Remembering faith-and-film critic Edward McNulty (1936-2024), a courageous soul who always looked for the best in us

A Personal Remembrance of a Beloved Colleague

I have known Ed McNulty for decades, starting way back when I was a prominent religion editor for Knight-Ridder newspapers’ Detroit Free Press and often reported on stories that connected faith with popular culture.

In that robust age of journalism in the 1980s and early 1990s, every denomination seemed to have a film critic I could telephone (this was before email) to talk about religious perspectives on major movies. For quotable sources on stories like that, I could ring up film critic Henry Herx, who died in 2012, for his semi-official Catholic perspective and, when I needed a Protestant perspective, I had several numbers in my reporter’s Rolodex—including Ed McNulty for a progressive Presbyterian perspective.

When I left newspapers in 2007 to co-found Front Edge Publishing and www.ReadTheSpirit.com magazine, I developed an even larger circle of faith-and-film contacts. These new colleagues included the pioneering Brussats, the famous couple who live in New York City and run the giant Spirituality and Practice web hub. It was Mary Ann Brussat who alerted me to a complex mess Ed had sunk into when an online deal to host his Visual Parables magazine in a “virtual” format had turned sour.

“Somebody needs to help pull Ed out of that mess,” Mary Ann said. She and Frederic didn’t have the bandwidth to help, Mary Ann told me, but she was quite persuasive in arguing that Ed’s unique voice needed to be rescued from a messy corner of the Internet into which he had fallen.

Our publishing house took on the task. One unique asset we have is the software-development genius of our co-founder, Publisher John Hile, who agreed to look into the technical complications surrounding Ed’s body of work. John achieved the prodigious task of saving Ed’s archives and transferring them to a new home as part of our long-running weekly magazine, ReadTheSpirit. 

And, the moment Ed began appearing in each Monday morning’s issue, we got positive feedback from readers about his weekly mix of “free” reviews of recent films (and occasionally some classics)—as well as his “paid” monthly PDF magazine Visual Parables that was packed with reviews and discussion guides. Enough people did, indeed, pay to subscribe to that monthly PDF so that Ed felt that he was able to keep doing that work literally until the day he died.

One of his biggest fans among our publishing house’s community of authors was journalist Suzy Farbman, a columnist and author of the memoir GodSigns. Not long before his death, Suzy sent Ed a note thanking him especially for writing about movies that she otherwise would never have discovered without his reviews. That warmed his heart because Ed loved nothing more than to highlight a terrific-but-little-known movie that nobody else in mainline news media was covering.

Suzy and Ed both shared their notes with me. That’s often how our “community” functions via connections from writers around the world that pass through our home offices.

As usual, Ed was concise in his final note to Suzy and me: “Thanks so much! As you know, writers never know who’s out there reading. I’m always happy to hear when someone feels what I do is worthwhile.”

That was about two weeks ago, or so. Then, when Suzy got the news of Ed’s passing, Suzy emailed me again: “He was so smart and sensitive. Though we never met, I admired him from afar.”

Anyone who knew Ed understood that he had a huge, compassionate heart—and that he was utterly outspoken on issues of social injustice. He also had a sense of humor—and a relentlessly optimistic Christian spirit. I am using that phrase, because as a lifelong Christian myself, he was a mentor in journalism for me. I’ve often thought that I hope to maintain Ed’s relentlessly resilient spirit in coming years. 

And that leads me to a different kind of conversation I had one day with the venerable dean of “religion editors” nationwide, David Briggs, who called to ask me about a future news story in our online magazine. We concluded our business, then David added: “I really love what you and the other writers have done with ReadTheSpirit—but I do have one question about the film critic Ed McNulty, if that’s OK.”

“Sure,” I said to Briggs. “Ask away.”

“I wonder: Does that guy ever see a film he hates!?! I like the text of his reviews—but I think his star-rating system is out of whack—inflated in favor of too many stars. Do you hear that from other readers?”

“I have,” I said, laughing and remembering full well conversations I had with Ed about how his star ratings always verge on the high end of the spectrum. I told Briggs: “Yes, I have to admit there’s some star inflation in his ratings—but you have to understand this from Ed’s perspective. These are not traditional movie reviews. Ed’s looking at movies as what he calls ‘visual parables’—lessons we can glean from movies. When he sees a movie—good or bad—he tries his darnedest to find some value in what he has seen. And the reason I love Ed’s approach to movies is that I’m often accused of the same thing by my wife and friends. They claim that I never hate a movie, because I always come away talking about some redeeming moment within the movie that makes me glad I saw it.”

“Ohhhh,” David said as if realizing that Ed and I both were too much in love with movies to truly be critics. “Ohhhh. Well I guess that explains it.”

And it does, I think.

Ed’s reviews were nothing if not thoughtfully analytic.

He was indeed very smart, Suzy!

But Ed’s aim was never to condemn anyone for their failings. He always was looking so deeply, and pondering so wisely upon the resources from his own deep faith, that time and time again he could come away from a feature film with some “parable”—some spark of wisdom—to be gleaned from even the worst movie.

I loved Ed for that.

He always looked for the best in us.

And, if we care to remember Ed’s legacy—may we try to do so ourselves.

Care to learn more?

Read this obituary and photo gallery researched and prepared by his family.