Category: Reviews

culture, Essays, Film Reviews, ISSUE #53 | MAY 2026

“The Thing” as an Agent of Popular Culture

By Sophia Mandt John Carpenter’s The Thing is a clear illustration of perspectives—both conscious and unconscious—held by individuals within modern culture. Since The Thing is a horror film, it vividly depicts a more overtly primal, anguished, and fear-mongering understanding of what it means to be human than other similar works of popular culture. Note that my views align with a professor’s definition of culture as … Continue reading “The Thing” as an Agent of Popular Culture

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Book Reviews, ISSUE #53 | MAY 2026, Religion

Training the Tongue: A Review

By Campbell Collins In his new book, Training the Tongue and Growing Beyond Sins of Speech,  Father Gregory Pine lays out a path toward developing virtue in speech. Pine’s book—which discusses truth-telling, conversation, communion, correction, humor, teaching, and prayer—seems particularly pertinent to the lives of Hillsdale students. We talk so much that we have our own conversational clichés: “That guy” in Logic and Rhetoric and … Continue reading Training the Tongue: A Review

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Book Reviews, ISSUE #50 | OCT 2025, Religion

Fire on the Altar: A Review

By Campbell Collins In his new book, Fire on the Altar: Setting Our Souls Ablaze through Augustine’s Confessions, C. C. Pecknold presents a “Catholic understanding of Augustine” (3) and thereby helps readers’ “souls to be set ablaze by that fire which burns for us in heaven and upon the Church’s high altar” (14). Pecknold’s approach is, perhaps, peculiar. The book is neither fish nor fowl: … Continue reading Fire on the Altar: A Review

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ISSUE #49 | MAY 2025, Music Reviews

Into the Past: A Review

By Michael Branigan and Rooks Russell “Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can!”  Gatbsy’s assertion haunts the close of the title track “Into the Past,” from the band Driveways’ 2022 album.  Reliving old crimes preoccupies the pop-punk band’s discography, and lead singer Pat Finnegan confronts the question by drawing on symbols from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ray Bradbury, Ernest Hemingway, Ken Kesey, and F. Scott … Continue reading Into the Past: A Review

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Book Reviews, ISSUE #49 | MAY 2025

The High Hallow: A Review

By Campbell Collins Much of Hillsdale has sojourned in Tolkien’s Shire, and many students count the Bagginses and the dwarves, Gandalf the Grey and dear Sam Gamgee among their childhood playfellows. In his new book, The High Hallow: Tolkien’s Liturgical Imagination, Ben Reinhard encourages us to return to Middle Earth with a more attentive eye, seeking out the influence of the Catholic liturgy in Tolkein’s … Continue reading The High Hallow: A Review

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Film Reviews, ISSUE #48 | MAR 2025

“Don’t You Forget About Me”: A Review of the Unforgettable Classic The Breakfast Club

By Julia Leonard The powerful opening chords of Simple Minds’ “Don’t You Forget About Me” welcome the viewer to a world of New Wave music, fingerless gloves, and John Hughes teen films. This is a world in which a silent Saturday detention is a form of discipline for high school students, shouting can shatter glass, and a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, … Continue reading “Don’t You Forget About Me”: A Review of the Unforgettable Classic The Breakfast Club

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Film Reviews, ISSUE #47 | DEC 2024

The Twisting of Tolkien: A Rings of Power Season 2 Review

by Henry Ahrabi, Anna Jackson, Jonah Murray, and Jonathan Rolfe Two years ago, out of our great love of Tolkien, we decided to begin watching Amazon’s new Rings of Power. It was a delightful time, holed up cozily in Koon (then, as now, a women’s dorm), watching it, offering a running commentary with our friends. We did not expect much faithfulness to Tolkien, and so, … Continue reading The Twisting of Tolkien: A Rings of Power Season 2 Review

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Book Reviews, ISSUE #46 | OCT 2024

Beauty for the Common Man

by Aidan Jones Among my many pet peeves is when self-proclaimed “artistic types” scoff at the great artistic achievements of our ancestors. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” they snort, scorning a simple pastoral painting in favor of a meaningless combination of colors that some tortured soul was inspired to plaster across a canvas. They grin determinedly through an atonal opera, explaining that … Continue reading Beauty for the Common Man

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Book Reviews, ISSUE #43 | DEC 2023

Obsession: Perfume, and Humanity’s Depraved Desires

“He was born scentless and senseless, he was born a scentless apprentice.” Every so often there comes a work of literature whose deep themes express the darkness of human thoughts and beg the mind to inquire into the sheer hysteria of the human psyche. Perfume, The Story of a Murderer, by Patrick Süskind, is one such book.  The story of Perfume forces the reader to … Continue reading Obsession: Perfume, and Humanity’s Depraved Desires

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Film Reviews, ISSUE #42 | OCT 2023

How the “Barbie” Movie Subverts Expectations

From the droves of young people flocking to the theaters decked head to toe in pink, to the gushy movie critics, to the conservatives who thought it was based, to the conservatives who thought it was garbage, everyone who watched it has been reacting powerfully to the film Barbie. Such an uproar is a sign that the movie touches something deep in the zeitgeist—but what … Continue reading How the “Barbie” Movie Subverts Expectations

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