Catholic Film Reviews

reviewed by John Murphy
Norman Mailer’s The Castle in the Forest was a novel about Hitler narrated by a demon, who writes: “Most well-educated people are ready to bridle at the notion of such an entity as the Devil…There need be no surprise, then, that the world has an impoverished understanding of Adolf Hitler’s personality.” I was [...]

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The last word spoken in Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac is “panache.” It’s a single-word summation of all that came before. Cyrano — like Falstaff, Captain Ahab or Robin Hood — is a literary character turned worldwide phenomenon.  He is the big-nosed, swashbuckling poet who embodies “panache,” and has captured the hearts and imaginations of [...]

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Directed by Julian Jarrold
Starring Matthew Goode, Emma Thompson, Ben Whishaw, and Michael Gambon
So…Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh is one of the twentieth century’s classic novels. It’s not especially long. A week or so should do the trick. Don’t have the time? Well, there was a superlative miniseries adaptation of the novel produced by Granada in [...]

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Directed by Ken Loach
Starring Cillian Murphy and Liam Cunningham

‘Twas hard the woeful words to frame to break the ties that bound us. But harder still to bear the shame of foreign chains around us. And so I said, “The mountain glen I’ll seek at morning early.
And join the bold united men, while soft winds [...]

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Directed by Martin Scorsese
Starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder
Martin Scorsese directing a Merchant-Ivory film might superficially describe The Age of Innocence, but it would do an injustice to both parties. This is a Marty movie through and through — beautifully filmed, expertly acted, and thematically obsessed with guilt, passion, and moral failings.
Newland [...]

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Directed by Milos Forman
Starring F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce
reviewed by John Murphy
Beloved of God
Amadeus nabbed an impressive 8 Academy Awards in 1984, including Best Picture and Best Director for Milos Forman. All awards were well-deserved. Rarely does a movie come along this bursting with life, wit, and energy.
For viewers who think opera is all [...]

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Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Starring Ryan O’Neal and Marisa Berenson
The Northwest Film Center in Portland, Oregon is currently hosting a Stanley Kubrick retrospective at the Portland Art Museum. The series offers eager fans a unique opportunity to chart Kubrick’s development as a director, as well as to see some of his lesser-known films on the big [...]

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reviewed by Kevin Murphy
It is the middle of World War II. The Germans are challenged on the Eastern front, where their soldiers are freezing to death. To the West, America has just entered the war. To add to the Germans’ difficulties is the so-called “Jewish Question”: what to do with the five million Jews they [...]

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