sequel, X2 and subsequently an executive producer on the third film, The Last Stand.

Almost two decades later, Feige became so successful at making Marvel movies that he led the fledgling Marvel Studios into the greatest box office run in history, making him the highest-grossing producer of all time. In 2009 the Walt Disney Company bought Marvel Studios for $4 billion, and after a decade of Feige-produced hits they were in a position to buy out the entirety of 20th Century Fox Studios.

Feige- who once fought just to give Hugh Jackman a comic-accurate haircut- was now the “Bruce Wayne” of the producing world.

However, like any successful person, business, or entity, it’s only a matter of time before chinks begin to appear in the armor.

Even Kevin Feige, the most powerful man in Tinseltown, is still subject to dramatic exits and entrances of leadership, something that has plagued Walt Disney Studios since the death of its beloved founder. Under Bob Chapek, all film divisions reported to an intermediary instead of reporting straight to the top, and it’s clear from the slate that got put out that Feige began to have increasingly less control over the final product.

Upon Iger’s return, Feige now reports directly to him and based on this year’s Thunderbolts and Fantastic Four the quality difference from what came before is notable, but the world still wonders if superhero fatigue hasn’t done this whole enterprise in. It may end up being that, once again, it’s up to Wolverine and the X-Men to save the day.

All eyes are now on Avengers: Doomsday to see if Marvel still has it, but predictions on that front will be for the tail end of this series.

With this series my friend Kevin (our video essayist supreme) and I will be exploring:

• Why the MCU succeeded where previous Marvel entries didn’t

• Why the firing of James Gunn and Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox had disastrous effects on the overall storyline post-Endgame

• How Feige’s methods running the studio are actually extremely similar to Old Hollywood methods

• How I would have planned out the MCU post-Endgame, and how it could still be saved

Hope you enjoy this new series, and if you have suggestions on specific movies or topics within the MCU that you want to see covered, sound off in the comments below!

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Brothers Eddie and Charlie Scott tackle one of their favorite filmmakers with Quentin Tarantino’s complete overhaul and completion of his Kill Bill movies, combining them into a 4 and a half-hour epic titled “Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair”. In theaters now.

“It’s Like Re-Discovering the Mona Lisa”

By Eddie Scott

The Whole Bloody Affair is Tarantino’s original vision for Kill Bill, being both first and second movies put into one long epic. However, Tarantino’s editing extends beyond simply stitching the two halves together, but rather features a complete project more closely resembling his original vision, adding scenes and even going as far as to negate studio changes made for censors and runtime.

Now, typically I refrain from speaking about myself in reviews in an effort to keep them focused on the film’s nature rather than myself. However, I cannot write this review without acknowledging you, the reader, and call attention to my personal viewing experience. Everyone’s perception of this matter will be different, however I will do my best to segment my perspective into relatable and understandable terms and perspectives.

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On November 15, 2025, Pope Leo XIV hosted an array of filmmakers and festival heads for an event celebrating movies and the theaters that play them. Among other remarks, he said cinemas are the “beating hearts of our communities”. Coincidentally on the same day, I went to see Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) accompanied by a full orchestra and choir in a freshly remodeled single-screen theater first built in 1925. While a deeply moving event in and of itself, it also marked the next chapter in a tumultuous but passionate love affair with a place that taught me the power of art and community. This is both the story of that century-old movie palace and of how theaters and the fantasies projected in them can bring us closer to life and our Lord.

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Around third grade at the local library, I was given the choice to rent one of the many films available. Of all the DVDs on the shelf, the one that stood out to me was Back to the Future. My mom began to tell me it was one of her and my dad’s favorite movies from the 80’s, and we brought it home to watch that evening. From there, I was quickly transfixed by all the movie had to offer. I even made a “time machine” project to show my class that year. Since then, I’ve seen Back to the Future more times than I could possibly count, and it still holds the title of being my all time favorite film.

