A journey into the deep south, up in those tree laden mountain regions is like a trip to a country within a country. That's old America right there, where men are men and brothers marry their sister. A protective community full of their own traditions who don't like visitors as much as visitors don't like to venture inside.

Four men are delivered by the Cahulawassee river into a redefined test of manhood far removed from what was supposed to be an overnight trip through the rapids. It initially feels as if the danger sits at the start and ending of their journey, entrusting locals who are suspicious of each others motives. We expect that trouble will await them when they…

"Deliverance," John Boorman's stomach-churning and now-iconic observation of the savagery of nature, man, and conscience is a film built upon and defined by its conflicts. The conflict of man versus nature gives way to the conflict of man versus man and, in turn, man versus self and, finally, nature versus man. It is a poetic progression of the how these conflicts and the destruction imparted by human beings leads only to human destruction. Boorman couches this progression in a heavy-toned, chilling adventure-drama, but the thematic poetry of its conflicts is writ large throughout.

Revolving around four friends who take a canoe trip down a remote river before it is damned, the four soon find themselves damned. Traveling into an off-kilter…

March Madness 2013 – No Re-Watch Edition

Ten years ago when I was still into that sort of thing, a book called Wild at Heart swept through the evangelical community. The book told a story of how men in today's world have lost touch with the wildness and masculinity that God made them to embody. This loss means that men feel a hole in their souls, a "great wound", if I remember the title correctly. Part of the solution included getting out into the wilderness. I remember our church mens' group taking a canoe /camping trip in spring 2004, a trip heavily influenced by that book's message.

Watching this film, I remember that canoe trip. We were certainly never in…

A whirling whirlpool of crystal clear cultural reflections, Deliverance is a brooding, boundary breaking journey down the river to hell. Despite his British ethnicity, in 1972 John Boorman proved his ability to capture the unrelenting horrors of the cantankerous South better than many American filmmakers could. He drew constant allegories on a world that we change as much as it changes us, embedded in the story of four businessmen from Atlanta, slowly regretting how they left their suburban, concrete jungle for a real one.

Poet James Dickey deserves copious credit for his source material and Southern insight, if it hadn't been for his novel and screenplay Boorman would've directed a different picture. Dickey's dialogue provides a realistic perspective on an…

There's much that stays in memory after seeing this extraordinary film. You have the bizarrely entertaining "Dueling Banjos" scene at the beginning of the story. Then there's the infamous rape scene, which it is perhaps most known for.

What strikes me the most, however, are the engrossingly absorbing performances by actors Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, John Voight and Ronny Cox. Bill McKinney and Herbert Coward are incredibly convincing as well as the two depraved mountain men who turns the four friends' river-rafting trip into a harrowing and tightly wound nightmare.

The depth and intricacy invested into these characters, in combination with James Dickey's fantastic script, is what puts the meat on the structural bones of this film, while simultaneously making…

To-Watch List (2018 Edition) Film 19 of 115

I’ve always been attracted to very “elemental” movies. While these kinds of films usually focus on survival against the elements like that in this film or Quest for Fire, I’d lump No Country for Old Men, Lady Macbeth, The Witch, High Noon, Bicycle Thieves, Phoenix, The Wages of Fear, A Ghost Story, and Drive in this category. They’re films that place a heavy emphasis on non-verbal, emotionally-driven character motivation to drive the action, as well as trusting the audience to deeply connect with the story and themes with as little set-up or expository dialogue as possible.

It’s important to note that I’m not belittling or demeaning these films’ quality by calling the…