Tis the season of “The Artist”: On screen, in print, and on stage, the man of the hour is the creative genius, the absolutist, the martyr, the suffering sinner redeemed only when he gives himself away, lovingly and without reservations, to his art. Just ask Hollywood, which is all aflutter at . . . . Continue Reading »
From the first seconds, first-time director Michael Sarnoski establishes a deliciously understated, contemplative mood in Pig. Continue Reading »
I very much enjoyed Armin Rosen’s essay about the Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (“Tarkovksy’s Sublime Terror,” October 2023), but I’m afraid he has made an error of fact about Tarkovsky’s film Nostalghia. Rosen says the protagonist, Andrei Gorchakov, “swallows poison and then . . . . Continue Reading »
In The People’s Justice, Judge Amul Thapar adroitly assumes the role of storyteller to defend an influential and controversial jurist’s reputation. He recounts twelve prominent cases that have come before Justice Clarence Thomas during his thirty-two-year term on the Supreme Court. The book . . . . Continue Reading »
The best movie you’ll see this year—or, if I’m being honest, this decade—is about two men having a protracted argument about God. If you merely watch the trailer, you may walk away with the erroneous impression that Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s magnum opus, is about the . . . . Continue Reading »
Andrei rublev, the masterpiece of the great Soviet filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky, opens with a failed attempt to conquer God. A man attached to a hot-air balloon floats to the upper domes of an imposing church, the tallest structure that a mob of fifteenth-century monks and peasants will ever see in . . . . Continue Reading »
Jake Mahaffy’s observation feels both timely and timeless. The things that matter most lie beyond the scientifically captured image—human relationships and the divine. Continue Reading »
Christopher Nolan reminds us that cinema—not just consumable movies, but cinema as an art to be experienced in a particular way—is not entirely lost to nostalgia. Continue Reading »
In Oppenheimer, director Christopher Nolan has taken the meticulously researched seven-hundred-page book American Prometheus and rendered it into his best film yet. Continue Reading »
In a time when there is little cultural respite from the institutional advancements of the left, First Things is indispensable to the creation of the “parallel polis.” And your subscriptions and donations are indispensable to First Things. Continue Reading »
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