Chris Williams

A STILL SMALL VOICE and the exhausting work of soul care Documentary about hospital chaplains shows the cost of spiritual service.

For my second week, I look at A STILL SMALL VOICE, a documentary about hospital chaplains that captures the exhausting work of meeting people's spiritual needs.

chrisicisms.substack.com/p/a-still-sm...

INTO GREAT SILENCE is soul-forming cinema Surrender to the silence and mystery.

Back over at Chrisicisms, starting a Lent series about movies that have helped me grow spiritually. This 3-hour, nearly dialogue-free documentary about monks is one of the most profound films I've ever seen.

chrisicisms.substack.com/p/review-int...

The John Wick series is so effective because it fully embodies the three major tenets of dumb guy fantasy: 1. being able to kick anyone’s ass, 2. living by a code of honor, and 3. paying for things with gold coins

I also think six feet is a safe and reasonable distance to maintain from the edge.

Disney seems so skittish to commit to The Muppets that I wonder if we see The Muppet Show return as occasional specials before they pull the trigger on a series. Which I'd be fine with, but I'd hope the specials would go longer than 30 minutes.

Why is the headline not "The shittake hits the fan"?

And, of course, the film's biggest cultural contribution was being where Ain't It Cool News got its name. And while Harry Knowles is a scuzzbag, it was AICN that introduced me to so much great film writing and fueled my early movie nerd sensibilities.

Aside from some style in the action scenes and a fun Travolta performance, this is forgettable. But 30 years ago, when I was a high school kid too scared to interview classmates for the school paper, I sat down and wrote my first review ever for this movie. Was fun to revisit.

30 Years Ago, John Woo’s First Hollywood Hit Was This Silly Action Film Starring John Travolta In 1996, John Woo had his first hit in Hollywood with the action movie Broken Arrow, starring John Travolta and Christian Slater.

To BROKEN ARROW on its 30th anniversary.

collider.com/broken-arrow...

I might be wrong, but I seem to remember the trailer for The Gray Man calling them that.

Which, once upon a time, could be Kevin Fiege. But I don't think we are there anymore and the're running around thinking they're visionaries when their last "movie" featured Chris Pratt and Mr. Peanut.

It's a shame because their work on ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT and COMMUNITY led to some of the greatest TV episodes this century. But it also hammers home that they should only be trusted to carry out the orders of a much more talented creative person.

They took the longest, dumbest way possible to describe something that should be simple and fun, which is totally on brand for these guys.

I don't even know what they mean. What is "narrative information" delivered in 30-second installments prior to the release of movie if not a teaser or trailer.

Chadwick Boseman and James van der Beek both died in their 40s of an illness that's treatable if a colonoscopy catches it but almost no insurer covers them for people under 45, this is what Engels meant by "social murder"

The directors of The Electric State have not earned the right to be so pretentious.

My typo is perhaps evidence that my own public schooling might have been lacking.

I still believe strongly in having my kids in public schools because we're all in this together. But I don't think homeschooling today is necessarily what it was in 30 years ago.

We're not homeschooling, but many of our friends and family are. And their kids are all involved in co-ops and partnerships that have them around others several days a week. It's not the isolating thing it might have been in the past.

That’s okay, I don’t see his movies either.

(I did see SPRING BREAKERS, a movie so gloriously dumb that I’m not sure it was intentional.)

Fair, but I still like it! (I'm really curious if Flanagan will keep the ending, which is not in King's novella).

Oh, hard disagree there. I love Marcia Gay Harden in that role. There's a shot of her sitting in a plastic lawn chair brandishing a butcher knife that is the perfect mix of King's Americana and menace.

That awful Die Hard battery commercial in which he played John McClane one last time was better than A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD, which might have been the most depressing theatrical experience of my life.

And, again, I love Flanagan. But I'd love to see him stop re-adapting these titles and just get cooking on The Dark Tower.

Mike Flanagan & Stephen King Back In Business With ‘The Mist’ Movie For Warner Bros Warner Bros is reuniting frequent collaborators Mike Flanagan and Stephen King on a new adaptation of The Mist, based on King's 1980 novella.

Few people are better at adapting Stephen King than Mike Flanagan...except maybe Frank Darabont. I'm all for keeping Flanagan in the King business, but good luck topping the original, particularly its stomach kick of an ending.

deadline.com/2026/02/step...

"Try to battle my boys? That's not legal!"

kinda both funny and deeply sad that some people’s whole deal is just being super mad about something all the time

Simply on a live performance stagecraft-design-camerawork-logistics-direction level, this is ASTOUNDING.

I don't know much (anything) about football - but Lift Every Voice and Sing, Green Day and Bad Bunny is making a lot of racist sports maga mad.