by Dean | Jul 12, 2016 | General
On the second season of Turn (on DVD):
One wonders why there aren’t more protections for people in the Revolutionary War series, Turn, as when the reprehensible Lt. John Simcoe (Samuel Roukin) is sent by the British army to take command of a group of punks but has no accompanying soldiers to prevent the punks from doing violence to Simcoe. As it happens, Simcoe doesn’t need protection—a likely story!—but, really, no-protection is often just part of the existential circumstances in this world of conflict and spies (for George Washington).
Spy Abraham Woodhull (Jamie Bell) gets knocked around but good, but knows the risk he’s always running. It’s the falsely accused and the betrayed who are frequently unaware of terrible risks. It’s a nifty cliffhanger when poor Major Hewlitt (Burn Gorman), a Brit, is foolishly seized. . . J.J. Feild, an American actor playing the British John Andre, maintains nice chemistry with Ksenia Solo (as Peggy Shippen), and so far their scenes together have been a small respite from the bloody goings-on. But for how long?
by Dean | Jul 11, 2016 | General
English: Actor Matthew McConaughey at the 83rd Academy Awards. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Not everything in the new Civil War movie, The Free State of Jones (2016), makes sense, but it is a worthwhile product. Lifted from history, it focuses on Confederate army deserters and runaway slaves, led by Matthew McConaughey‘s Newton Knight, who live for a long while in a swamp.
That self-serving Confederate soldiers intent on stealing a Southern woman’s hogs never return to her house after Newt and four females, armed with rifles, hold them off is one of the nonsensical items here. And yet there is a nice historical scope to Jones, and it is rich and transportingly presented.
Set, of course, in a Christian sphere, the story proffers a gent who is—and, in history, was—a pseudo-Christian activist. He is properly anti-slavery but also parts from his wife (Keri Russell) without divorcing her and starts living with ex-slave Rachel (Gugu Mbatha-Raw). (In history, he had a bunch of children with her.) This is Newt Knight. Can’t deny he is interesting.
by Dean | Jul 7, 2016 | General
Cover of The Dreamlife of Angels
The main characters in Erick Zonca‘s The Dreamlife of Angels (1998) are cheerful Isa (Elodie Bouchez) and frowning, self-absorbed Marie (Natacha Reguier), who form a brief friendship.
Far more important to Marie than this friendship is her agonizing romance with well-to-do Chris (Gregoire Colin), a two-timing nightclub owner. In Marie and Chris, Zonca has characters an audience might feel superior to, but not in Isa, who, although not perfect, is friendly and generous. Marie and Chris, on the other hand, are callous. To the latter the former is, as Isa remarks, “just another girl”: the romance is doomed.
I do not understand the title of this French film; is it merely highly ironic? If so, that irony in itself is interesting. Whatever the case, La Vie Revee des Anges is easily one of the finest movies of the Nineties, a probing, dramatically strong artwork with an original, i.e. unadapted, screenplay. It eschews French talkiness and French pessimism (it is not merely dark). Moreover, it seems to be saying—albeit it’s something we all know—that there is no alternative to a life of self-control and some, or much, conventionality. Isa looks for and finds work; despite whatever odd jobs Marie has had in the past, she doesn’t really want to work (except, if she can, for Chris). Nothing good results from this. Also, for Marie friendship is a tenuous thing. She has little desire to maintain it. A stable sex life, admittedly not without love, is preferable.
I urge you to seek out Dreamlife.
(In French with English subtitles)
by Dean | Jul 6, 2016 | General
They Live by Night (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There is an agreeable premise in Nicholas Ray‘s They Live by Night (1948): a young ex-con who robs a bank loves, and hits the road with, a saucy gal who knows better than to rob banks.
Bowie (Farley Granger) wants the straight-and-narrow while on the lam, but ordeals do arise. . . Keechie, Bowie’s wife, is a country girl whom the filmmakers glamorize a bit. She is played by Cathy O’Donnell with her semi-innocent, semi-sophisticated face.
Ray’s film is pretty naturalistic at first, but the romantic ooze it provides does nothing to spoil the story’s appeal. Bowie and Keechie live by night. Accent on the word “live,” for they do live—though they are also running. If you’ve heard the names Bowie and Keechie before, it may be from Robert Altman’s lousy remake of They Live by Night, titled Thieves Like Us, which is the title of the novel the two flicks are based on.
by Dean | Jun 30, 2016 | General
Jesus Camp (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The 2006 documentary Jesus Camp should have been a movie called The Religious Lives of Children—whose subject is exactly that—since that’s partly what the film is, anyway. The religious lives of Christian children are in full swing here. Instead, what directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady have engendered is a basically anti-right-wing scare-fest about an evangelical, pentecostalist camp for young kids, sent there by their born-again parents.
In all fairness, never do Ewing and Grady mock or sneer at the Christian people in Jesus Camp, and Pastor Ted Haggard, who became a sad case after a gay sex scandal, plays into the filmmakers’ hands by making a buffoon of himself before their cameras. That hardly keeps the film, however, from being tendentious secularist hogwash.
