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Criteria: The Catholic Film PodcastFragmented sexuality in Malick's To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, & Song to Song 00:00 Introduction 12:44 Form 1:04:15 Themes 1:28:17 Moral problems 1:52:00 Favorite sequences After the artistic triumph of his magnum opus The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick had an unwontedly prolific period, releasing To the Wonder (2012), Knight of Cups (2015), and Song to Song (2017). In these films, known informally as the "Weightless Trilogy", Malick took his previous formal experimentation even further, relying heavily on improvisation stitched together with a stream-of-consciousness editing style evoking the fragments of memory. The results are undeniably aesthetically exciting, but also critically divisive, as many viewers find the latter two films particularly...2025-05-152h 13Criteria: The Catholic Film PodcastMetaphysical Malick: The Thin Red Line (1998)Continuing our trek through the filmography of Terrence Malick, the world's greatest living Christian filmmaker, we arrive at The Thin Red Line (featuring Jim Caviezel in his breakthrough role). This film came in 1998 after Malick's twenty-year hiatus from directing movies, after which he never took such a long break again. Focused on the experiences of U.S. soldiers during the battle for Guadalcanal during World War II, The Thin Red Line is remarkable in that it features all the poetry, interiority, and dreamy aesthetics we have come to expect from Malick, while still being, in Nathan Douglas's wo...2024-04-011h 35Criteria: The Catholic Film PodcastAsteroid City: delightful, decadent, or despairing?0:00 The prosecution 39:15 The defense With the release of his new film Asteroid City and with memes imitating his cinematic style going viral on social media, Wes Anderson is having a real moment in the zeitgeist almost thirty years into his career. In Asteroid City, Anderson drives further into the immediately identifiable and somewhat polarizing style he has cultivated for the past decade, characterized by meticulous framing, camera moves and blocking, a certain color palette, and deadpan writing and acting. One is always aware of the director's hand tightly controlling a cute, harmonious little wo...2023-07-131h 20Criteria: The Catholic Film PodcastStripping St. Francis: Francesco (1989)There are two movies about St. Francis of Assisi on the Vatican's 1995 list of important films. The first, discussed in the previous episode, is Rossellini's well-known Flowers of St. Francis (1950). The second is quite obscure: Liliana Cavani's Francesco (1989), starring Mickey Rourke as St. Francis and Helena Bonham-Carter as St. Clare. The best thing one can say about Francesco is that despite being directed by an atheist, it attempts to take its protagonist seriously as a saint; that it is somewhat faithful to the historical trajectory of his life; and that it does not embrace the usual reductive c...2022-10-271h 23Criteria: The Catholic Film PodcastWhy is The Rings of Power Boring?Thomas Mirus, James Majewski, and Nathan Douglas discuss the new Amazon series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The show thus far is not so much offensive as it is bland in ways similar to much popular film and television today. This discussion attempts to understand why the show generally fails to move, focusing especially on its frequent small-mindedness or arbitrariness in characterization and writing, and on its habit of “telegraphing” or signalling emotion rather than genuinely conveying it. (We apologize for the lip-syncing problems in this episode!) Topics and timestamps: 0...2022-09-151h 41
Criteria: The Catholic Film PodcastWhy is The Rings of Power Boring?Thomas Mirus, James Majewski, and Nathan Douglas discuss the new Amazon series, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The show thus far is not so much offensive as it is bland in ways similar to much popular film and television today. This discussion attempts to understand why the show generally fails to move, focusing especially on its frequent small-mindedness or arbitrariness in characterization and writing, and on its habit of “telegraphing” or signalling emotion rather than genuinely conveying it. (We apologize for the lip-syncing problems in this episode!) Topics and timestamps: 0...2022-09-1500 min