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Stephen King released The Running Man in 1982 under his pseudonym Richard Bachman as a scathing critique of the rapacious hyper-consumerism of the 1980s. Five years later, director Paul Michael Glaser (best known as the Starsky in Starsky & Hutch) and Die Hard writer Steven E. DeSouza would tackle an adaptation. The result is a loose adaptation that falls prey to many of the cultural elements the novel critiqued while still offering up some original insights of its own.

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Ben Richards, a police captain who refuses to fire on innocent civilians and gets imprisoned as a result. After a failed breakout, the producers of the popular game show The Running Man choose him as their next contestant. On this show, prisoners are offered freedom in exchange for facing off against a bevy of souped-up assassins called hunters with names like Subzero and Buzzsaw in a live televised arena for one night.

From the start, the film differs greatly from the source material. The latter’s Ben Richards is a poor husband and father with a sick daughter. He elects to be a contestant in The Running Man because of the promise of financial riches if he wins. The show also takes place on a global scale for thirty days and follows Richards on the run. If he survives, $1 billion is his. The dynamic in the film is fundamentally different.

DeSouza uses this narrative change to comment on media manipulation and mob mentality. Richards is completely innocent and even heroic, but all of his actions are re-edited to villainize him to the public. The game show begins (after an extended aerobic exercise montage) with a reel of Richards’ purported crimes. He becomes a scapegoat for the largely unexplained authoritarian regime that controls America somewhere between 2017 and 2019. While the script gets a lot of mileage out of this theme, it does lessen the novel’s commentary a bit.

In the novel and seemingly in the upcoming film, the game show is popular not because the public wants justice against so-called criminals, but because they genuinely have a disregard for human life. They know Ben is innocent and still want to see him dead. With social media today having no issue laughing at the misfortune or even death of others, this is totally believable.

The world of the film is often comedically dark, where innocent people are either framed or outright murdered and the most popular show on television is where people get hunted for sport. Dystopia gags abound: “Mr. Richards, I’m your court-appointed theatrical agent”. Yet at the same time, it has a deep optimism about the ability for people to “wake up” and revolt. Ben eventually starts to turn the public in his favor by dominating his hunters and revealing the regime’s duplicity. This seems to only require Ben to simply be a bigger man physically than everyone else and say a lot of cringey one-liners.

Schwarzenegger is at the start of his prime here. This came out after Conan the Barbarian and the first Terminator film. Predator released the same year. Sadly, he is just not a great actor yet. His biggest talent is his muscles. Every line read is pained and awkward. He is funny both intentionally and not. This version of Ben Richards does not feel like a real person who inhabits this world. He instead comes off as an over-the-top character created for a show in the sickly, repressed America depicted. Luckily, the rest of the cast almost makes up for it.

One of the film’s most inspired moves was to cast the original host of Family Feud Richard Dawson as the host and producer of The Running Man. He is fantastic here and lends the whole affair a bit more authenticity.

The show’s “hunters” do what they need to do, too. They are all suitably goofy and recall professional wrestlers. As I said before, it does feel like the film indulges in some of what it criticizes. Professional wrestling is clearly both a target and an inspiration. The film’s other Predator cast member and later governor Jesse Ventura does steal the show as hunter Captain Freedom in a role that channels the later talents of Patrick Warburton and fellow WWE alumni John Cena.

Richards is aided in his competition by his prison allies Laughlin (Yaphet Kotto) and Weiss (Marvin J. McIntyre). Kotto is great in everything from Alien to the criminally underrated Blue Collar (1978), but neither him or McIntyre get much to chew on. In one of the film’s more baffling decisions, Richards is also helped by Mic, the leader of a government resistance group, who is played by Mick Fleetwood (of Fleetwood Mac) in heavy elderly man prosthetics. I have no idea what the point of that was.

Maria Conchita Alonso plays the totally necessary love interest Amber Mendez who is there to look pretty and in danger. She is also totally necessary for the film’s ludicrously cheesy ending.

The 1987 Running Man has quite a few problems and is not a great take on the book. Yet, there is a lot of fun watching Arnie beat up an opera-singing electricity-wielding fat guy (Erland van Lidth) or crack such jokes as “here is Subzero...now plain zero!” Turn your brain off and enjoy the bonkers action. Or maybe turn it on just for the handful of occasions where there is some interesting societal commentary.

