Jesus films

It's almost Easter. It makes sense, then, to watch a Jesus film or two—preferably one that is not Passion of the Christ. Also, I included some films that are vaguely inspired by Jesus but aren't necessarily Jesus films.

Nazarin (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1958)--see my review
The Gospel According to Matthew (dir. Pier Paulo Pasolini, 1964)
Life of Brian (dir. Terry Jones, 1979)
The Last Temptation of Christ (dir. Martin Scorsese, 1988)--the book is better

Jesus of Montreal (dir. Denys Arkand, 1989)
Son of Man (dir. Mark Dornford May, 2005)

One I haven't seen yet but would be greatly interested in seeing is The Messiah (dir. Nader Talibsadeh, 2008), an Iranian film that narrates his life from the Islamic perspective.

Pluralism can go too far

Film review: Nazarin

Nazarin (dir. Luis Bunuel, 1958). Bunuel's best film, like most of Bunuel's films, is a skillful and satirical examination of religion and relationships of power. In Nazarin, a virtuous priest is subjected to a series of torments obviously meant to mirror the life of Christ. But for Bunuel the atheist, the most unbelievable miracle in the Gospel narratives is that people actually listened and were changed by the words and deeds of Christ. His film imagines a world where the petty squabbles and self-absorption of human beings wholly prevent an authentic spiritual epiphany, and where Jesus' last moments—wracked by doubt and anxiety—take on a subverted but still profound significance for contemporary human experience. The narrative is oddly choppy in places, but Bunuel successfully communicates his critique. A

After the Thin Man: A Play

After the Thin Man

Characters in the Play
A
B

SCENE: A and B are seated at a couch. The TV is on and A is flipping channels. The play opens with them in mid conversation.

A: Ian McKellan isn't that funny either.

B: He's entertaining. You would invite him to a dinner party.

A: Yeah, but he might bring one of his “friends” with him. [A attempts to do air quotes, but this is difficult since one hand is already engaged in flipping channels.] It's hard to do air quotes with just one free hand.

B [ignoring A's homophobia, which probably masks a wide array of neuroses]: So use both hands then.

A: After the Thin Man is on. [He settles on this channel and sets down the remote.]

B: You'll do air quotes with both hands after The Thin Man is over?

A: What?

B: You said you'd do air quotes after The Thin Man is on.

A: After the Thin Man, the sequel.

B: They're playing the sequel to The Thin Man after they play The Thin Man? Like a double feature? What's the sequel called?

A: After the Thin Man IS the sequel.

B: You just said that. But what's the sequel called?

A: The sequel to After the Thin Man is Another Thin Man.

B: I know it's another Thin Man movie, but what's it called?

A: What?

B: So you'll do air quotes after the sequel to The Thin Man is on...?

[Beat.]

A: What?

CURTAIN

Film review: The Circus

The Circus (dir. Charles Chaplin, 1928). In what is possibly Chaplin's most pleasant feature film, the Tramp accidentally becomes the main attraction of a floundering circus (though for most of the film he is not cognizant of this); sight gags, sentimentality, and spider monkeys ensue. Though Chaplin's films lack the imagination and intelligence of the work of Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, he remains more popular than them both because of his willingness to submerge his films in pathos. He attempts to emphasize every frustrated expression, every kind gesture, every longing glance as if it were the focal point of the film, and in doing so, he uses his films as tools to draw his audience into a shared emotional experience—they establish an immutable empathic bond between reel and real life. This bond became problematic in his later films, where Chaplin's use of pathos in social commentary slips sometimes into emotional fascism (social commentary should appeal foremost to the intellect rather than preying upon the emotions; see The Great Dictator), but The Circus works because of its much more modest goals. A