Arts
Syriac Christian artist calls paintings of war 'a cry for help'
LANCASTER, England – A huge plume of grey smoke billows into a vivid blue sky as rooftops and buildings buckle into twisted iron and debris and then begin to fall. Beneath the smoke, human wreckage of the blast is visible: faces of victims contorted in pain and others dead, lying in pools of their own blood.
Review: Spider-Man: Homecoming
NEW YORK – There's much to like about the vibrant comic-book adaptation Spider-Man: Homecoming (Columbia). Besides an unslacking pace and a clever central plot twist, there's the fact that the mayhem on display is kept virtually bloodless.
Art as you've never seen it: New film highlights Pope Francis' vision
VATICAN CITY – What do the Sistine Chapel, a used car with 186,000 miles on the odometer and a statue of Our Lady of Lujan made out of metal from an abandoned factory have in common?
Review: Despicable Me 3
NEW YORK – Director Pierre Coffin's animated comedy "Despicable Me 3" (Universal) – the second direct follow-up to the 2010 original – turns out to be something of a disappointment, falling short when compared to its predecessors.
Review: Transformers: The Last Knight
NEW YORK – Grown-ups who yearn to connect with their inner 11-year-old boy are given a two-and-a-half-hour window of opportunity to do so in Transformers: The Last Knight (Paramount).
Scorsese says a boyhood of church and movies continues to inspire him
QUEBEC CITY – Faith and films have been lifelong obsessions for director Martin Scorsese, obsessions that he said have given him moments of peace amid turmoil, but also challenges and frustrations that, in hindsight, he will accept as lessons in humility.
Book: A compelling, critical look inside Canadian prisons
Down Inside: Thirty Years in Canada’s Prison Service by Robert Clark (Goose Lane Editions, soft cover, 265 pages, $22.95).
Winston Churchill reminded us many years ago that the way we treat crime and criminals is a reliable test of the civilization of any country.
Book: The rise and fall of the Evangelicals
The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, Frances Fitzgerald, Simon and Shuster, 2017, 740 pages, $35.
Although a child of evangelicalism (my father J.H. Hunter was the longtime editor of a magazine The Evangelical Christian), I learned much about the origins and development of evangelicalism from this incisive and fascinating book by Pulitzer Prize winning author Frances Fitzgerald.
Review: The Mummy
NEW YORK – The clumsily fashioned horror flick "The Mummy" (Universal) turns out to be anything but tightly wound.
Review: Wonder Woman
NEW YORK – Close to eight decades ago, William Moulton Marston – whose name seems more suited to a stodgy novelist than a writer of comic books – created Wonder Woman. In the years since, the character has, of course, become a staple for DC Comics.
At Cannes, Wim Wenders talks about making movies that matter
CANNES, France – When films by Fellini and Rossellini topped the list of Pope Francis’ favorites, it should have been clear that, when it comes to cinema, this is an unusually discerning pontiff.
Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales
NEW YORK – Iconic and eccentric buccaneer Capt. Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) hoists the black flag for a fifth time in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (Disney). The result is a flashy but ultimately unsatisfying journey for the theme park ride-based franchise that first set sail in 2003.
Man builds replica of St. Peter's Square with 36,000 toothpicks
VATICAN CITY – The Eiffel Tower, the Roman Coliseum, the Statue of Liberty, the Taj Mahal; are just some of the universal monuments that a Colombian teacher makes to scale out of little wooden sticks (toothpicks).