Lincoln movie review

By Caleb | March 3, 2013

I’m a big fan of The West Wing, and this was rather like a period version of Aaron Sorkin’s political drama. In many ways, that’s high praise, but there’s something rather small-screen about this film. My friend James argued that it never quite shakes the feeling of being a glorified TV movie, and it’s certainly […]

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Vengeance and grace in “True Grit”

By Caleb | February 15, 2011

I went to see the Cohen brothers’ film True Grit earlier. It’s based on a book by Charles Portis, but is apparently a remake of the 1969 film starring John Wayne. It tells the story of 14-year-old Mattie’s efforts to gain vengeance against Tom Chaney, who killed her father, by enlisting the services of Rooster […]

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Does television destroy imagination?

By Caleb | September 6, 2009

Film and television are sometimes criticised as requiring less imagination than reading. If we can already see exactly what the characters look like, if the actors and designers and directors have already captured so much detail on screen, what’s left for us to imagine? On the other hand, there are people who see this as […]

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Are our opinions about art only subjective?

By Caleb | August 16, 2009

Recently Roger Ebert provoked quite a reaction with his trashing of Michael Bay’s multi-million dollar sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Many people who enjoyed the film reacted angrily – surely if they liked it, then it was good for them? But Ebert had the audacity not just to personally dislike the film, but insisted […]

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L'Abri Film Festival

By Caleb | October 23, 2008

Tomorrow I’m off to the English L’Abri community in Greatham, Hampshire for their now annual film festival, Twenty-Four Frames per Second, a weekend of film, lectures and discussion about film. The films include The Lives of Others (2007, dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck), The Great Dictator (1940, dir. Charlie Chaplain), Grizzly Man (2006, dir. Werner […]

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Wall-E and the Ark in Space

By Caleb | August 8, 2008

Last week Bev and I went to watch Wall-E, a love story about two robots. Wall-E has been left behind to clean up Earth, which has been abandoned due to all the pollution and rubbish, but then he meets a sleek “female” robot called Eve, who’s a bit like a Mac to his PC. I […]

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