One Battle After Another wins Oscar for Best Picture: What do movies tell us about ourselves?
The Daily Article
The Denison Forum
4.9 • 576 Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2026
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
“One Battle After Another” won the Academy Award for Best Picture last night, along with five other Oscars. The awards show prompted some reflections for me, which have less to do with the films themselves than with the experience of watching them. The best movies are often the most surprising, the ones with a plot twist we did not foresee, films that convey an unanticipated message that nonetheless resonates with life. The best journeys in life, similarly, occur on the paths we least expected God to call us to travel. When you pursue your Father’s purpose, your life becomes a “motion picture” in which the scenes you “film” today are part of a story you are telling the world. The key, as a wise mentor once taught me, is to stay faithful to the last word you heard from God and open to the next.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good day and welcome to the Monday, March the 16th, 2026 edition of the Daily Article podcast from Denison Forum. |
| 0:10.1 | Today's daily article is authored by cultural theologian, Dr. Jim Denison, and narrated by yours truly, Chris Elkins. |
| 0:18.5 | The movie, one battle after another, won the Academy Award for Best Picture last night, |
| 0:24.0 | along with five other Oscars. Michael B. Jordan, Sean Penn, Jesse Buckley, and Amy Madigan |
| 0:30.1 | won acting Oscars. The awards show prompted some reflections for me, which have less to do |
| 0:35.8 | with the films themselves than with the experience |
| 0:38.5 | of watching them. My wife and I took two of our grandkids to a movie the other day. We seldom go |
| 0:43.9 | to the theater except with them, it seems. However, hardly a week goes by without us watching |
| 0:49.8 | at least one movie at home, usually on a streaming service such as Netflix or Amazon Prime. |
| 0:55.9 | We are apparently not unusual. |
| 0:58.4 | Only half of Americans went to a movie theater in 2025, while 75% told surveyors that they had |
| 1:05.5 | recently opted to stream a movie at home instead of watching it in the theater. |
| 1:10.3 | The movie watching experience, wherever it takes place, is ubiquitous. |
| 1:15.5 | While 7% of Americans told Pew Research Center that they have never seen a movie in theaters, |
| 1:20.8 | I cannot find data indicating that a significant percentage of Americans have never seen a movie at all. |
| 1:29.2 | So-called moving pictures were first developed in 1891. The first time projected moving pictures were presented to a paying |
| 1:36.0 | audience was in December 1895 in Paris, France. Over the generations since, they have become a |
| 1:42.8 | pervasive and indelible part of our lives. |
| 1:45.9 | Why is this? |
| 1:47.0 | Clinical psychologist Anna Nogales explains in psychology today that movies can be cathartic as they express the emotions we feel. |
| 1:55.3 | They help us escape from our own world for a couple of hours as well, offering entertainment that distracts us from our challenges. |
| 2:02.7 | She writes that they can be therapeutic when they, quote, help us view things from a different |
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