“I hate California, I want to go to the east coast.” “I want to go where culture is like, New York, or Connecticut or New Hampshire.”- “Lady Bird”. These words from the film “Lady Bird” reflect the aspirant personality that is emitted throughout the film. This coming-of-age film highlights the catholic youth’s mindset behind their…
The Little Hours: Queer Comedy in Medieval Times
Set in a mid-14th century convent in Garfagnana, Italy, The Little Hours subverts modern viewers’ expectations of Catholic convent life in order to create an absurd comedy. The film follows three young nuns, Sisters Alessandra, Fernanda, and Genevra, and is based on stories from The Decameron, a collection written in the 1300s. One of the major themes explored is the…
“That’s our hell. It’s an Irish bar where its St. Patrick’s Day everyday forever.”: Three Paths Of Moral Reckoning Through Purgatorial Visions in The Sopranos
The Ripple Effects of Chrissy’s Visions: An Introduction Season two episode nine of mafia classic The Sopranos, From Where To Eternity, grapples with the implications of the mobster lifestyle through a Catholic imagination of hell, purgatory, and morality when one of the crew’s own, Christopher Moltisanti, is shot and critically wounded. While in a coma,…
A Goth Nun? More Plausible Than You Think
Introduction Little Sister is a 2016 indie film directed by Zach Clark. The movie follows a girl named Colleen, who is on the path to becoming a nun in New York when she gets an email from her mother in North Carolina. Colleen has not spoken to her family in many years, but the email…
The Intersection of Catholic and Ethnic Identity in “West Side Story”
West Side Story movie poster. Source: Amazon Prime Video West Side Story is a film that showcases the conflict and struggle that accompanies immigration, poverty, and the American dream. The main characters are from rival street gangs that, despite sharing several similarities, despise each other. They both come from poor backgrounds, are immigrants or the children…
The use of Catholicism in The Godfather movie
Catholicism, one of the world’s most well-known religions with its rich traditions and moral teachings, deeply influences the lives of millions worldwide. In the film “The Godfather,” directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Catholicism is tied within the very makeup of the story. The film contrasts the religious rituals and ethical principles of the Catholic faith…
When in Drought, Pray: Historical and Contemporary Catholic Activism in También la lluvia
The movie También la lluvia is a movie in Spanish about a film crew that documents their movie’s production about Christopher Columbus’s first arrival in the Caribbean, meanwhile the locals at their film site in Cochabamba, Bolivia, face civil unrest. The film crew hires many locals to work as extras in the scenes and laborers…
Using knowledge of Catholicism to better understand the themes present in “Coco” (August Thielking)
The 2017 Disney Pixar film Coco surrounds the Mexican holiday of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). This movie follows the main character Miguel on a journey to the Land of the Dead where he must fight alongside his deceased relatives to make it back to the land of the living before sunrise…
Political Sanctuary in Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Political resistance, lust, religious trauma, hellfire! In a Disney musical? The 1996 movie The Hunchback of Notre Dame is arguably Disney’s darkest musical adaptation as it follows the grim themes of Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel by the same name. The story begins in Paris, with the murder of an anonymous Romani woman committed by Judge…
The Nun: The Role of Mary observed through the lens of the Catholic Tradition
(The nun: source IMDB) Horror movies often employ religious elements, whether to make the circumstance more realistic or to add an element of mystery, the horror genre has tapped into the religious realm since the Supreme Court granted freedom to Hollywood producers to portray religion as they pleased. A prime example of this practice and…
Catholics in the Americas 