Media Matters Archive

And the award goes to…

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April 25, 2019 Matthew Kauffman Smith

  Both my daughters accompanied me once – just once – to Take Your Child to Work Day. It turns out watching their father go through his day in middle management is way less exciting that school. Another Take a Child to Work Day passed on Thursday without my kids noticing. And anyways, they would be more excited to learn that April 25th was also National Zucchini Bread Day, an homage to an underrated baked good. It was also National Hug a Plumber Day because, well, plumbers need hugs too?  I couldn’t find any research that suggests plumbers receive fewer […]

Gloria Bell

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April 1, 2019 Matthew Kauffman Smith

Julianne Moore has made a career out of subtle performances that make her highly relatable. From playing a woman fighting chemical allergies – and suburban normality – in Safe, to her performance as a homemaker who supports her alcoholic husband and their family by winning contests in The Prize-Winner of Defiance, Ohio,to her Oscar-winning turn as a linguistic professor with early onset Alzheimer’s Disease, Moore usually chooses nuance over melodrama. It’s no surprise, then, that Moore takes a subtler approach to dealing with middle age in Gloria Bell, an English-language remake of the 2013 Chilean film Gloria. Unlike many foreign remakes, Sebastian Lelio (Disobedience, A Fantastic Woman) directed […]

Lego Movie 2

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February 21, 2019 Carmen Andres

When The Lego Movie came out in 2014, my son was 11. By that age, he and his friends were far more into computer games, Star Wars and superhero movies than their Legos, but they got a kick out of the movie–in no small part because of its ability to not only draw on a childhood love of Legos but also appeal across pop culture landscapes like Star Wars and the DC comic universe. And it had a really thoughtful and satisfying story to boot. Lego Movie 2: The Second Part definitely continues the pop culture landscapes and references–cranking them […]

The Favourite

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February 7, 2019 Jerry L. Holsopple

I asked one of my students what I should review this week, with both options being about powerful women (the other was On the Basis of Sex).  On the surface, The Favourite, nominated for ten Oscars, seems to just be an expose of the decadence of the royal court in the early 18th century.  We expect this to be another costume drama that exploits the audiences desire to see inside the lives of the rich and famous, but it is not even close. Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) ruled for twelve years starting in 1702.  When she came to power she […]

Top 10 Films of 2018 – by Media Matters Reviewers

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January 30, 2019 Thirdway

As promised, here’s our annual list from most of our Media Matters reviewers, reflecting a pretty good year for film! Read and enjoy (or argue in the comments!) and file or bookmark this post for your film viewing queues! Several lists count down from ten meaning the best pick is last, others don’t prioritize their lists. But always fascinating what Mennonites are loving in the realm of film. Lists posted in the order they were received. (As always forgive the various list formatting of our beloved quirky reviewers. But don’t miss their descriptions/rationale for vote and placement.) Vic’s Top 10 […]

Fiction readers: do you love literary or popular books?

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January 17, 2019 Gordon Houser

According to an October 2013 article in Scientific American by Julianne Chiaet, researchers at The New School in New York City “found evidence that literary fiction improves a reader’s capacity to understand what others are thinking and feeling.” Participants in the study read excerpts from genre (or popular) fiction, literary fiction, nonfiction or nothing, then took a test that measured their ability to infer and understand other people’s thoughts and emotions. The difference was significant. Literary fiction, writes Chiaet, “focuses more on the psychology of characters and their relationships.” It increases readers’ psychological awareness. “Although literary fiction tends to be […]

Mortal Engines

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December 21, 2018 Carmen Andres

What happens when Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens—the filmmakers of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit—get a hold of the futuristic steampunk world of Mortal Engines, a 2001 young adult novel by Phillip Reeve? You get an adventurous and visually gorgeous two hour movie with a touch of thought-provoking ideas. Set hundreds of years after the “Sixty Minute War,” during which the use of powerful quantum weapons resulted in geological upheaval, giant predator cities roam the Western world on wheels, ingesting smaller cities and devouring dwindling resources. Haunted by her mother’s murder, Hester Shaw (Hera Hilmar) […]

Widows

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December 13, 2018 Vic Thiessen

Writer/director Steve McQueen has made one brilliant film after another (Hunger, Shame, 12 Years a Slave), all of them dark dramas about people in pain and people inflicting pain on others. Widows, advertised as a heist thriller, is actually another slow-moving dark drama focusing on people in pain (and people inflicting pain). The film also explores a variety of vital and topical themes with obvious good intentions. But while Widows enjoys near universal critical acclaim, I am uncertain about whether such good intentions can succeed with such cold and violent characters, a number of whom are meant to be sympathetic. […]

Green Book

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December 7, 2018 Jerry L. Holsopple

Green Book is named for the guide book that told black travelers where they would travel safely as a person of color. When traveling, you could find places where you would be welcome to check into a hotel or eat at a restaurant. The story, borrowed from a real story, however is more a glimpse into the forming of an unusual friendship, than it is a critique of this type of travel. Take a highly cultured black man, trained as a classical pianist, who departs on a concert tour into the deep south. Put a working-class night club bouncer, modestly […]

The Crimes of Grindelwald

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November 27, 2018 Carmen Andres

It seems hard to believe, but J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World now spans two decades. The first Harry Potter novel was published in 1998, with the film adaptation premiering three years later. The last Potter film was released in 2011, ending our big screen journeys into that universe until the 2016 premiere of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which launched the first of five—yes, five—planned spin-off films destined to push the Wizarding World well into its third decade. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald picks up a year or so after the 2016 film. Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne), who’s […]