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In the annals of horror history, few movies are as seemingly Godless as the 1968 classic Rosemary’s Baby. The film follows Rosemary Woodhouse, a young woman living in New York, as she slowly comes to realize that a local coven of witches has recruited her husband, Guy, to help them carry out a nefarious plan for her unborn baby. It’s every mother’s worst nightmare, but the truth is much more diabolical than even she could’ve imagined.
The witches actually conjured the devil to secretly conceive a child with her, and this child is destined to become the Antichrist. Unfortunately, Rosemary only learns this horrible truth after her son is born, but by then it’s too late. The woman’s maternal instincts soon kick in, and after hearing a chorus of demonic chants like “Hail, Satan!” and “God is dead!”, she gives in and agrees to raise the child. On top of its overtly Satanic story, Rosemary’s Baby also appears to attack and even mock the Catholic faith. There’s a scene where some of the main characters criticize the pope and the Church, and Rosemary periodically experiences bizarre dreams suffused with confused Catholic imagery. The whole thing just seems like a Godless exercise in blatant anti-Catholicism, but I’d suggest that there’s more to this movie than meets the eye. If we look at it through a Catholic lens, we’ll find that it actually contains a surprisingly profound message about the value of faith, so let’s take a deep dive into Rosemary’s Baby and see how it teaches this important lesson. Good Guys and Bad Guys To begin, let’s clear the ground a bit and show that the film doesn’t truly disparage our faith, starting with the characters’ criticisms of the Church. These remarks all come in a single scene, where Rosemary and Guy have dinner with the Castevets for the very first time. Roman and Minnie Castevet are an older couple who live in the apartment right next to the Woodhouses, but unbeknownst to their younger friends, they’re also key members of the cult that wants to bring the Antichrist into the world. The two couples talk a bit about Pope Paul VI’s upcoming visit to New York, and Roman quips that popes never visit cities where the media is on strike. He believes all organized religion is hypocritical, and in hearty agreement, Guy dubs the whole thing just another form of show business. After these brazen (and, to be frank, stupid) criticisms of the Church, Minnie and Roman turn to Rosemary and ask what she thinks. As a former Catholic, she’s not entirely comfortable with the conversation, but the only defense she can muster is a sheepish “Well, he is the pope.” In response, Roman proclaims that we don’t need to respect the pontiff just because he “pretends to be holy,” and unsurprisingly, his argument leaves Rosemary at a loss for words. People often take that discussion as a blatant attack on the Church, and the first time you watch Rosemary’s Baby, it definitely appears that way. The movie hasn’t revealed the truth about Roman and Minnie yet, so as far as a first-time viewer knows, these are just four fine people enjoying a pleasant meal together. But by the time the credits begin to roll, the scene takes on a very different meaning. You eventually realize that Roman, Minnie, and Guy are the primary villains of this story, so you can’t simply assume that they speak for the film. That would be like thinking Avengers: Infinity War supports genocide because Thanos wants to wipe out half the universe. That’s not how movies work. They typically align themselves with the views of the protagonist, and in Rosemary’s Baby, that’s the one person who tries to defend the maligned pontiff. To be fair, Rosemary’s argument is half-hearted at best, so we can’t say the film genuinely supports the Church. However, because the ones who happily criticize the pope are the villains, it’s fair to conclude that the movie doesn’t endorse their views either. It merely recounts them, and there’s nothing anti-Catholic about that. Garbled Recollections The same principle also explains the cult’s Satanic exclamations at the end of Rosemary’s Baby, but it doesn’t quite take us all the way home. We still have to account for the confused Catholic imagery in Rosemary’s dreams–including angry nuns, an odd conversation with Pope Paul, and a group of Catholic schoolgirls. Do these creations of the woman’s subconscious constitute an attack on our Church? The way I see it, the answer is a pretty clear no. Rosemary grew up Catholic, she attended Catholic school, and at one point in the movie, she even talks about the pope’s upcoming visit to her city. That’s enough to make anybody dream about nuns and bishops, and because she no longer practices her faith, it’s totally plausible that those images would become garbled in her mind. In other words, these dreams are simply a natural part of the character, so they don’t tell us anything about the film’s attitude towards the Church. In fact, I’d even argue that they play an important role in the story. See, film is a visual medium, so if a movie wants to make a point, it shouldn’t just tell the audience. It should show us, and that’s exactly what these dreams do. They show us Rosemary’s obscured (at best!) faith, so we don’t have to take the woman’s word for it. We can see the sorry state of her Catholicism for ourselves, and if you ask me, that wilted piety is the key to interpreting this movie as a Catholic. An Urgent Warning Rosemary’s Baby never explains why Minnie and Roman chose Rosemary to be the Antichrist’s mother, but from a perspective of faith, it’s safe to say that the woman’s rejection of God played a key role in their decision. You even get the feeling that the couple purposely insulted the pope at that fateful dinner because they wanted to see how Rosemary would react. If she showed herself to be a pious woman, they most likely would’ve looked for another victim, as the devil wouldn’t have been able to touch her. But since she openly declared her lack of faith, she had no defense against their demonic machinations. The enemy was able to push the poor woman around at will, and he even used her motherly instincts to compel her to raise the child herself. It’s a tragic turn of events, and it hauntingly illustrates our absolute dependence on grace and our helplessness against the power of evil without it. Sure, witches probably won’t choose us to bring the literal spawn of Satan into the world, but we all have to deal with diabolical temptations to sin. Each and every one of us is engaged in an ongoing spiritual battle just as real as Rosemary’s, and if we want any chance at winning, we have to maintain a lively faith nourished by prayer and the sacraments. If we don’t, we’ll inevitably fall prey to the snares the devil puts in our way, and for a Catholic, that’s the biggest tragedy of all.
