MOVIES
Kevin Costner’s Big Gamble
The iconic actor-director's new custody drama, "Black or White," offers a fresh, poignant, and sometimes funny treatment of an old social wound.
Deep Black Noir: “Double Indemnity”
“Murder sometimes can smell like honeysuckle...” Patrick Coffin The film noir genre is on dark, velvety display in such films as The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Big Sleep (1946),The Postman Always Rings Twice (adapted in [...]
Non-believers Make the Best Saint Movies: Monsieur Vincent
“It is only because of your love that the poor will forgive you the bread that you give them.” Patrick Coffin When Christians make movies about saints, they sometimes succeed as hagiography, always make their [...]
The Apartment, Movie-wise
“Why do people have to love people, anyway?” Patrick Coffin Few movies can be at once savage and sweet; fewer still while straddling more than one genre. Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960) manages all of [...]
The Sound of Music: The Last Drop of Golden Sun
“Only grown-up men are scared of women.” Patrick Coffin The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music marked the culmination of creativity by the team that wrote Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, and The King and I. It [...]
The Lingering Trance of Green Dolphin Street
“Our whole marriage has been a…slip of the pen?” Patrick Coffin Some movies linger in your spirit for long stretches. They put you in a trance—disturbed, humorous, or charmed, depending. You re-watch them (let’s call [...]
Frank Capra’s Forgotten Christmas Classic
"Meet John Doe" is surprisingly current, even timeless, in its examination of ambition, identity, and repentance Patrick Coffin Bring to mind a scene from a Frank Capra movie: a good man stricken with despair stands [...]
The Unbearable Frightness of Being
The Exorcist turns 40. Patrick Coffin The shaking bed. The frantic mother. The faithless priest duking it out with the demon upstairs—and oh, that spinning head. These and other iconic images from The Exorcist (1973) [...]