by Dean | Nov 8, 2016 | General
Cover of The Opposite of Sex
The teenaged girl acted by Christina Ricci in the 1998 Don Roos film, The Opposite of Sex, is unsavory and callow and makes a number of politically incorrect remarks about homosexuals (the impetus: her gay half-brother). Despite this, the movie is every bit as pro-gay as it is pro-straight if pro-straight is a necessary designation. What it so tritely and predictably scorns are evangelical Christians. It pretends to understand homosexuality when in fact it is as ignorant as a stone, and about Christianity it is not ignorant so much as culpably blind.
by Dean | Nov 6, 2016 | General
Cover of Duel (Collector’s Edition)
Man-made cars and the interstate highway system are not the modern wonders to make us forget, and not be shocked by, the strange brutality in human behavior. Indeed, it is on the interstate that businessman David Mann (Dennis Weaver)—in Steven Spielberg‘s Duel (1971)—encounters a stranger who tries to off him with a tanker truck, the reason for which is never revealed. It is activity as absurd as it is horrible.
Spielberg’s first notable success, Duel is a made-for-TV action thriller which has been called “Jaws on wheels” except that it’s a better flick than Master Steven’s Jaws. It has a shaky climax, but is consistently fun and nicely economical. The smart script is by Richard Matheson, and Weaver is constantly on screen but never abandoned by skill. As well, Duel is one of those many 1970s films enamored of rural American settings, as though it is only in these pristine outdoor places that insights about life may be had.
by Dean | Nov 3, 2016 | General
![Cover of "The Siege [Blu-ray]"](//ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51PcaaYPBdL._SL350_.jpg "Cover of \"The Siege [Blu-ray]\"")
Cover of The Siege [Blu-ray]
Not when the balderdash is this strong.
About the only item to be taken seriously here is that, even in 1998, Arab terrorism in the United States is, to whatever degree, a continual threat. The most preposterous item is that a U.S. army general, during a state of martial law in New York City, becomes so brutish as to torture and even kill an Arab who is an American citizen. Or is the martial law itself the most preposterous item?
The CIA agent Annette Bening plays, by the way, is there when the torture goes on, and why she tolerates it is hard to fathom. Patently the filmmakers were dreadfully sloppy in creating her character: she is a pleasant woman made to look like an utter fool. Little does director Edward Zwick know it, but virtually the same is true of the film’s black hero, the FBI agent played by Denzel Washington. Poor Zwick. He’s making a mockery of his liberal principles without knowing it.
by Dean | Nov 1, 2016 | General
The virginity of Jane The Virgin, now married, is gone. She and Michael had sex, and the show is sophisticated enough to present Jane feeling rather dismayed as though part of her identity has fallen away. But, hey, she’ll get used to it—already is used to it by the episode’s end. Why was an odd animated sequence used to confirm it? (Is this show gimmicky, or what?)
Jane and Michael are true to each other. Not so Luisa and Rose, a.k.a Sin Rostro (Bridget Regan), and no wonder. We are shown a list of Rose’s murder victims, one of whom is Luisa’s father. It’s a deal breaker, you could say, except where the lesbian sex is concerned. (Luisa will still have that. Incidentally, will she ever practice medicine again?) Anyway, Jane the Virgin is always better when sinister doings and thus police actions are taking place, as they do near the conclusion of last night’s episode. Before this, what we saw was ALMOST boring. Not quite, but almost.
by Dean | Oct 30, 2016 | General
Rachel Scott was the first person—and the first Christian—killed by the pathological murderers at Columbine High in Colorado in 1999. In the new film I’m Not Ashamed (2016), there is supposed to be some fictionalizing of Rachel’s story, but how much fictionalizing I don’t know. This in itself does not render the picture a failure, which in my view it is, though a very interesting failure—and, in fact, a film other critics have been unsurprisingly wrong about. One accused it of having “perfunctory” images, which is mostly a canard. What is true is that the cinematography here is crude, although in the daytime scenes it gets better.
Rachel (Masey McLain) is the daughter of a born-again mother, divorced. Through the influence of a relative she, too, becomes a Christian, keeping old friends (as best she can) and making new, devout ones. She starts a wobbly love relationship, however, with a nonbelieving kid to whom she doesn’t reveal she is a Christian. Meanwhile, the two evildoers, Harris and Klebold, conspire about their future killings.
Scott is a future martyr, but what the film explores is what it means to be a religious young person in a secular environment, the struggle of a Christian youth to discover an identity and a proper, or faithful, way of life. This is something I’m Not Ashamed does well. And it is forced to show us that this secular environment can be unjust and dangerous. The moviemakers have every right to blame Darwinian theory for the killing of Christians and others at Columbine, whether it’s intellectually defensible or not. They surely see it (Darwinian theory, not evolutionary theory, to the extent it is a theory) as anti-biblical and false. This particular element, though, is not as interesting as the movie itself.
Again, an interesting failure—riveting in several ways, lame in many others. I’m glad I saw it. The acting of Miss McLain, by the way, is not lame. As Rachel she does terrifically effective and modulated work.
Directed by Brian Baugh.
![Cover of "The Siege [Blu-ray]"](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51PcaaYPBdL._SL350_.jpg "Cover of \"The Siege [Blu-ray]\"")