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I’m not going to lie, when I first heard about F1 The Movie, I had absolutely no interest in it. Auto racing has never appealed to me, so the idea of a film based on Formula One sounded like a total snoozefest. But then something unexpected happened. When the first trailer came out, I checked it out on a whim, and to my surprise, I liked it. I began to think this movie might actually be pretty good, so I decided to give it a shot. I bought a ticket for opening day as soon as I got the chance, and I walked into the theater hoping for the best.
F1 The Movie was directed by Joseph Kosinski, and it stars Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Tobias Menzies, Kim Bodnia, and Javier Bardem. In the film, Sonny Hayes is an aging race car driver whose time in the spotlight was cut short by injuries. It looked like his career would forever be a tale of unrealized potential, but now, thirty years later, he’s getting a shot at redemption. An old friend named Ruben invites Sonny to join his struggling Formula One team to keep them from folding, and the man quickly accepts. He soon finds himself driving alongside a hotshot rookie with tons of talent but very little experience, and if they want to succeed, they have to learn to put aside their egos and work together for the good of the team. If you just want to see a bunch of cool racing action, I think you’re going to have a ball with F1 The Movie. Director Joseph Kosinski captures all the drama and suspense of a Formula One race–including the high-stakes pressure of the pit stops and the nail-bitingly tense positional battles these athletes engage in–and there are even a number of times when he makes you feel like you’re actually in the driver’s seat. It’s basically a dream come true for racing fans, but if you’re like me, you need more than just a shot of automotive adrenaline. Like I said before, racing isn’t my thing, and to be frank, I’m not much of a car guy in general. My car gets me from point A to point B safely and without using an obscene amount of gas, and that’s all I really care about. I needed these Formula One races to be grounded in an engaging story off the track (much like the boxing in Raging Bull and the wrestling in The Iron Claw) or at least some interesting characters, but unfortunately, I got neither of those. The vast majority of F1 The Movie takes place on the raceway, and when the characters aren’t driving crazy cars at crazy speeds, they’re almost always discussing their strategy for the next event. You never get a sense of who these people are outside the Formula One world, so for a non-racing fan like me, there’s simply nothing interesting about them. Anything truly human in Sonny and his crew is swallowed up by their chosen profession and rendered dull and ineffective, so no matter how much I wanted to root for them, I just couldn’t bring myself to care enough. To make matters worse, the few times this film tries to flesh Sonny out beyond his work, he’s usually engaging in an eye-roll-inducingly stereotypical Hollywood romance with his team’s technical director. The woman supposedly doesn’t date teammates, but of course she makes an exception for Sonny. You know, because you can’t have a Hollywood movie without two characters falling head over heels for each other the first time they have a real conversation. That relationship mercifully takes some of the focus off Sonny’s racing career and adds at least a tiny bit of depth to the character, but it doesn’t actually make F1 The Movie any better. If anything, it makes the film worse because it’s such a missed opportunity. The filmmakers could’ve had Sonny do anything in his precious few moments of screen time off the track, and they chose to take the most unimaginative route possible. All that being said, I suggest you take my thoughts on F1 The Movie with a grain of salt. I know I’m in the minority here, and I’m not just talking about the film’s 83% critic score and 97% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes (as of this writing). Unlike me, most people have at least a passing interest in cars, so you’ll probably have a different reaction to this movie than I did. Sure, the thin lead character and flimsy plot will most likely keep it from breaking into your best-of-the-year list, but the gripping automotive action and the tense on-track drama will probably make this a fun experience for the majority of viewers. Just know that it all depends on what you’re looking for, so if you’re like me and you need an engaging story beyond the track, you should probably give this film a pass. M3GAN might’ve been the most pleasant cinematic surprise of 2023. Like a lot of people, I thought the trailers looked pretty stupid, but also like a lot of people, I changed my tune when I saw the film. It actually turned out to be a touching story with a boatload of hilarious comedy and some super fun horror, so when I heard that a sequel was in the works, I couldn’t have been happier. M3GAN 2.0 was easily one of my most anticipated movies of the year, and now that I’ve finally seen it, I’m happy to report that it’s a worthy, albeit admittedly lesser, continuation of this awesome franchise.