The upcoming adaptation from director Edgar Wright is set to be a more faithful adaptation. Ben Richards (Glen Powell) will be a father who volunteers for the show to care for his sick daughter. The game will be held throughout the real world rather than in an arena. And in the age of TikTok brainrot and sports betting, the possibilities for a new adaptation are various. While the 1987 film is fun, it is certainly not above improvement.

I was in my freshman year of college when I first discovered the concept of “film festivals.” You’ve heard of the big ones — Cannes, Sundance, Venice, Telluride. When I first discovered that these things existed, my mind immediately jumped to what it would be like to attend one. A whole weekend, just watching the biggest films of the year, hanging out with movie stars and directors? Surely, they must all be like that, right? Sign me up.

As time went on, I resigned myself to the idea that, not only was attending one of these festivals exceedingly difficult, but hanging out with the Hollywood elite was also out of the question. The dream would remain a dream.

Fast forward to this past September. A friend of mine reached out to me and asked if I’d be interested in attending the Middleburg Film Festival. For those not from Virginia, or even those in Virginia, Middleburg is a small town closer to D.C. — a very nice small town, but still a small one. I had no idea they had a film festival and automatically made the assumption that it must be a small, independent one. Me, being a film lover, though, was open to the idea of seeing some local movies and meeting some fellow film lovers.

My assumption, however, was oh so very wrong. The Middleburg Film Festival, it turns out, not only hosts most of the biggest films of the fall festival season each year, but also welcomes big Hollywood stars and directors, who come to this small town in Virginia both for the scenery, yes, but also because the Middleburg Film Festival is renowned for being a “true” festival — not one swarmed by paparazzi and celebrity mega fans, but instead real film lovers who want to engage with the material and talk with these big, Hollywood celebrities not about how Timmy is still with Kylie, but instead about the art itself.

Needless to say, I cleared my weekend plans and bought tickets for six movies. 17-year-old me was about to have his dreams fulfilled, but more than he ever could have thought possible (more on that later).

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Opinions will vary on whether or not 2025 has been, thus far, a “good year for movies”; it certainly has been better, though, than what I direly predicted last year after an unpleasant screening of The Fall Guy.

Yes, the highest-grossing film this year ended up being the awful, soulless piece of garbage that was the Lilo & Stitch remake, but still, there were some surprises. Superman ended up being a ton of fun, and even though nobody went to see the last two Marvel movies, Thunderbolts and The Fantastic Four wound up being better than the entirety of Phase Four (sans No Way Home) combined. My personal favorite thus far has been Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme, a surprisingly Faith-filled meditation on death that somehow also manages to be one of the funniest films I’ve seen in theaters.

That being said, what’s left as we approach awards season? The Venice and Toronto film festivals have just concluded, and the New York Film Festival (which this writer will be attending) is coming soon.

Whether you’re an AMC A-Lister looking to make the most of your subscription this year, or you’re looking for your “film of the month” that’s worth checking out, here’s a list of some upcoming films in the coming months to look out for.

The Long Walk (September 12th)

Directed by Francis Lawrence. Starring Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, and Mark Hamill.

This was a film that wasn’t really even on my radar until recently until the positive reviews started pouring in. Stephen King adaptations these days are a dime-and-dozen, but once in a while- like with The Shawshank Redemption- someone gets it right. Francis Lawrence, best known for directing the first installment of The Hunger Games, has apparently delivered a harrowing epic on a relatively small budget. The story follows a group of young men who are forced to walk- maintaining a minimum speed of three miles per hour- or they are killed, with the last walker winning the contest. Looking forward to checking this one out this weekend.

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Not even a year into starting this website, we got in contact with a filmmaker named Bisong Taiwo who had just made a short film, Mary’s Way of the Cross, and since then has developed a really cool video game: Sainthood.

I finally got the app for the iPhone and tried it out and it’s awesome! It’s a relaxing strategy game that places you on a fictional island where you help develop the local Catholic community while also uncovering the island’s mystical past.

I sent a bunch of questions over to Bisong for an interview, check out his responses below:

Who are you and where are you from?

