Popular reviews

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★★ 34

  100

  "Those five in the pit are suffering too, just like Jesus, but they don't have your pride. They would never compare themselves to Jesus. Do you have the right to make them suffer? I heard the cries of suffering in this same cell. And I acted."

  I remember it vividly; like a memory still lingering fresh in the mind. It was my first time attending the sacrament of reconciliation, and I was just as nervous as the many other students lined up in waiting for their turn at the confessional. One by one, people entered and exited the booth with a degree of rebellion and solemnity. It eventually dawned on me that my time had arrived, and taking a…

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  Review by karsten ★★★★ 7

  I'm....hm....uh....
  Writing about movies is hard lol, writing about Silence is hell.

  At the ripe age of 22 I still don't know where I stand on religion, I just have a lot of opinions on it that nobody wants to hear about. But what I'm trying to say is I feel like with a film like this, a film as subtly extreme and exhausting as this, your view on religion is going to impact how you take in this movie. Which is why I think the most impressive part about Silence, aside from how it looks, is the objectivity of it, I think. It's taking you in with open arms and dragging you through a whole lot of honesty. Brutal ass honesty. I did a lot more thinking than I did feeling with this one and I'll definitely be coming back to it some day. Yet another classic gangster film from the one and only Martin Scorsese!

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 10

  THE LAST TEMPTATION OF GARFIELD

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  Review by maria ★★★★½ 11

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  andrew garfield and adam driver: *go through hell to save liam neeson and his soul*
  liam neeson: me no christian no more me a weeboo
  andrew garfield: please say sike

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  Review by josh lewis ★★★★★ 4

  even on rewatch i'm still unsure what to say about this one other than i already see myself wrestling with it for years to come. shūsaku sndō’s book itself is a masterpiece, a book about reconciling belief and inquiry, love and cruelty, calm and brutality (spoiler: you can’t), and out of it scorsese has stayed faithful to it and sculpted it into an extraordinarily empathetic portrait of arrogance and endurance. many have already compared it to scorsese’s previous spiritual works Last Temptation and Kundun, but it’s closest relative for me is his criminally underrated Bringing Out The Dead, the story of a paramedic addicted to the high of saving life, but unable to endure the pain of death—late in the…

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  Review by #1 gizmo fan ★★★★½ 3

  Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver further prove they are two of the most convincing and diverse actors today. Unlike Hacksaw Ridge, in my opinion, the faith in this film was handled beautifully and very respectfully. I absolutely adored Silence.

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  Review by Evan ★★★★½ 8

  This one is going to have to marinate in my brain for a few days before I even attempt to write down some cohesive thoughts. But I'll leave you with this: Holy Fucking Shit! Marty hasn't lost it one bit.

  Also, that final shot...WOW! One of the best final shots I've seen in a film to date.

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  Review by Jake Cole ★★★★★ 2

  "Go on, then, Rodrigues, pray. But pray with your eyes open."

  I remember reading a review of this when it came out that dismissively compared it to Shinoda's original adaptation, arguing on demonstrably woke lines that Scorsese's emphasis on Endo's rumination on faith came at the expense of the novel's critiques of colonialism. It struck me as a blinkered, surface-level reading of the film then; now, it seems downright oblivious. Scorsese has worked with strong scripts for so much of his career, but he communicates visually, one of the few filmmakers who can shoot impressionistically and expressionistically with equal skill. It is hard to ignore how both Rodrigues and especially Garupe recoil at every Japanese person who approaches them, instinctively…

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  Review by Nakul ★★★★½ 7

  god-fellas.

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  Review by Neil Bahadur ★★★★★ 5

  "Grace fills empty spaces but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it." - Simone Weil

  Preliminary notes - because like all great art, it is not consumable within a single experience. But where to start with a film as dense as this one? Reading 'Mizo on Mizo'* earlier, Mizoguchi stated in regards to 'The Life of Oharu' that "it takes several years before a true work of art begins to take shape." I don't think any of us need to be reminded at this point that Scorsese was developing this project since 1991, but it frankly feels like it (I consider this a huge compliment) - it's the most concentrated film of his career and…

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  Review by Jareddd ★★★★★ 4

  surely God has heard their prayers as they died,
  but did he hear their screams?

  Faith has always eluded me. Despite a childhood and adolescence spent going to church on Sunday, despite numerous pastors existing within my family; something fundamentally just doesn't click. The geographical nature of religion bothers me, how the area in which you're born plays the biggest role in determining your faith. The constraints of Christianity, social or otherwise that don't mesh with the benevolent offerings of a supposedly loving God. I take issue with the supposed necessity of joining a faith rather than just existing with it, the idea that I must pledge my allegiance to one specific school of thought feels murky. And finally, the…

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  Review by Brendan Michaels ★★★★½ 2

  If you follow the career of Martin Scorsese loosely you would be fairly surprised that he would follow up his epic of debauchery and greed, The Wolf of Wall Street, with the tranquil, yet brutal Silence. But peering closer at some of the hidden gems of his filmography it was only a matter of time before he made Silence. Silence is a culmination of Scorsese’s themes of religion and faith that drive many of his films. It’s a tale of anguish, suffering, faith, agony, and reconciliation. Possibly Scorsese’s most harrowing of his films as the characters are put through hell to prove their faith which is the foundation of their lives. You will find no other film quite like Silence this year or any other year.

  
  FULL REVIEW ON TALK FILM SOCIETY