M3GAN 2.0 was written and directed by Gerard Johnstone, and it stars Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ivanna Sakhno, Jemaine Clement, Brian Jordan Alvarez, Jen Van Epps, Aristotle Athari, Amie Donald, and the voice of Jenna Davis. The film is set a couple of years after the first M3GAN, and it begins with Gemma–the creator of the titular android–and her niece Cady living a normal, peaceful life. But that all changes when AMELIA, another killer robot created from M3GAN’s coding, bursts onto the scene. She threatens to kill Gemma and take over the world Skynet style, and as luck would have it, the only thing that can stop her is the program she’s based on. It’s not ideal, but Gemma and her team have no choice. They resurrect M3GAN and team up with the android to take down their new techno foe. If you’re at all a movie fan, that plot synopsis probably sounds very familiar. We’ve seen good guys team up with their former enemies multiple times before, most notably in the AI-centric Terminator 2, so the plot isn’t the big draw here. Instead, M3GAN 2.0 has to win you over by telling its time-honored story in an entertaining way, and thankfully, the film does exactly that. For starters, it trades in the original movie’s slice-and-dice horror stylings for more of an action vibe, and it makes the transition pretty successfully. Don’t get me wrong, M3GAN 2.0 can’t hold a candle to the year’s best action flicks–like Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning and Predator: Killer of Killers, but it’s a worthy entry in the genre nonetheless. To the surprise of no one, these fights aren’t terribly complex, but the actors and their stunt doubles pull them off quite convincingly. Just as importantly, writer/director Gerard Johnstone avoids the temptation to chop those scenes up with a million cuts, so you’ll have no problem following the action and enjoying every second of it. There’s even a fight that somewhat mimics the cinematography and choreography of Leigh Whannel’s underappreciated sci-fi gem Upgrade, and if you’ve seen that film, you know how much of a compliment that is. All that being said, M3GAN 2.0 isn’t a complete departure from its predecessor. The franchise may have left its horror roots behind, but it hasn’t forgotten how to make people laugh. I wouldn’t say this movie is as funny as the original M3GAN, but that’s okay. It still brought a smile to my face almost every time one of the characters cracked a joke, and there was even one gag (involving an infection; you’ll know it when you see it) that had me genuinely cracking up. It’s the kind of humor that injects the experience with a sense of joy even if it doesn’t always make you laugh out loud, so despite its pedestrian plot, this film is still a ton of fun. Unfortunately though, there’s not much more to it than that. Part of what made the first M3GAN so good was its surprisingly heartfelt themes of love and loss, but this sequel is a big step down in that regard. The movie uses its dueling-AI premise to present a balanced take on both the dangers and the legitimate uses of artificial intelligence, and while I’m totally on board with that message, it just doesn’t hit nearly as hard as a story about a woman trying to connect with her grieving niece. To be fair, M3GAN 2.0 does attempt to recapture some of that emotional weight, most notably with M3GAN herself, but it’s not the same. The film doesn’t make you believe in the titular android’s humanity the way, say, Blade Runner and Ex Machina do, so you simply can’t sympathize with her as much as Gerard Johnstone probably wants you to. That keeps M3GAN 2.0 from being more than merely fun, so I can’t say this is one of the best movies of 2025. But a film doesn’t have to be one of the year’s best to be worth a watch. It can just be a good time at the theater, and M3GAN 2.0 definitely fits that bill. Sure, it’s not for everyone, but if you’re a fan of the first movie, or if this sounds like something you’d enjoy (it works just fine as a stand-alone film), I suggest checking it out. |
Jp Nunezis a longtime film buff and theology nerd with master's degrees in theology and philosophy from Franciscan University of Steubenville. His favorite movie genres are horror, superheroes, and giant monsters. Archives
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