by Dean | Mar 3, 2019 | General
A 1962 picture from France, Love on a Pillow is about self-destruction in the blood, and the far-reaching effect of erotic love. Genevieve (Brigitte Bardot) discovers a man who is attempting suicide and saves his life, later joining him in an amatory relationship. About this man, Renaud (Robert Hossein), it may be said, “Once a wreck, always a wreck.” He is a louse too, but Genevieve, a weak, complicated beauty, cannot leave him.
Sometimes rather dreary, the film is also sensual, usually smart, and imaginatively directed by Roger Vadim. For example, Genevieve and Renaud are arguing with each other as they approach their car, but since the camera is trained on the outside of the car, once the couple get in, the continued argument can no longer be heard. The audio is lifted.
The movie’s ending is bad—overblown—but the acting isn’t. Bardot does well enough, although her coldness is okay only up to a point. She needs to give us what someone like Monica Vitti does. Hossein, on the other hand, offers some depth and sophistication. So does Love on a Pillow (a.k.a. Le repos du guerrier), adapted from a novel by Christiane Rochefort. I’m glad it exists.
by Dean | Feb 26, 2019 | General
If Spike Lee wants to make a film about the not-yet-obliterated racism of past decades, that’s fine, but he needs to do it without utter agitprop. Agitprop has no place in art.
Except for Kyle Smith, the critics drooled over BlacKkKlansman (2018); but Smith was right that “The movie is a typical Spike Lee joint: A thin story is told in painfully didactic style and runs on far too long.” Painfully didactic, yes: Lee editorializes nearly all his characters, caring not about them but only his message, such as it is. It’s okay for him to be implicitly anti-Trump, but it is done in a stupid fashion. In fact, the whole movie is sufficiently stupid, in its assault on bigotry, to veer into a certain skepticism about American Christians and not just disapproval of the misuse of Christianity by Ku Klux Klan types.
BlacKkKlansman is an unholy wreck.
by Dean | Feb 24, 2019 | General
Harold Lloyd knew how to play an innocent, as in The Cat’s Paw (1934), and here he is the son of a missionary in China, one wishing to perpetuate his father’s work by returning to Stockport, California, the place of his birth, in order to marry and produce offspring. But the toxic political machine in Stockport seizes the Lloyd character—Ezekiel Cobb—to render him a straw candidate for mayor with the expectation that the machine’s reprobate candidate (a good Alan Dinehart) will win. Cobb, however, comes across as a “regular guy” and he wins. Subsequently he learns perfectly how unsavory men can injure him, and vigorously he fights them not only for his own good but also for the city’s good.
This is a Harold Lloyd talkie, consisting of lively set pieces, likable wit, and respectable acting. Once the funny moments begin to subside, even so, the movie’s pace drags a bit; and yet Lloyd and Una Merkel (the saucy love interest) hold the eye. As for the ear, it’s fascinated by such talk as when the innocent earnestly asks Merkel: “Why is it that all American girls are so lacking in individuality?” In 1934, were they?
Directed by Sam Taylor.
by Dean | Feb 22, 2019 | General
Herein, Tippi Hedren plays a practical joker who finds out, of course, that life is no joke. The birds in Bodega Bay have gone insane, psychopathic, vicious. Relationship problems pale in significance when the avian attacks begin. One wonders why Tippi and Rod Taylor spend as much time outdoors as they do.
The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 offering, is a character-driven drama (consider the two women, Lydia and Annie, who fear abandonment) before the bird business heats up. . . Has the film aged well? Sure. The special effects no longer impress, if they ever did, but images and scene set-ups are still sobering and vivid. The dead man at the farm, the gathering of crows on the playground jungle gym, the gasoline fire on Main Street—all brilliant. In spite of a lot of poor acting—thank Heaven for Jessica Tandy—The Birds is an almost-great horror flick.
Cover of The Birds (Collector’s Edition)
by Dean | Feb 19, 2019 | General
I have seen the first two episodes of the new Netflix series, The Umbrella Academy. We need another visual narrative about X Men-like superheroes like we need Jussie Smollett giving campus lectures on the subject of hate crimes. The action scenes have been fun, but the rest of the stuff is rather stale and sophomoric. Plus, Ellen Page‘s acting has been indifferent, phoned-in.