My name is Bisong Taiwo. I'm a Nigerian-Canadian filmmaker, video game designer, and software developer (in no particular order), born and raised in Nigeria and currently based in Canada.

Were you raised Catholic, or did you come to the Faith later in life?

My dad is Baptist and my mom Catholic, and I went to both churches growing up. I stuck with Catholicism once I got to University because I love its history and most especially its beautiful sacred art in all its forms: paintings, sculpture, poetry, music, etc.

What inspired you to start making video games? Were there favorite games of yours growing up?

I've played video games since I can remember. I can't list any favorites because I played and loved everything from every genre. My friendships were based almost entirely on the games they had. I would get into trouble at school because I would spend all my time in the computer labs playing games. Once I found out one could program games in Flash, I knew I was going to be doing this for the rest of my life.

How did you get to making 'Sainthood'?

Sainthood was born simply because I wanted a good Christian game to exist. My definition of "good Christian game" is two-fold: first, it must show Christianity in a good light, i.e it cannot be based solely on the negative aspects of Christianity, not because those don't exist, but because there are many other options on the table in that regard. It had to be a game that showed off Christianity at its core: love God, and love your neighbor. The second was to make it of a high enough quality to genuinely attract people from all walks of life. Many folks who go to Cathedrals are not even Christian, and so these buildings have been evangelizing for centuries just by being beautiful works of art.

What were some of your key inspirations in making 'Sainthood'?

Death Stranding is a major inspiration. The idea of connecting the world by serving its isolated inhabitants is absolutely brilliant, and actually is fundamentally Christian in nature. That was the jumping off point, and the first mechanic I implemented was delivering packages to the island's inhabitants. Other inspirations have come from many different places; The fixed isometric 8x8 grid is from Into The Breach, the randomly generated provisions and building locations are from rogue-likes, the stories are from life experiences and stories from Africa, and the character of the Prioress is a direct rebuttal of the stern and steely stereotype we typically see in media.

Do you have plans to add more content to the game down the road?

Yes, the game has a Prayer Mode, which is separate from the main game, where you can listen to and pray the entire Rosary. I've recently added the Divine Mercy Chaplet as well, and I hope to add more prayers as time goes on.

You're also a filmmaker, what films do you love that inspire you?

I love pretty much everything by Andrei Tarkovsky and Terrence Malick. Words I would use to describe their films are philosophical, dreamy, reflective and meditative, and I think this is a very interesting space for Christian films to explore. This style of filmmaking doesn't seem to be popular outside of cinephiles unfortunately, due in part to their glacial pace, but I would love to make films in this style forever. My main takeaways that I bring to my own works are the use of music, sound design, and voice-overs as major driving forces, as well as the use of dreams, internal reflection, and non-linear montage sequences. On the other side of that coin is Mel Gibson, who's films I love as well. He tends to tackle the divine from a gritty, brutal perspective. Watching a Gibson film after a Malick/Tarkovsky film is kind of like waking up to a brutal reality after having a vision from God.

What are some of the filmmaking projects you've worked on?

Recently, I directed Mary's Way of the Cross (it's available to watch on Prime Video!). It's a re-imagination of the Stations of the Cross prayer, from the Virgin Mary's perspective and her internal reflection. I made a similar reflective short film a couple years prior called Woman: Proverbs 31 which streamed on Formed for a few years. Earlier still, I directed a micro-budget feature called Time Sleeper, also available on Prime.

What future projects do you have on the docket?

I've been commissioned by our local film exhibition center to direct a film for their upcoming 50th anniversary event this September. It's going to be a short film about temptation told through dance choreography. On the video game side, I have a few prototypes I'm testing that may grow into bigger games in the future. Given our rich Catholic history, there is infinite potential and source material to adapt to video games and cinema. We owe it to ourselves to support, partake and carry on the tradition of creating sacred art using the artistic mediums available to us today, and this will always be my goal.

Here’s where you can check out Bisong’s work!

