One young priest’s journey to the ugly heart of Christianity.

Like most Hitchcock films, Shadow of a Doubt concerns epistemic upheaval. It’s a tale on the dangers of knowledge. What happens once you know? Knowledge has a way of spoiling things, shattering hopes, replacing epistemic doubts for moral ones, curiosity for despair. It’s a traumatic experience to realize it was all an illusion.

In Gun Crazy (1950) death, love and madness go in high gear, and it's hard to keep track midst all the shooting. At a traveling show the boy meets his soul mate, a gun-carrying, wild-blooded and death-foolish blonde. It’s love at first shooting.

Crossfire (1947) begins with a brutal murder. We only see the shadows of one man beating another to death in a hotel room. In due course we discover that a fascist has killed a Jewish man. Nothing new under the sun? Perhaps, but there’s a problem: we're in Washington D.C. two years after the military defeat of fascism. And that's the catch: military defeat of fascism does not mean its demise.

A time for idiots.

Western violence and progress in The Wild Bunch.

Melancholia (2011) and pessimism.