On Media

I have always watched TV in community. In many ways these communities of shared stories have shaped the stories I tell about my life.

After centuries of Westerners going to Africa to teach, documentary filmmaker James Ault goes to learn.

Several times a day, my Facebook feed invites me to cry, laugh, or feel amazed. I click almost every time.

In adapting my course for video, I had to learn to bridge the distance between me and students I couldn't imagine, let alone see.

The lead character of Wallander is a cop relentlessly pursuing justice. He knows he should leave work at the office, but he can't.

Poems, novels, and short stories have all influenced Christian ways of telling our sacred stories. What about a miniseries?

Divergent puts age-old questions of belonging in a new setting: a postapocalyptic society with the motto “factions before blood.”

The Borgias series has a human, believable Pope Alexander VI. But it misses opportunities to make more of holiness as well as of sin.

Cohle and Hart are magnetic and unforgettable. But True Detective's existential heft never exceeds the palaver of a 101 class.

In The Walking Dead, there's a crucifix at a Baptist church. Why don't producers check such details with somebody who is actually religious?

Llewyn Davis lives a decidedly nonromantic existence as a starving artist. He’s a good musician, but there are thousands like him, and they can’t all succeed.

I began watching Her suspicious that it would glorify bodiless romance or present a mere male fantasy. But the film surprised me.

Girls gets attention as a boundary-breaking comedy focused explicitly on gender. But Hannah and friends are not navigating adult life well.

Though action-packed, Peter Jackson's Hobbit films have less of what made his Lord of the Rings movies work: character development, humor, interior drama.

In the holiday movie blitz, one live wire unites two very different films: Christian Bale, who plays the lead in both Out of the Furnace and American Hustle.

I was prepared to enjoy the theological heart of Catching Fire. But my moviegoing experience was bizarrely affected by all the ads.

Twelve Years a Slave pulls no punches. As a white southerner, I found myself objecting that it couldn't have been as bad as this all the time. But these horrors happened, and we have yet to face them squarely.

Orphan Black is so suspenseful and addictive, you may not realize that it's examining deep questions about the meaning of selfhood.

Don Jon is not about a porn addict saved by a good woman. It's about the unhealthy collision of two people who are ready only for broken relationships.