Filmography: https://www.bisongtaiwo.com/

Sainthood Game: https://www.sainthoodgame.com/

X: https://x.com/bisong_taiwo

It is 90 degrees outside and St. Peter’s Square is filled with thousands of pilgrims waiting to see Pope Leo XIV. Pentecost weekend is the Jubilee of Movements as part of the general Jubilee year. I am sweating profusely, having been seated outside in the heat for hours waiting. The Pope’s homily was in Italian and my grip on the language only extends to ordering at restaurants and asking for directions so I understood very little. In it, as I later read translated, he said that “the Holy Spirit comes to challenge us, to make us confront the possibility that our lives are shriveling up, trapped in the vortex of individualism”. I realized then and now that this has described many struggles in my life, but mostly especially my relationship with film.

During the pandemic, I spent most of my time watching movies. In retrospect, I wish I spent more time reading the classics or lifting or any number of more materially productive activities. Nevertheless, I gave myself a full education in film history from Edison and Méliès to Godard and experimental film to the streaming age. This was wonderful, but like it was many others, the pandemic was a time of great isolation and loneliness.

This era would finally end for me in the Fall of 2022 when I spent a semester abroad in Rome. There I would meet my wife and embark on a series of adventures across the continent. Movies were a big part of why we started dating. One of our first conversations was on the topic where she thrilled me by saying her favorite directors were Christopher Nolan, Wes Anderson, and Quentin Tarantino.

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In the end, we are given an image: a daughter crying over her mother’s coffin begging for forgiveness. Yet, no one ever steps up to say why. The film’s crisis never resolved. The reason has however been made entirely clear to the audience, and yet was never stated. We have all of the pieces to the puzzle of their relationship - of the societal struggles these characters endured - and yet we are never explicitly told the truth: both mother and daughter are victims. That, while one ultimately did the other wrong, the root cause of their angst was not from within, but rather stems from these societal issues that were projected onto them. And so, from the dawn of talking pictures, Imitation of Life stands as the voice for the truly voiceless.

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The industrial town where The Pencil takes place has a pencil factory and a big prison facility nearby. The skies are dark; the small roadside ‘lakes’ are actually large, slate-grey water puddles of uncertain innocuousness; and in the distance, thick, white clouds billow from factory smoke stacks. Grim-faced arrivals disembark from a boat and trod along a road that runs between imposing walls of variously-sized wooden logs piled tight and high.

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Over the past few years, a 2012 lecture from art critic Camille Paglia has resurfaced online, in which she makes the very bold claim that the greatest work of art of the last 30 years is none other than Star Wars: Episode III - The Revenge of the Sith.

Now, one does not need to look far to discover that Ms. Paglia has a lot of crazy ideas about art and is most certainly not a religious person by any means, but I can’t help but feel that she is speaking to something much deeper about George Lucas’ 2005 conclusion to his decades-long saga, and about Star Wars as a whole.

Buckle up, because I’m going to be diving deeper into Revenge probably more than you’ve ever thought about it before.

PART I: CONCLUDING A SAGA

Sequels- at the time The Empire Strikes Back hit theaters in 1981- were nothing new in Hollywood. The serials that Star Wars are based off of dominated the box office in the 1930s with fans flocking theaters to see the latest episode of Buck Rogers or Batman.

Where George Lucas completely bucked convention was that when he wanted to make more Star Wars movies after Return of the Jedi, instead of looking forward to the continuing adventures of Luke Skywalker, his instinct was to look backwards.

In the decision to set the next film approximately 30 years before the events of the original Star Wars film- which was now subtitled “Episode IV: A New Hope”- George Lucas turned traditional movie storytelling on its head: instead of a story structure represented by a potentially infinite line he was instead creating for himself the challenge of a defined, closed loop.

And Revenge of the Sith is the closing of that loop (or at least it was intended to be).

In 2014, a Star Wars fan named Mike Kilmo posited a theory about Lucas’ intent with the original six films that led to a whole new way to analyze them: Ring Theory (starwarsringtheory.com).

The theory posits that each of the six films “rhyme” with another, but not just in the sense that the first, second, and third in each trilogy are intentionally similar, but that in fact each film corresponds to another in a “closed loop” as shown above.

