Many films have been made about the senselessness and brutality of war. But Elem Klimov’s ‘Come and See’ deserves renewed attention for its masterful ambiguity.
Shirley Jackson is known today primarily as a writer of literary suspense. But she was also a wife, and a mother, roles examined by a new film on Hulu.
Like his wife Joan Didion, John Gregory Dunne had an abiding interest in, and a cleared-eyed view of, the struggle between the haves and the have-nots.
Telling the story of two friends in the Oregon territory who steal milk to bake cakes, Kelly Reichardt’s latest film asks us to ponder the nature of generosity.
COVID-19 restrictions have had a devastating impact on independent cinemas. But thankfully, a special program of films about nuns is now available online.
Corpus Christi gives parish Catholicism a jolt of Protestant spiritual energy, reaffirming Christ’s message of love, delivered by a criminal-cum-priest.
In 'Softness of Bodies,' the story of a flighty young poet in Berlin pivots from comedy to drama, from shoplifted shoes to darker issues of money and violence.
Rather than the politics of sainthood, Malick’s film mirrors the reality of things themselves. Like faith itself, they can’t be so much articulated as experienced.
At the center of Malick’s film is Jägerstätter’s incomprehensible decision to give his life away, ostensibly benefiting no one. But such heroism ultimately wins.
With the release of Terrence Malick’s Jägerstätter biopic, the martyr’s biography has finally come into broader public view. But his sacramental devotions haven’t.
A parasite is a homemaker, living in its host. In Bong Joon-ho’s new film it could be property, capital, commercialized art and artifice, or all of them together.
Mike Wallace contributed both good and ill to the evolution of American journalism. Perfect for an era of fake news, a new documentary traces his evolution.
In this final installment of our summer conversation series, we discuss Henry James’s classic novella ‘Washington Square’ and William Wyler’s ‘The Heiress.’
Famed documentarian Ken Burns traces the long and complex history of country music, revealing old American tensions between personal and collective freedom.
Soviet novelist Vasily Grossman is not often thought of as a religious thinker. But his Armenian travelogue shows a different, more numinous side of his work.
Easy Rider is a lasting work of art not only because it reflects the “spirit of the Sixties,” but because it depicts a bona fide tragedy that transcends its time.
In this episode, Commonweal editors and writers discuss what they've been reading this summer, touching on everything from David Hockney and Robert Caro to Jia Tolentino and Rick Steves.
In this installment, we take a back-to-the-earth approach, reading a Japanese treatise on natural farming alongside an Italian film about rural peasant life.
Abel Ferrara’s new biopic about Pier Paolo Pasolini evinces a highly personal, anti-institutional strain of Catholicism—where grace abounds in squalor and scandal.
Most of the films in competition at Cannes were quieter, more richly textured meditations on love, loss, and identity. But the specter of Trump loomed large.
The first Kenyan film ever officially screened at Cannes, ‘Rafiki’ was banned in Kenya for “legitimizing homosexuality” against the country’s dominant beliefs.
A classic of Chicanx cinema gives us the true story of Gregorio Cortez, a Mexican man hunted down by Texas Rangers and imprisoned for crimes he didn’t commit.
Powell and Pressburger’s seminal 1947 film about a group of Anglican nuns in India offers more than melodrama, as secondary characters reveal the face of Christ.
Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite is a brilliant dark comedy, but in its extravagance and emotional sprawl also the kind of film that can be viewed in different ways
Wielding his trademark tools of pathos and whimsy, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda announces he’s out to steal your heart—then tiptoes in and does it anyway
