Michael DeNobile's Movie Reviews

THE BANALITY OF EVIL: A REFLECTION ON THE FILM HANNAH AREDNT (2012) AND THE BOOK EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM (1963) Michael DeNobile reviews the 2012 film  Hannah Arendt  and Arendt's 1963 moral political thesis Eichmann in Jerusalem and their moral implications. I am, of course, as you know, a Jew. And I’ve been attacked for being a self-hating Jew who defends Nazis and scorns her own people. This is not an argument. That is a character assassination. I wrote no defense of Eichmann. But I did try to reconcile the shocking mediocrity of the man with his staggering deeds. Trying to understand is not the same as forgiveness. I see it as my responsibility to understand. It is the responsibility of anyone who dares to put pen to paper on the subject. Since Socrates and Plato, we usually call thinking to be engaged in that silent dialogue between me and myself. In refusing to be a person, Eichmann utterly surrendered that single most defining human quality, that of being able to th...

Originally posted in March 2017. Movie seen at Oswego 7 Cinemas in Oswego, NY. A REFLECTION ON THE FILM THE SHACK Michael DeNobile discusses the 2017 box office hit, The Shack and provides insight regarding the film’s ethical questions.  To where shall we go to lay down the burdens of this life?--for the yolk is heavy, and I am weary that I will not finish the work. Time and time again, man is faced to reconcile himself to suffering, of the presence of evil on this side of Paradise. Ideally, goodness and joy would be the absence of pain, a world where we individually get to judge what is right and what is wrong, to decide who gets to be put asunder in Hell and who gets a Golden Ticket to the top floor of the Observation Deck. However, Michael DeNobile notes that if we get to judge others by the way they treat us, where shall we go when others judge ourselves? Will we be worthy of a Golden Ticket or will the elevator be sent to sub-level 4 of the Seventh Circle? In the age o...