By his logic, this would mean that the end of Attack of the Clones (a massive battle with four legged walkers where the clone troopers win) would actually correspond with the beginning of Empire Strikes Back (a massive battle with four legged walkers where the stormtroopers win).

For Revenge, here are some of the similarities shared with A New Hope:

Revenge of the Sith begins with an epic space battle to rhyme with A New Hope’s ending.

And it goes on and on:

And on:

I won’t repost the entire site here, but you get the gist.

Granted, you might look at all this and go, “these are the delusional ravings of someone who spends too much time on the Internet,” and while this is probably true to an extent, the fact that it all lines up so well is a testament to the insanely intricate plotting of George Lucas. No other director or writer in the film business can even come close to this kind of visual poetry on such a grand scale.

Revenge of the Sith has to provide both a satisfying conclusion to the two films before it and a sensible, logical prelude to the films that come after.

And it somehow manages to be the best of the original three prequel films, while also drawing heavily from Greek tragedy and 19th century opera. Those who have tried to emulate this feat (i.e. Warner Bros essentially forcing Peter Jackson to make three Hobbit films for them) have almost always been found lacking.

PART II: THE MOST SUCCESSFUL INDEPENDENT FILM OF ALL TIME

Another Star Wars fan who gives great insight into the films themselves actually plays a part in them, or at least the TV shows. Sam Witwer started out as the voice of “Starkiller” in the Force Unleashed games, which paved the way for him to get the role of Darth Maul in The Clone Wars series, where he got to work very closely with George Lucas. Witwer has often shared his insights both on his X account and at conventions, like in this clip below in which he explains that, essentially, every single Star Wars film from Empire to Revenge has been an independent film:

That’s right: every Star Wars sequel or prequel that George produced was made with his own money. There was a lot of hubbub about Francis Ford Coppola making Megalopolis with his own funds, but Lucas has been doing it since 1978. That means everything- the sets, the CGI, the equipment- is coming out of George’s pocket: every film helped ensure the next one.

A lot of people like to poke fun at the seams of these films especially since in many respects the technology used to make them has advanced in a lot of ways since. Yet after watching the fantastic series on Industrial Light & Magic (aptly titled Light & Magic) on Disney+- about the effects company that Lucas founded to make the first Star Wars- it led me to a reconsideration of my initial criticisms of those seams.

And the realization was this: this movie was made for ONLY $100 million. The price tag on The Force Awakens? $500 MILLION. People always criticize George for all the CGI and greenscreen that was used to make this film, but fail to see the genius of it- by putting all of the money on the screen and developing entire new ways of making movies to do so, George was able to make one of the most ambitious blockbusters of all time, while still retaining final creative control.

And the result is this:

Audiences still love these movies because no films have looked like this since. The Marvel films all have looked progressively more gray as they’ve gone on, and no one else has the time, budget, AND artistry to pull something like this off. The only person who has is James Cameron, and it’s why the Avatar movies are the highest-grossing movies of all time.

The term “maximalist filmmaking” has been way overused in film discussion in recent years, but the Prequel Films represent it in its best possible sense. What other filmmaker has so successfully put his imagination to the screen in such a way?

CONCLUSION

Revenge of the Sith, for all of its flaws, endures because of its ambitious sincerity. People joke about the dialogue, yet what other movie has lines that iconic? The sequels went the wrong way in trying too hard to emulate the way people talk and act in real life, and yet the quasi-Shakespearean dialogue of the prequels is secretly what makes them work. It’s silly, it’s corny, and yet its endlessly entertaining. More importantly, you believe it. You believe in the mythology, that this in fact was how the far away Republic fell, that this is not a film but a retelling of history. And it’s the bombastic yet committed performances of the cast (primarily McGregor and McDiarmid) that sells you on that.

At the time of writing, the re-release of this 20-year old movie (which I attended the day prior to this) is set to make $25 MILLION this weekend. Audiences are increasingly shunning films meant to reflect any political messages or to show us the “grim reality” of an increasingly faithless world: the people want to be transported- for just a little over two hours- to a galaxy far, far, away.