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Content Badge: Violence

The Power and the Glory – A Review

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Have you ever read a book that inspired in you a soul-crushing desire to eat fried chicken, shed undefinable tears through a mouthful of Sprite, and slap someone in the face with a tortilla? My students and I found ourselves in this conflicted state after taking the long hard journey through the jungle of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory.  The story starts in a hot dusty village where a lethargic dentist meets an alcoholic priest who is on the run from the deadly zeal of a hostile lieutenant….

In Search of Sacrifice: The Drama of the Family in Godzilla Minus One

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2023’s Japanese film Godzilla Minus One is more than a monster flick—it’s a true family movie. Not to be confused with CGI-heavy American Monsterverse films like Godzilla x Kong (2024), GMO is a piece of old-fashioned movie magic. What it lacks in budget—the film was made for a mere $15 million!—it more than compensates for in story, acting, and an incredible use of budget-conscious effects that somehow look better than Warner Bros.’ $150 million popcorn flicks. And yes, GMO is a popcorn flick, but it’s so much more. The movie…

Look Up: Why I Believe in Superman (2025)

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Superman (2025) is a fun and wholesome movie that’s best enjoyed on the big screen. Despite some issues with pacing and a few unfortunate content choices, actual comic book readers and fans of DC’s more fantastic feel will find James Gunn’s first entry in the new DCU a welcome escape from the grim-dark deconstructions of Zack Snyder and the sprawling fizzle of the recent MCU. What they will not find—contrary to certain online trolls with axes to grind—is a Superman who is either weak or “woke.”  Instead, Gunn offers us…

Cutting Edge, but Get to the Point

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Fantasy authors have a league of their own. They play for various intramural teams, such as The Snarky Sendups (Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series), Cape-Clad Mind Explosions (Wheel of Time), Chemistry Set (Mistborn), or Space Cadets (Speaker for the Dead). Last but not least are the Gravitas Gang (Frank Herbert, C. S. Lewis). Tolkien is relaxing in a comfortable hole in the ground, still writing the rulebook. In Elvish.  With Assassin’s Apprentice, the first of the Farseer Trilogy, Robin Hobb has created a team rather than signed up for one. Most…

Melancholy, Minnesotan Medicine

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In a post-progress Midwest, beside that omnipotent and mercurial god, Lake Superior, Rainy and his wife Lark have the closest thing to happiness that money can’t buy. Roads and bridges are falling to rot, fanaticism and drug use are uncomfortably common, and towns and cities are forced to scrape by in the shadow of a handful of ultra-wealthy “astronauts” who live apart while exploiting those left in America’s ruins. Yet none of these evils need deprive Rainy and Lark of their quiet joy. Rainy, a simple but soulful bassist who…

Escaping the Void: A Review of Thunderbolts*

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The Marvel Cinematic Universe hasn’t done itself any favors since Endgame (2019). Between emasculating beloved male characters, inserting contemporary ideology at every turn, and generally sacrificing good storytelling on the altars of agenda, Disney has managed to turn a multi-billion-dollar franchise into a string of box office duds. Thanos with his gauntlet couldn’t have ruined things any more thoroughly than has Disney with its blinkered ideological commitments. But amidst the wreckage of the post-Snap MCU, the studio has managed to produce at least two decent films. One was Guardians of…

Pure Murder: A Review of Gladiator II

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I never want to see this movie again. Granted, this might sound a bit harsh coming from a Classics undergrad who spent most of his Classics Club movie nights rewatching the first installation of this movie franchise—yet I remain steadfast: I never want to see this movie again. I have no issue with some of the creative liberties and historical inaccuracies adopted by Ridley Scott that people too often bemoan in movies like this (such as a newspaper being read in a café or sharks in the Colosseum). All those…

Armageddon in Slow Motion

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Mankind will end in four hundred fifty years, and its opinions about that fact may be largely irrelevant. That is upshot of Cixin Liu’s Hugo-winning The Three-Body Problem, and its sequels, The Dark Forest, and Death’s End. Together, they make for a complicated, high-concept meditation on humanity, politics, speculative science, and the problem of evil. Whether that meditation yields good fruit is another question. While the events in this trilogy involve multiple protagonists, include numerous plot twists, and span hundreds of years, this review will focus primarily on the first…

Terrible Purpose: Beauty and Contradiction at the Heart of Dune

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In Dune, Part One and Part Two, Denis Villeneuve has adapted the unadaptable. These two impressive films, though they simplify and sometimes alter their source material, manage to distill the heart and soul of Frank Herbert’s original novel (1965). Given the influence of the ideas embodied in the text and now popularized in the films, it seems a good moment to appraise these adaptations, and to reflect on the ideas they promote. Like the films, this essay is divided into two parts, the first being a traditional film review (of…

An Understated Masterpiece You’ve Probably Never Seen

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“They used to say that a child conceived in love has a greater chance of happiness. They don’t say that anymore.” So muses Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke), whose status as a “God child” with a one percent chance of living past thirty ought to have prevented him from pursuing greatness. Set in a believable near-future where nearly every new human life has been planned down to the genes, Gattaca chronicles the early career of a man who refused to submit to that world’s predestinarian yolk. Gattaca’s star-studded cast and incredible…