There was a time when the darkness and loneliness of divorce seemed to me tragically romantic. Probably, I was reading too much Andre Dubus and John Updike at the same time. Raymond Carver probably did not help either. There was a resigned dark humor to the characters, an alcoholic loneliness, and (for Dubus’ characters) a tangible and inescapable divine presence.
quality
I am always interested in films that involve pastors, whether the pastors are good or bad. Because this is something I know from the inside out, it is not hard to tell whether or not the filmmaker actually knows what he or she is doing in writing or casting the character. Phillip Youmans knows what he is doing in Burning Cane (2019; streaming on Netflix).
When God is dead, there is not nothing. Worship abhors a vacuum. So when God or gods cease […]
Fridays at The Jagged Word are when I try to expose as little of my ignorance as possible. […]
Coraline (2008, streaming on Amazon Prime) might be the perfect movie for All Saints or All Souls (not that I’m praying for the dead in Purgatory, understand). What a great, semi-frightening children’s movie that gets to the heart of what matters in a family. I don’t know how closely it follows the story by Neil Gaiman, but the film is profound in ways I didn’t expect.
It’s late October, so the only thing to do is catch up on classic horror movies. A year […]
I’ve been thinking about why we are affected by people who don’t exist. Even when characters are based […]
