New Lives of the Popes podcast
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
Lives of the Popes on Apple Podcasts: Lives of the Popes on CatholicCulture.org:
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Into Great Silence (2005) w/ Manny Marquez
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
Into Great Silence is one of the great documentaries from an artistic point of view, and surely the best ever made on a Catholic subject. Filmmaker Philip Gröning contacted the Grande Chartreuse monastery in the French Alps in 1984, asking if he could come and film the Carthusian monks in their way of life. They responded saying that it was not yet the right time. Sixteen years later, they got back to him saying they were ready to receive him, a single cameraman with no fancy lighting or sound equipment. Gröning spent six months filming the monastery, sharing the monks' silent way of life....
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Bing Crosby plays a priest in Going My Way and The Bells of St. Mary's
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945) bring us back to a very different period in American culture, where the immensely popular singer Bing Crosby could make a movie playing a priest of essentially spotless character, and that movie could win six Oscars and be popular enough to get a sequel with the same character. But is that enough to make a great Catholic film, or to make midcentury Hollywood a model of what edifying cinema should be? These films, both directed by the great Leo McCarey, are entertaining to be sure, and heartwarming in their way. But as a portrayal of the...
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Adoption drama: Secrets & Lies (1996)
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
In the 1996 British comedy-drama Secrets & Lies, Hortense, a young middle-class black woman in London, having lost both of her adoptive parents, decides to seek out her biological mother - who turns out to be a working-class white woman named Cynthia. Director Mike Leigh is known for collaborating in depth with his actors to create vivid, deeply realized characters and performances. Secrets & Lies is an outstanding specimen of a lost genre: a kitchen-sink drama that relies entirely on its rich humanity to keep us watching. Andrew Petiprin joins Criteria to discuss the movie. Links...
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Revisiting Malick's A Hidden Life (2019)
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
James, Thomas, and Nathan Douglas conclude their journey through Terrence Malick's filmography (thus far) with a discussion of the film that introduced him to many Catholics: A Hidden Life, about the Austrian martyr Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, who was killed for refusing to swear loyalty to Hitler. Coming after Malick's avant-garde phase of the Weightless Trilogy, A Hidden Life is a more conventional narrative but retains much of the stylistic and formal development of his past few films. Links Original episode on A Hidden Life New Polity podcast on Bl. Franz SIGN UP for...
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Triumph of the Heart director faced glorious trials making great Catholic art - w/ Anthony D'Ambrosio
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
Anthony D’Ambrosio directed, wrote, and produced the outstanding new film Triumph of the Heart about St. Maximilian Kolbe. In this inspiring interview, he discusses the difficult path he and his team charted to produce this independent film with a low budget, high artistic standards, and deep Catholic spirituality. Film is an expensive medium. Since a high budget requires one to calculate mainstream appeal in order to make one’s money back, a low budget can leave more room for artistic and spiritual integrity. Though the production faced many hardships, it was buoyed up by the hope that...
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US army chaplain meets Italian monks in Paisan (1946)
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
Roberto Rossellini's 1946 World War II film Paisan has a unique structure: six vignettes following the American troops north from their landing in Sicily through Naples, Rome, Florence, Romagna, and the Po Delta. However, the film takes the perspective of the Italians, with the Americans more often than not naive outsiders. It is a fascinating exploration of the clash of cultures in the tragic scenarios of war and foreign occupation. One segment in particular will be very interesting to Catholics: an American priest serving as an army chaplain visits a Franciscan monastery along with his...
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He Who Gets Slapped (1924)
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
James and Thomas discuss the original creepy clown movie, He Who Gets Slapped, starring Lon Chaney in an amazing performance as scientist Paul Beaumont, who suffers a mental breakdown after his research and his wife are stolen by a wealthy baron. Leaving his former world behind, Beaumont becomes a circus clown known only as He, whose entire act consists of attempting to say profound things while being slapped and ridiculed by the other clowns, recreating his trauma - until one day, he comes back into contact with the man who betrayed him... The film explores the effect that the crowd's ...
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Triumph of the Heart is a film worthy of its subject, St. Maximilian Kolbe
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
James and Thomas review an outstanding and very intense new film about St. Maximilian Kolbe, directed and written by Anthony D'Ambrosio. Triumph of the Heart is set mostly in the starvation cell in Auschwitz as Kolbe and his companions try to find a way to die with hope and dignity. Don't miss it, in theaters Sept. 12. SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter: DONATE to keep this podcast going: Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission.
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A hard world for little things: The Night of the Hunter (1955)
Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast
James and Thomas discuss one of their favorite films, The Night of the Hunter, directed by Charles Laughton. It’s about the sacred innocence of children, and discerning true vs. false prophets. A unique mix of fairy tale, horror, and Southern gothic with expressionist visuals, The Night of the Hunter contains some of the most striking and poetic sequences ever filmed. SIGN UP for Catholic Culture's newsletter: DONATE to keep this podcast going: Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission.
info_outlineThe 1991 film A Brighter Summer Day, directed by Edward Yang, is considered by many one of the best movies ever made. The film is set in Taiwan, shortly after the Chinese Civil War, when the country was under martial law, with a political and cultural pressure felt at every level of society. At the center of this intricately plotted four-hour drama is the family of fourteen-year-old Xiao Si'r, whose strong sense of honor and justice is pulled in various directions as he gets caught up in a youth gang and romantically entangled with the girlfriend of a disappeared gang leader. But more than that, this incredibly textured four-hour drama gives the sense of a whole uneasy social fabric.
As this is the first Chinese-language film the Criteria hosts have covered, they are joined by film festival programmer Frank Yan, who provides crucial historical and cultural context about Taiwanese history and cinema.
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Music is The Duskwhales, “Take It Back”, used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com