by Dean | Apr 5, 2019 | General
Mary Gordon is a notable American author, and a Catholic. From The Stories of Mary Gordon (2013), there is “Death in Naples,” a 19-page piece wherein an elderly widow, Lorna, visits Italy with her son and daughter-in-law.
The daughter-in-law is a difficult complainer who suddenly has to leave the Continental country without appreciating any of its splendors. The son goes with her, and Lorna is left alone. There is something catalyzed by this: Lorna sees the inadequacy and absurdity of life. Among the many details about her that Gordon provides is that “She was not a religious woman,” and to be sure Lorna does not understand how spirituality, or a spiritual life, is to be had. A certain uplift, however, occurs at the story’s conclusion.
A luminous story it is, and “The Deacon” is also very worthy. Here, a nun called Joan finds it impossible to Christianly love Gerard, an unsuitable deacon. He tried to become a priest but “couldn’t cut it at the sem,” although at St. Timothy’s School, where Joan is the principal, he fails to cut it as a teacher as well. The nun’s weakness regarding love is no worse than the weaknesses of other Christians at the school, and inevitably she must attempt to work her way around it. She settles for what she is capable of, spiritually. It’s the kind of subject Mary Gordon faces head-on.
by Dean | Apr 2, 2019 | General
Ashley Bratcher displays realistic, suitable restraint and persuasive agony as Abby Johnson, a Planned Parenthood director (and real-life person). We miss her, in the faith-based Unplanned (2019), every time she is not on screen.
Whatever moral merit exists in Planned Parenthood—and filmmakers Chuck Konzelman and Cary Solomon do not believe there is very much—the movie is hot and bothered that bloody abortions are taking place in P.P.’s private rooms; and well it should be. Abby herself has had two abortions and scarcely cares that her Christian parents and her husband are offended by her director job. However, P.P.’s garbage, its evildoing, becomes too much for her. She actually seeks help from anti-abortion protesters.
Unplanned is a powerful film until its last twenty to twenty-five minutes. Then its artistry starts failing. There is not enough build-up to Abby’s decision to leave Planned Parenthood, and the script begins to propagandize for the pro-life movement. The movie ends up being less successful than Gosnell. But for a long time that artistry is there. And Bratcher’s performance is there. Final word: However much Pure Flix recoils from it, the movie’s R rating is justified.
by Dean | Mar 28, 2019 | General
The Nick Searcy (director)-Andrew Klavan (screenwriter) effort, Gosnell—about the infanticide in Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s Philadelphia abortion clinic—has its flaws. For one thing, Klavan’s dialogue is not masterly (sarcastically: “You’re a ray of sunshine”). But the film is intelligent middlebrow drama all the same, technically conventional but also brave and gripping. More gripping, I would say, in all its ugly clinic scenes than in the courtroom parts which supply the movie’s subtitle: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer. This is especially true when police officers and an assistant D.A. investigate, hardly believing what they see, said clinic. Dean Cain enacts one of the cops and is commandingly true. Sarah Jane Morris as the D.A. and Earl Billings as Gosnell are faultless.
by Dean | Mar 27, 2019 | General
Saturday Afternoon (1926), a silent Harry Langdon flick, is a little over 26 minutes long and un-tediously endearing. Langdon plays a mild-mannered gent married to a shrew (Alice Ward), probably because of which he agrees to join his portly pal (Vernon Dent) for an afternoon tryst with two lovely dames. Suspense builds as he tries to avoid his wife’s suspicions and animosity, but it’s not as though we actually sympathize with Harry: he’s a milksop who, inarguably, should have told the dames he is married. He also gets stupid with two other freewheeling young women and a brick he is holding. So it’s Harry, warts and all, and he soon takes a necessarily rough ride.
Competently directed by Harry Edwards, the film is funny without being too much, and Langdon is marvelous with his committed acting and man-child face and body activity. The other actors are good too. The best thing about the short script is its unpredictability.
Maybe, just maybe, Saturday Afternoon is art.
by Dean | Mar 22, 2019 | General
I haven’t been seeing very many current movies, and this even includes The Death of Stalin. But I did read the graphic novel, The Death of Stalin (2017), by writer Fabien Nura and artist Thierry Robin—it “inspired” the making of the movie—and I enjoyed it. The pictures are stark and tough-minded, the writing is magnetic.
The monstrous Stalin dies early on. The monstrous Lavrentiy Beria is first shown raping a hapless girl (for a rapist he was), and it isn’t long before we see just how contemptuous of Stalin the barbarous official is. After the big guy dies, Beria schemes. Depicted here is a cold hell, a bleak, loveless, secular domain where violence can be employed at any time and self-seeking dominates. When criminals are in power is the book’s theme, and it’s virtually relevant for the situation in socialist Venezuela when Madura blocks foreign aid from reaching his distressed people. I repeat: socialist Venezuela.
