Dumbo: Choosing Heroism

This contains spoilers for Dumbo. I have seen mixed reviews for Dumbo, which saddens me, because in my opinion Tim Burton has done something extraordinary. He’s given an animal “autonomy,” which in a literary sense means “the right to self-govern” and control his own story. Dumbo is not just at the mercy of events in...

10 Villains to Love-Hate

Since the world is celebrating romance today, I thought I would celebrate my lifelong romance with villains instead (I’m a brat like that). These are my top 10 Villains ranked according to their level of “evil,” in terms of how much destruction they wreak. OBVIOUSLY... MASSIVE SPOILERS. Honorable Mention: Kylo Ren, Star Wars This boy...

Creating Monsters to Devour Us

Man’s hubris knows no bounds. Mary Shelley knew this when she wrote the now-famous novel, Frankenstein. And so it is a fitting tribute to have her portrait hung on the walls of a mansion in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, as a reminder to audiences that the themes of her book are still relevant today. The...

The God We Do / Don’t Want

Free will is such a complex topic, theologians have dedicated entire volumes to it, what it means in the spectrum of divine grace, and how much humans have of it (could we really destroy ourselves, or would God ‘stop us’? if He would stop us, is that the end of our ‘free will’? Does our...

Life, Death & More: Coco

Coco is about the human desire to believe in an afterlife, and our quest to have our life mean something. It explores these themes through the eyes of Miguel, whose desire to become a “famous musician” leads him to steal a guitar on the Day of the Dead and fall into the afterlife. When he...

The Symbolism of Wonder Woman

The new Wonder Woman is a lesson in the ancient myth of femininity and a forward in the feminist revolution. Much to my consternation, ‘feminism’ doesn’t mean ‘equality among the sexes’ in modern language; it more often means ‘man-hater.’ When Diana turned up in this film not only sporting a good attitude toward Steve and...

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

Time. We watch it slip away, complain there’s never enough of it. We blink… and a moment, a day, a decade, is gone. And we can never get it back. Young Jake (Asa Butterfield) never ponders the nuances of lost time. He has no interest in such things. He works a dull but ordinary job...

Does Star Wars Reflect the Modern Age?

The new Star Wars (don’t worry, no spoilers!) is an interesting reflection on the modern era, about a villain becoming a villain through his choices, and heroes becoming heroes by facing similar choices and selecting the moral path. The Jedi are a myth; the next generation grew up without them. Kylo Ren believes returning to...

Jurassic Park: A Lesson in Fatherhood

In a high pressure, intense situation… what would you do? Airlines tell you, in the event of a disaster, to put on your own oxygen mask before attending to the mask of the person next to you. The implication is that in disastrous situations, many would be selfless. And, human beings have proven this time...