Film and Book Reviews

After a meaningful plot reveal, the film zeroes in on the interiority of Maria’s murderer, who is in the room with us. In light of this revelation, perpetrators, victims, sinners, and saints stand on equal ground, because mercy infuses justice. Despite our discomfort with this evening of scales, grace still does its work. It vitalizes the bleak room of the prison, a place one character likens to Hell.

Moses the Black: “No One Can Serve Two Masters”  By Marge Hynes, Writer Moses the Black imagines a modern-day Chicago gang leader, Malik, whose life echoes the brutal conversion of one of the Church’s most arresting saints. The film asks the viewer to remain, uncomfortably, inside the world humanity constructs without Christ: blood, death, sin, […]

When Simone crosses the threshold into the Idaho house—this novel is full of doors both metaphorical and physical that arrange and filter how she encounters her memories, her choices, her wishes, her beliefs—she finds more than painful memories waiting. The presence there shifts between beauty and terror, invitation and threat. Is it her own mind fracturing under pressure, or is it something real, something outside herself? Is the presence formed from guilt, sadness, love, or evil? The novel’s answers are winding and complicated, reminding us that the spiritual realm is and not always as it seems, that our choices have consequences outside the bounds of ourselves, and that we are never as alone (or as autonomous) as we may think or feel.

This advent, I spent each day reading Susan De Bartoli’s Welcoming the Christ Child with Padre Pio. Although this book was released in 2022, it was a tremendous daily read to prepare for Christmas.

This year, I’m praying with two new journals from Ave Maria Press: Heather Khym’s Encountering Emmanuel and Fr. John Nepil’s Illuminate. Both offer Scripture, thoughtful reflections, guided prayer, and space to wrestle, ponder, and actually let God speak—yet each one guides you along its own distinct path.