Danny Anderson

Glass Onion is God’s Not Dead for Liberals Before you start furiously typing your angry responses to the title of this post, let me defend myself. As I watched Rian Johnson’s latest entry in the Knives Out franchise, I found myself laughing and…

If you’re looking for evidence that there is some justice in the world, take heart in the fact that M3GAN is a bona fide hit, both with critics and the cold-cash calculus of the box office. It would have been easy for critics to sour the public…

We should all live in Room 237. And not (just) so we can make out with naked ghosts. I recently re-watched Room 237, Rodney Ascher’s 2012 documentary about the many readings and conspiracy theories surrounding Stanley Kubrick’s seminal adaptation of…

For the past several years, my family and I have made a tradition of watching through Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy in the Thanksgiving window. In all honesty, the tradition wasn’t born out of an intentional act of religious devotion.…

This semester, I’m teaching a class on documentary films. Late in the course, I assigned the 1997 film Trekkies, directed by Roger Nygard. Former Next Generation star Denise Crosby travels the world interviewing fans and stars from the franchise, and…

It’s a bleak world that Rotten Tomatoes has wrought. Hot takes and sick burns are the internet’s fuel, and what used to be called “pwning” (for whatever reason) is now the standard attitude that we all bring to all social media discourse. This sadly…

I'm Back! Hi guys, Ricky Pope here. I am back with new content, this week on the Christian Nerds Unite Podcast. Recently, I interviewed Danny Anderson. College English professor, Podcast Host and Author. He and I discuss the ideas of Christianity in…

Let there be no doubt about my position. John Carpenter is a great artist. And critics, many of whom seemingly made careers out of missing this point, have largely come around to acknowledge this fact. If there was any remaining doubt about…

By Arthur Aghajanian AA: In the context of theology, we might note that film has a special ability to represent things that other art forms can’t. The hypnotic affects achieved through temporal dislocation, the camera’s ability to concentrate…

By Arthur Aghajanian Going to the movies may not seem like religious action, but it’s one of the most common ways we experience spiritual insight. Film impacts how we interpret life, and its mechanical apparatus is uniquely suited to provide glimpses…

Writer-director David Prior’s adaptation of Cullen Bunn and Vanesa R. Del Ray’s comic series, The Empty Man, was never aimed at a mass audience. It’s not a Marvel property. It’s ephemeral, and rather than giving the viewer resolution, it purposefully…

A teenage girl, awkward in her track uniform and wearing a large pair of glasses, runs with great effort. Only her father cheers for her from the stands. She is the last to finish the race, and all the other runners look at her with a combination of…

We are living in a ruined world. The general consensus seems to be that we’ve scorched the earth below our feet and now live in the last days. It is a malaise that transcends political persuasion. Left, right, and center: everyone agrees that the…

By Danny Anderson Horror films are shapeshifters by nature. They emerge into the world at a given time and place and contort themselves to embody the anxieties, fears, and hopes of their moment. For those interested in religion, horror has been,…

Mike Flanagan’s new Netflix series, Midnight Mass, was always bound to be a focal point for one culture war or another. Flanagan has already established himself as a filmmaker that people talk about, and his horror films and shows consistently become…

It’s always struck me as odd that Chris and Paul Weitz’s 2002 comedy About a Boy isn’t more popular than it is. Based on a novel by Nick Hornby and boasting a stellar cast that includes Hugh Grant, Toni Collette, Rachel Weisz, and a very young…

By Danny Anderson [Spoilers (if that’s even still possible)]. Over the last two months, I was sucked into Wanda Maximoff’s hex like everyone else. Many other people have, or will, write about the gripping meditation on grief that WandaVision…

Right now, on some social media platform, someone is ranting about Zack Snyder. In comic fandom debates and “Film Twitter” discourse, no filmmaker incites more passionate opinioneering than Snyder. His films’ fundamental form and style excites…

By Danny Anderson Growing up a low-church Protestant, I had a tragically shallow liturgical education. When I moved to New York City in my mid 20s and first saw Catholics with ash on their foreheads on that particular Wednesday, I was utterly…

By Danny Anderson Is it going too far to call Pet Sematary an Easter movie? Hear me out. First, let’s admit up front that Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer’s 2019 adaptation of Pet Sematary doesn’t explore the depths of human grief that it’s source…