by Dean | Nov 4, 2018 | General
The 2018 film Chappaquiddick treats Senator Ted Kennedy as though he were a very unscrupulous tragic hero save he doesn’t die at the end, which is significant. Kennedy goes on living, after dopily getting together with Mary Jo Kopechne and driving her to her doom: oxygen deprivation in a car underwater. “Kopechne died because Kennedy dithered” (Daniel Oliver), and after this, a true tragic hero would have died, perhaps by suicide.
This is not to say that John Curran‘s film isn’t a good one; it is. Sympathy goes to Kopechne—how could it not?—but even more of it goes to Kennedy, and one may be in high dudgeon over this. Yet it should be remembered that by consorting with Kennedy poor Mary Jo was going off with a married man. It was a grave mistake.
Jason Clarke, though, portrays Kennedy not only as a tragic hero but also as a fool, in a nicely subdued performance. I suspect that director Curran did not work that thoroughly with his actors—they don’t always own their roles—but there’s no problem with Clancy Brown, who shows intelligent fire as Robert MacNamara, or a palatable Ed Helms. It’s about time someone made a movie about the Liberal Lion of the Senate’s failure to be charitable to a doomed girl.
by Dean | Nov 1, 2018 | General
Dennis Hopper‘s The Hot Spot is a lurid sex ‘n’ violence medley from 1990.
Its pulp story is second-rate with its mad, insatiable Virginia Madsen character and excessively defeated blackmailer (William Sadler). Hopper wants us to have a good time, however, primarily through scenes of nudity, so it’s a pretty low enterprise. It would be, anyway, even if the utterly enticing yet innocent looks of Jennifer Connelly call for a favorable comment. Even so, she and Madsen are certifiably limited here as actors, and Don Johnson is miscast as a smart, greedy drifter-thief. Hopper may have been a bit corrupted by playing in Blue Velvet.
by Dean | Oct 27, 2018 | General
The serial murderer in the spooky The Spiral Staircase (1946) is the worst kind of man there could be—one who targets women who are especially vulnerable, women with “afflictions.” Not always a sympathetic character, old, ailing Mrs. Warren (Ethel Barrymore) is nevertheless right to urge her hired helper Helen (Dorothy McGuire), who is mute, to leave the vicinity. The handsome Dr. Parry (Kent Smith), beginning to love Helen, agrees. However, death (at the hand of the killer) has been in the town; now death is in the house!
Robert Siodmak‘s film is cleverly shot to look now fey, now horror-noirish. It is very consistent with its melancholia, and its cast seems like old friends (ours). Credit must go to Mel Dinelli, too, for script-adapting what is probably a fine entertainment novel by Ethel Lina White.
by Dean | Oct 23, 2018 | General
Improbability rises to the sky in the crime movie, Pendulum (1969), but I find it fascinating for its honesty about civil libertarian trends, criminals, and male-female relationships. Police captain Frank Matthews (George Peppard) arrested a murderer-rapist named Sanderson only to see him turned loose—ultimately by the Supreme Court—but still impenitent. Subsequently Matthews, rightly believing his wife Adele (Jean Seberg) to be an adulterer, is arrested for the crime of slaying her and her lover. But Matthews gets away from his fellow police, for he strongly suspects the (vengeful) killing was done by Sanderson and he intends to hunt him down.
Stanley Niss‘s plot grows feeble because the authorities would have suspected crazy Sanderson as much as Matthews does, but they don’t. More interesting than good, Pendulum, directed by George Schaefer, does yield a message or two, one of which is about the fundamental inadequacy of circumstantial evidence. This may keep you watching the film, but probably not as much as the solid acting of Richard Kiley and Madeleine Sherwood and the first-rate looks of Jean Seberg. Or the first-rate looks of George Peppard.
The flick can be seen on YouTube.
by Dean | Oct 21, 2018 | General
In-Lawfully Yours is a 2016 faith-based—or Christian—picture which for a long time resembles a good Frank Capra comedy.
Divorcing her husband after he two-times her, Jesse soon falls for a small-town minister who is solemnly told that Jesse is a bad influence on him. (Chelsey Crisp and Philip Boyd are droll and pleasant as Jesse and hubby.) The filmmakers do not believe this, albeit, well, it’s true that Jesse has never converted to the Faith. But she’s learning.
The Capraesque delight fails to last. I don’t care about a few comedic cliches, or some intermittent oddity, but, once again in a faith-based movie, there is conversion propaganda. It is allied with hey-God-is-on-your-side theology, and this theology will save your soul. All in all, the film becomes rather silly, in more ways than one. Jesse, for example, says it’s okay that Ben, her minister-lover, recently engaged in an angry food fight. But it wasn’t just a food fight. Ben struck Jesse’s ex-husband with his fist. I am more impressed by the cast of In-Lawfully Yours than by its Christianity. I must consider the pic a mere bauble.
