S07 E07 – 40: The Temptation of Christ and the Powerful Necessity of Suffering
On this episode of the Reel World Theology Podcast: This episode ballooned from a written article into a full-fledged podcast episode. Friend of Reel World Theology, Reed Lackey, wrote the movie 40: The Temptation of Christ and it debuted this…
A Tale of Two Heroines: Revisiting the Past with Gone with the Wind (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939)
In the year 1939, two blockbuster movies burst onto the big screen in brilliant technicolor, forever changing the face of American film: Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. On the surface, the heroines of both films have…
Greyhound: Harassed and Helpless
Tom Hanks’ Greyhound doesn’t waste much time on exposition: on-screen text tells you how crucial supply convoys are to the Allies in Europe. A brief flashback introduces you to Hanks’ Commander Krause. But tension and dread is already building by…
Stop Calling Gone with the Wind a "Product of its time"
HBO Max, a streaming service that is still in its infancy, made waves recently when they announced that they were temporarily pulling Gone with the Wind, the 1939 film based on Margaret Mitchell’s novel. The HBO statement reads, “These racist…
Aliens Just Like Us: The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) & Under the Skin (2013)
“Every village and small country place is full of people who’ve just come and settled there without any ties to bring them. The big houses have been sold, and the cottages have been converted and changed. And people just come…
A Statement on Racial Justice
The staff at Reel World Theology mourn the unjust killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and the many who came before because we believe that #BlackLivesMatter. We affirm the Imago Dei inherent in all human life. In this,…
Editorial: I’m Learning about Racism
I grew up outside a small, rural town that’s so ordinary and homogenous that there’s actually a documentary about it. I stole a joke from somewhere that “I was twelve before I learned that the name of my town wasn’t…
Brilliantly Done, Emma.
“Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.”…
Review| Wander Darkly (2020)
Wander Darkly tells a story about a couple struggling to make their relationship work as it gets upended by a traumatic event. The story follows Adrienne (Sienna Miller) and Matteo (Diego Luna) as they look back on their relationship. Together…
A Deluge of Dark Water(s): The Dark Waters of Dark Waters (1944), Dark Waters (1993), Dark Water (2002), and Dark Waters (2019)
When I was a child, I thought I was surrounded by bad guys. This is not a metaphor. I had the creeping suspicion that everyone I knew—my grandma, the dentist, the children’s pastor at my church, my pre-school teachers, everybody—was…