by Dean | Apr 2, 2017 | General
The fourth season of The Americans on DVD—I’m watching it.
Things start going wrong for Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth (Keri Russell), the two Soviet spies with American accents in D.C., just when the Soviet Union itself is shown to be limping along (to the end of the road?). The FBI discovers that Martha (Alison Wright), one of its paper-filin’ secretaries, married, without knowing it, a KGB officer! That would be Phillip. Worse, Martha becomes a traitor. Martha’s boss (Richard Thomas) never had a clue. Our enemies, however dangerous, are not as efficient as we continually think.
Despite the straining of our credulity, the first seven episodes of Season 4 are fun and compelling. Viewers of Season 5, I’m right behind you.
by Dean | Mar 31, 2017 | General
Cover of Under the Sand
On Under the Sand (2000):
Like Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s Maborosi, this French film by Francois Ozon centers on the mysteriousness of an individual death, but it is far less effective than that masterly Japanese picture. For one thing, it seems to also center on a person’s irrational, even insane, response to an individual death, a loved one’s death, and this possibility merely leaves the film obscure. More importantly, it is bland and dull—like so many other French films nowadays, distinctly un-entertaining. Art such as that in Under the Sand shouldn’t be as dry as sand.
The presence of Charlotte Rampling doesn’t help much. I like her graceful, poignant performance as well as her fetching smile and lovely hair, but she deserves a better movie. Existential mystery is poorly served by this weakling of a film.
(In French with English subtitles)
by Dean | Mar 28, 2017 | General
Cover of Scotland, PA
In Scotland, PA (2001), director-screenwriter Billy Morrisette parodies, and transfers to 1975, Macbeth. By adapting a violent classic for a series of well-photographed scenes, Morrisette proves sort of a comic Claude Chabrol, out for fun. His film is hilarious, and the cinematography by Wally Pfister is brightly handsome when it isn’t tellingly dim.
Not only is Scotland, PA—well acted by James Le Gros, Maura Tierney, and a few others—not a tragedy, it cannot even be called a tragicomedy. Just a dark farce, with Morrisette completely indifferent to Shakespeare’s themes. And it’s a slapdash dark farce at that. Have a good time.
by Dean | Mar 26, 2017 | General
A Little Night Music (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If there are decent sets and costumes for A Little Night Music, these and the pop pleasure of Stephen Sondheim‘s songs make this 1970s musical comedy recommendable. The book by Hugh Wheeler is worthless. Granted, few books for musicals are what they ought to be, but do they have to be this bad? Wheeler’s work is “suggested” by the Ingmar Bergman film, Smiles of a Summer Night, which, the last time I saw it, disappointed me. The whole second act of the libretto is muddled and dopey; I couldn’t abide Henrik’s and Anne’s frequent running around or the Russian roulette business. In both acts of the libretto, Madame Armfeldt is as loathsome as she is in Bergman’s movie—more so, in fact.
The music, however, makes the difference. “Now,” “Every Day a Little Death” and “Send in the Clowns” are all minor gems. Not so the cheap “Remember?” but the lyrical vulgarity in the snappy “The Miller’s Son,” coming as it does from Petra the maid, is appropriate. I don’t know how long it’s been since A Little Night Music was revived on Broadway, but I give one cheer over its being revived (some years ago) in Tulsa. With limited appeal, it is a theatrical event.
(To the right, the poster for the film, not the stage show)
by Dean | Mar 22, 2017 | General
My Night at Maud’s (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Years ago, Eric Rohmer wrote the story, “My Night at Maud’s,” one of his Six Moral Tales, before he filmed it. In my opinion, the film gets boring; the written story, for all its dialogue, does not.
Seldom in his oeuvre did Rohmer make as many references to Catholic, or Christian, faith as he did in “Maud’s.” The Michelin engineer (unnamed), living in Clermont-Ferrand in France, befriends for a short time the beautiful divorcee, Maud. He also necks with her a bit despite being a Catholic who believes he is destined, or predestined, to marry a fellow Catholic named Francoise. Resistant to having sex with Maud, the engineer nevertheless makes the mistake, on a dangerously snowy night, of lying down next to Maud on her bed for an night’s ordinary sleep. Maud’s mistake is putting her arms around the man and pressing her body against his.
Still, no sex.
And then there’s Francoise. Gradually the matter of forgiveness pops up: Will the engineer forgive Francoise for a particular amatory-sexual sin? The themes that emerge in Rohmer’s story are spiritual playing-with-fire, perfidy in severe and mild forms, and the challenges to chastity. It is a successful Christian tale which I don’t believe should have been made into a movie, unlike another moral tale, “Claire’s Knee,” which is okay as a movie.
