by Dean | Jan 5, 2019 | General
I would have enjoyed Elmer Kelton‘s novel, Shadow of a Star (1959)—“star” as in sheriff’s badge—a tad more had it been devoid of the hackneyed concept of townspeople demanding that a deputy turn over to them an appalling killer so that he might be lynched. The deputy, young Jim-Bob, is the sole person in charge of the killer now that the sheriff, Mont Naylor, has been badly wounded.
Ah, but for a short Western, the book is pretty rich and certainly exciting—not really tired. Hell is other people—Jim-Bob faces lawbreakers big and small—yet the tale is uncynical. Men can often be trusted, those can’t be are in genuine trouble. Further, there is much economy and little softness in Star. It can’t be much improved on.
by Dean | Jan 3, 2019 | General
The Ida Lupino film, The Bigamist (1953), turns Edmond O’Brien into a romantic. Director Lupino co-stars in the piece and, like scriptwriter Collier Young, is in a romantic mood; albeit, to be sure, O’Brien’s character is a bigamist. He is married to both Lupino and Joan Fontaine (unknown to each other), but is almost an angel in his liaisons with them. A true lover of both.
Lupino once remarked that as a director she was “the poor man’s Don Siegel.” (Remember The Hitchhiker?) Not exactly. Not with a film like The Bigamist, which is sober and character-driven. In the 1950s Europeans were making movies meant for adults not youngsters, but few Hollywood products had such an aim. Lupino’s film, although it’s no Le Amiche, is rather different. It won’t offend anybody but it will bore the kids. It has a grown-up gravity. I like it.
by Dean | Dec 29, 2018 | General
A Sea-Air-Land (SEAL) team member carries his Colt Commando assault rifle through the woods during a field training exercise. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Lone Survivor (2014) is an excellently wrought war movie that lets us know just how long a severely wounded human body can last. The wounds keep coming to the four Navy SEALs entrusted to a failed operation amid the forest trees of Afghanistan (and the SEALs give as good as they get). Another film based on a true story, though at long last it gets rather tiresome, it is incontestably powerful and has a mostly good momentum.
The dialogue is lousy—coarse—and apparently LS is not always journalistically accurate. But I agree with James Bowman that director Peter Berg’s “great achievement . . . is to take away the media’s political filter and show us war as men actually experience it, albeit at an unusually high level of intensity.” Too, it has a bigness about it that other contemporary war flicks lack.
by Dean | Dec 27, 2018 | General
William Wellman directed many serious films (The Ox-Bow Incident, The Story of G.I. Joe, Nothing Sacred) as well as superficial but pleasurable pop pictures like Yellow Sky, a 1948 Western wherein a band of thieves muscles in to take advantage of someone else’s gold claim. The someone else is Anne Baxter‘s “Mike” (a nickname for a very pretty tomboy) and her grandfather (James Barton), certainly not a match for six armed lawbreakers.
Wellman’s wild bunch, filmed in long shots on parched earth, snub and pound each other until real schisms develop. Gregory Peck is somewhat miscast as an outlaw, but at least his character grows in nobility. He gives the same dad-gum performance, though, that he gave in every movie. Lamar Trotti’s script is colorful and integrated. All the same, it is hardly edifying that the film implies that what will set a young woman on the right path is being tackled and smooched, yea, even by a thief. We’re grateful the smoocher is not a rapist.
by Dean | Dec 24, 2018 | General
The interesting plot of God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness (2018) has Pastor Dave (David A.R. White) harriedly fighting an eminent domain plan pursued by fictitious Hadleigh University against Dave’s long-standing church. The church is located on the university’s campus, but owns the land it was built on. Wanting the land for itself, Hadleigh, a state institution, considers the church a bad P.R. entity for several reasons. One is that Pastor Dave just got out of jail for properly refusing to have his sermons evaluated by the local government. Another is that an act of vandalism against the church has led to the accidental death of a newly hired co-pastor.
The vandal is an ordinary young man and lost soul (Mike C. Manning) who is frustrated by his doubting Christian girlfriend’s resistance to unreligious living. The film tells us that in New Century America any kind of assault on Christian people is possible, perhaps inevitable. But America is complex, so we are also told that sometimes a move against a church is merely practical, not persecutory; as witness what the university does.
I have never seen a faith-based, Evangelical movie depict as much human anguish as A Light in Darkness does. Not only do many things take their toll on Pastor Dave, but Keaton (Samantha Boscarino), the vandal’s girlfriend, and the boyfriend himself go through arrant hardship. It isn’t quite clear, however, what the Faith situation for Keaton is.
If this is a flaw, it isn’t much of one compared with the sentimental unlikelihood with which the film concludes. It is a message of anti-polarization in society. Good luck with that.
Another observation: White and John Corbett (as Dave’s lawyer brother) deepen the film and are never false.
It was directed and co-written by Michael Mason.
