Author Archives: davetcourt

Wow. The 2021 film Nine Days, by first time Director Edson Oda, came out of nowhere. Caught me off guard as I knew next to nothing about it except that it was recommended viewing. And for good reason. It’s a high concept film filled with existential concerns about life and suffering. Following a lone arbitorContinue reading “Nine Days: Making a Case for Life in the Tension Filled Spaces of the Living”

Blind Spots From The Vault Deceptively simple as the sum of its working parts, Waiting For the Prosecution (1957) is arguably one of the best courtroom dramas of all time. Director Billy Wilder infuses it with a mix of humor, emotion, realism, drama, and character development in order to tell the sory of an agingContinue reading “Month in Review: Memorable Reads, Listens, and Watches for October, 2021”

Wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving. The season that prepares us for a world in which darkness (All Hallows Eve) and light (Christmas) coexist as part of that necessary tension that awakens us to something truer, more beautiful. This is what Thanksgiving expresses, sitting somewhere between the drought and the harvest and encompassing the sin andContinue reading “Thanksgiving: Between the Drought and the Harvest”

It’s been nearly a week since I finished the new series by Mike Flanagan, Midnight Mass, and it would be an understatement to suggest many thoughts and feelings after watching this show remain. To its credit I suppose, except that those feelings come with a good deal of tension and frustration. I don’t think I’veContinue reading “Midnight Mass: Where Faith Meets Doubt”

Film Birdman of Alcatraz (1962, Directed by John Frankenheimer) You might not expect a story about a man and his birds to be this powerful, this astute in its observations on life, hope and redemption, or this aware of both nature and humanity. And yet here we are, finding our way into this particular man’sContinue reading “Month in Review: Memorable Reads, Watches and Listens for September, 2021”

I wrote a reflection piece on the 2017 film My Life as a Zucchini. The reflection piece accompanies a recent podcast episode I participated in for the podcast. The piece is linked here, and the podcast episode can also be found through this site: https://www.thefearofgodpodcast.com/blog/afterthoughtszucchini

I had a slightly disorienting experience this week with one of my current reads (Eugene Peterson’s final book, This Hallelujah Banquet, and a recent podcast episode from Bookmark: Ologies (episode 97) and featuring an interview with Neil Pasricha, the author of The Book of Awesome/The Happiness Equation and the 1000 Awesome Things blog. The episode,Continue reading “The Happiness Equation and This Hallelujah Banquet- What Does it Mean to Be Happy”

During some recent attempts at house cleaning, I uncovered some old pieces of writing from years ago. Some of them are from when I was very young. One of them was a piece I wrote when I was 15. It’s not something I have ever shared. I wrote it, filed it away, and never returnedContinue reading “A Rough Draft of a Forgotten Story: Recovering the Pages of My Teenage Years”

Film Pig (Directed by Michael Sarnoski, 2021) A briliant subversion of revenge film tropes forms the foundation for this studied character drama lead by Cage in what I would argue is a career performance. If you ever find yourself wondering how it is Cage became so iconic, this will function as definitive proof that itContinue reading “Month in Review: Memorable Reads, Watches and Listens for August, 2021”

As a considered fan of the Conjuring universe, it is too bad this third entry has been getting such a bad rep as it is actually a pretty strong entry in what is, I would argue, a really strong franchise. It isn’t quite as technically strong as it’s predecessors, but that shouldn’t take away fromContinue reading “The Conjuring, The Devil and the Curious Question of Peronhood and Existence: Parsing Out the Problem of Human and Divine Justice”