‘Dune,’ ‘Cabrini,’ and my listless movie year

Welcome to…the new Decent Films newsletter?!

If you’re reading this via your email inbox, at one time or another you signed up for the old Decent Films newsletter (RIP). I hope so, anyway—if not, please unsubscribe and hopefully you’ll never hear from me again!

Previously on… (Our story so far)

The old newsletter dates to the Before Times—before Covid, for one thing, and before a lot of other things. The platform I chose at the time turned out to be labor-intensive, or maybe it was just the way I used it, and too often months passed between updates. When Covid shut down movies and turned everything upside down, I took a significant hiatus from movie writing … and eventually months stretched into years. Even when I was actually was doing more movie writing, the inertia of facing the newsletter template was just too much. I wanted to get back to doing a newsletter. But I needed a new solution.

Then, last year, my life unexpectedly turned upside down again: My anchor job—the non-film corporate job that supported my movie-reviewing side-line apostolate (and mostly supported my family) for over two decades—fell victim to downsizing. After the initial shock, I came to believe that I could see God’s hand both in my having that job as long as I did and in its going away exactly when it did, and that I was being called to something closer to my identity as a deacon and a Catholic communicator.

In September, I began a new life as a high-school Theology teacher and an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University (where I did my diaconal studies at Immaculate Conception Seminary School of Theology). Teaching has been amazing and rewarding, but taking on two new teaching jobs, and the learning curve of my new career, put a complete stop to my film writing for the time being.

If the last thing I ever wrote about movies had been my July 2023 piece on Mission: Impossible and Tom Cruise’s career for RogerEbert.com, it wouldn’t be a bad way to go out! I had no intention of walking away from film writing, and yet as last year wore on, I had to face a difficult reality: With my new teaching responsibilities, there was no way I could keep up with the growing list of movies I would want to see for my annual write-up of my top films of the year. I did see some excellent movies, but my usual year-end personal “film festival” in late December and early January just wasn’t a possibility. So 2023 became the first year in over two decades that I did no year-end list. Hopefully it will be a one-year anomaly, and my next annual film list will come in January 2025.

Double Dune! Catching Cabrini! All Things SDG!

If I do publish a 2024 year-end list, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two will certainly figure in it somewhere. Last week I wrote two pieces about Dune—a movie I find overwhelming—comparing and contrasting the literary and cinematic world of Dune with both Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings, and this week I completed a third piece: a review of Cabrini, Alejandro Monteverde’s Angel Studios biopic of Saint Frances Cabrini.

From my review of Dune: Part Two for U.S. Catholic:

The inevitable analogy of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two as The Empire Strikes Back to Dune: Part One’s Star Wars was recently highlighted by Christopher Nolan.… Yet it would be equally true, if not truer, to call Villeneuve’s Dune movies a kind of anti–Star Wars. I’m tempted to call them the definitive anti–Star Wars movies, and Dune: Part Two the anti–Empire Strikes Back. Indeed, to speak as I did above of the Star Wars mythos suggests the characterization of the Dune saga as an anti-myth. For all that Lucas drew from Dune in crafting his galaxy far, far away, the whole outlook and tone of Star Wars owes more to inspirations celebrating the triumph of good over evil, from conventional Westerns and serialized sci-fi swashbucklers to J.R.R. Tolkien’s implicitly Catholic The Lord of the Rings. By the end of Dune: Part Two, it’s clear that while the idea of “the triumph of good over evil” is popular in some regions of the Dune universe, that idea is a cruel lie in a harsh cosmos with no lack of overwhelmingly evil forces and Machiavellian power players, but a dearth of powers worth rooting for. (Continue reading at U.S. Catholic)

From a companion essay, posted to my other Substack publication, All Things SDG:

In many ways Dune and The Lord of the Rings are comparable works; indeed, they stand alone among 20th-century literary projects in their depth and scope of worldbuilding, with dense, rich lore developed over multiple volumes finished and unfinished—in both cases in some way posthumously developed by the author’s sons. Tolkien may have left behind far more in the way of unfinished writings, and Christopher Tolkien may have managed his father’s literary legacy with more grace than Brian Herbert. Yet the parallels, however inexact, are striking and unique. Arthur C. Clarke reasonably remarked, “I know nothing comparable to [Dune] except Lord of the Rings.”

Even Tolkien acknowledged the kinship of the works—in a 1966 letter expressing his strong dislike for Dune… Tolkien’s dislike for Dune interests me partly because, while I’m fascinated by Villeneuve’s adaptations, reviewing them has proven a challenge, since I must try to articulate my appreciation of movies the appeal of which I struggle to explain to myself. Certainly when I read my own descriptions in my reviews, they sound to me like movies I would dislike! Yet I do like them.
(Continue reading at All Things SDG)

From my review of Cabrini for The Catholic Spirit:

Repeatedly Mother Cabrini is told to “stay where you belong” or scolded for “wandering into rooms where you don’t belong.” In a flashback to a key childhood incident—a near-fatal drowning that left her with compromised lungs and a lifelong fear of water—we hear a doctor declaring that “her bed will be her life—that is where she belongs.”

Today Saint Frances Cabrini is celebrated as a pioneer: the first U.S. citizen to become a canonized saint, the first Catholic woman to lead an overseas mission, and the trailblazing founder of the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which runs charitable institutions the world over. Yet Cabrini emphasizes that none of it would have happened had Mother Cabrini been content to remain in spaces deemed appropriate for her by the powerful men around her. Opening on March 8, International Women’s Day, Cabrini evokes the much-misattributed remark of American historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich that “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” (Continue reading at The Catholic Spirit)

All Things SDG? Why another Substack publication?!

As the name implies, All Things SDG is where I will post everything I write, movie-related and otherwise, including homilies and other theological writings and occasional writings on other subjects. You didn’t sign up for homilies and whatnot (although you may have gotten a homily I accidentally posted to this Substack about a month ago—sorry about that!). So this Decent Films Substack is for people who are interested in my movie writing—for whatever I post to Decent Films—but don’t necessarily want whatever I write about other subjects showing up in their inbox. Those who may be interested in, well, All Things SDG are invited to subscribe over there!

Finally, for everyone still with me…

From the bottom of my heart, thanks for reading!