I’m not sure where it started – perhaps studio publicists initially fed the convenient misinformation – but nearly every review of “A Serious Man” has described the film as a modern version of the Book of Job.
It makes me wonder if anyone has read Job lately.
Sure, the central figure in “A Serious Man,” the latest [...]

There is a reason we laugh so eagerly at zombies, as audiences have been gleefully doing with the horror comedy “Zombieland.”
Is there a more fitting symbol for our own inescapable mortality than zombies – decaying, dismembered figures that relentlessly pursue the living? Zombies have officially haunted us since 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead,” but [...]

Gluttony is often thought of as an old-fashioned no-no. These days, people get more worked up about the sexier sins – things like lying, murder and, well, those involving sex.
It was hard not to think about gluttony, though, while watching “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.” A computer-animated adaptation of a children’s picture book, the [...]

It’s probably not a question with which we really need to bother – after all, God is the one who ultimately decides these things – but watching Quentin Tarantino’s World War II fantasia “Inglourious Basterds” made me wonder: Are Nazis unforgivable?
Tarantino’s movie is so many things it makes your head spin – a war film, [...]

I couldn’t wait to take my kids to see “Ponyo,” the latest animated feature from Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki (“Howl’s Moving Castle,” “Princess Mononoke”).
Pixar is all well and good – in fact, the studio’s chief, John Lasseter, is responsible for bringing “Ponyo” to these shores. Here, though, was a chance to expose my children, [...]

I’m behind on “Mad Men,” the AMC cable series about 1960s advertising executives and the women in their lives. Though the third season premieres Sunday, Aug. 16, I’m still in the midst of season two on DVD. All of which means this post on an intriguing year-two plot development shouldn’t be giving anything away.
The strength [...]

Remember when movies used to be off limits for Christians? Talk to movie fans in their 60s, 70s and 80s and you hear stories about sneaking into theaters on the sly, for fear of being caught by fellow churchgoers.
What’s funny about that is God used to be a commonly discussed topic in films, at least [...]

There are many horrifying sights in “Bruno,” the latest guerrilla comedy from Sacha Baron Cohen. The most troubling for me, however, involved the people in the movie who represented Christianity.
In “Bruno,” Cohen poses as the aggressively gay title character, a flamboyant fashion junkie who has traveled from his native Austria in search of fame in [...]

Celebrating criminals as heroes has been a longstanding Hollywood tradition, from 1931’s “The Public Enemy,” in which James Cagney played a Prohibition-era bootlegger, to the recent “Public Enemies,” starring Johnny Depp as famed bank robber John Dillinger.
What struck me as I watched this play out yet again is that it’s a narrative tradition the Bible [...]

“Madea Goes to Jail,” producer-writer-director-star Tyler Perry’s sixth feature film, came out on DVD this week, adding to one of the more remarkable and idiosyncratic careers in Hollywood.
Without the support of a major studio or the talent of big-time stars – and in the face of routinely negative reviews – Perry’s movies have been reliably, [...]