Reviews
Arts & Culture, Reviews
Barbie, Written and Directed by Greta Gerwig
Lorence Olivo September 14, 2023
Superficially, Barbie was made to look cheerful, bright, and cute, but beneath the appealing facade, the movie is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s a shame that this movie appears to purposely stir up division where the potential was for something universally uplifting.
Arts & Culture, History, Reviews
Oppenheimer, Written and Directed by Christopher Nolan
Angelica Walker-Werth July 28, 2023
Oppenheimer was a key mind behind the invention and development of the bombs that ended World War II. He was also haunted by the question of whether producing these bombs was the right thing to do. This question runs throughout Christopher Nolan’s recent biopic, Oppenheimer, hailed by some as “the most epic WWII film yet."
Arts & Culture, Reviews
Sound of Freedom, Directed by Alejandro Gómez Monteverde
Tim White July 21, 2023
Although Sound of Freedom is emotionally straining at times, it is nonetheless an excellent and important film about heroic, inspiring people—and a film that hopefully will have a positive impact on real-life efforts to fight child trafficking.
Politics & Rights, Reviews, Science & Technology
The Case for Nukes: How We Can Beat Global Warming and Create a Free, Open, and Magnificent Future by Robert Zubrin
Thomas Walker-Werth April 3, 2023
The Case for Nukes is a refreshingly rational overview, not just of the merits of nuclear power, but of the potentially wonderful future of the human race and the ideas we must embrace and reject if we want to create a better future for ourselves and our descendants.
Education & Parenting, Reviews
How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doren
Tim White March 28, 2023
How to Read a Book was incredibly important and valuable when it was first published in 1940, and it remains so today. It’s so packed with clear, accessible, and oft-overlooked wisdom that even expert readers will find it an indispensable addition to their libraries.
Arts & Culture, Reviews
What’s Love Got to Do With It? Directed by Shekhar Kapur
What’s Love Got to Do With It? is a well-written and refreshingly thoughtful film that shows the crucial importance of honesty and independent thinking in achieving happiness. It is a sensitive yet incisive study of the clash between Islamic and Western cultures—and between collectivism and individualism.
History, Reviews
The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class That Tried to Win the Cold War by Philip Oltermann
Timothy Sandefur February 28, 2023
The Stasi Poetry Circle offers an unusual glimpse of the relationship between communist totalitarianism and the poetic impulses of both its victims and their victimizers.
Arts & Culture, Philosophy, Reviews
Babylon 5: Pioneering, Philosophic Science Fiction
Thomas Walker-Werth February 21, 2023
Babylon 5 is a unique science-fiction series that tells an epic story rich in philosophic ideas and moral messages. These make it timeless and well worth watching for anyone interested in complex drama.
Philosophy, Reviews
Knock at the Cabin, Written, Produced, and Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Knock at the Cabin depicts the vile notion that it is moral to sacrifice the person you love most—your highest value—for the benefit of others and/or to appease God.
History, Politics & Rights, Reviews
And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham
Timothy Sandefur February 13, 2023
What many of Lincoln's contemporaries—and many today—mistook for paradoxes or even contradictions more often reflected the prudence of a leader facing the horrendous task of guiding the United States toward a philosophic principle when unprecedented bloodshed made it sometimes seem safer to disregard that principle.