by Dean | May 2, 2017 | General
The Maltese Falcon (1941 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I have never desired to see the 1931 film of The Maltese Falcon, but only John Huston‘s acclaimed 1941 version. This is because Huston had the ability to make any movie a Big Deal, an event, without pretentiousness but certainly not without artistry, as is the case with Maltese. He had a capital Sam Spade in Bogart and didn’t sanitize the character. Indecent in many ways, Spade looks quasi-angelic next to the sneaky felons played by Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, both fascinating.
by Dean | Apr 30, 2017 | General
The Promise (2017), by Terry George, is a film about love and mass murder in the Ottoman Empire in 1914. An Armenian medical student, Michael (Oscar Isaac), is engaged to be married but drifts into an easy love for another man’s sweetheart, Ana (Charlotte Le Bon), also Armenian. That these two are Armenian inescapably makes them targets for a stronger power—the Turks—who start destroying those of this particular ethnic group.
The movie is often beautiful and always transporting, a big-screen treat. (I have no desire to see it on the small screen.) But it is not the cinematic epic Hollywood should have given us, except for its dealing with the Armenian genocide. Director George and Robin Swicord have penned a highly predictable and often trite screenplay. Trite: after Michael and Ana make love one night, the film cuts to Michael still in bed, looking at a fully dressed Ana as she dutifully puts up her hair. . . Also, there is nonsense. An Armenian captive prefers having a bullet lodged under his facial skin to its being taken out. (Hey, it isn’t fatal yet.) And why do the Turks permit the Armenians to carry crates of explosives when the Turks themselves are at risk?
After reading Read’s Scarpia, I am dumbfounded by how inadequate a period piece The Promise is. I don’t regret, even so, seeing it in a theatre, and you may not either. How disappointment can be kept at bay, though, I do not know.
by Dean | Apr 27, 2017 | General
![Cover of "Cinderella Man [HD DVD]"](//ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XS0V12S2L._SL350_.jpg "Cover of \"Cinderella Man [HD DVD]\"")
Cover of Cinderella Man [HD DVD]
On the caricature side, in this chronicle of the early-adult life of boxer James Braddock (Russell Crowe), there is 1) a repulsive Max Baer and 2) a dismal fat cat who revokes Braddock’s license to box after Braddock fails to put on a good show. Then there’s Braddock’s wife Mae (Rene Zellweger), more a cliché than a caricature; she dislikes her husband’s profession, his being “a punching bag.” She visits Braddock’s manager to protest. Gad!
Cinderella Man is watchable, though, because it’s captivatingly honest enough about poverty, and the boxing scenes are exciting, supplely executed, and perfectly edited. The poverty is that of the Great Depression, during which Braddock makes very little money since he is unable to fight. But a second ascent for this nice Catholic man finally begins. Howard’s film doesn’t stick in the gray matter, but it is inspirational. And far superior to A Beautiful Mind.
by Dean | Apr 23, 2017 | General
Cover of McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Robert Altman‘s McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) does appear to be far more truthful about the American West than other Westerns (i.e., mythological Westerns). However, I don’t know which is more ill-written—the movie’s Leonard Cohen songs or the Altman-Brian McKay script. Er . . . it has to be the script.
Warren Beatty enacts a profane cynic who becomes a dominating businessman in a frontier town, and gradually he begins a relationship with a brothel madam (Julie Christie) which is pretty hazy. The film is boringly and laughably anti-capitalist and has a lot of lame, dopey dialogue. Although it isn’t Beatty’s fault, he doesn’t really know what kind of man he is portraying, and yet his acting is assuredly superior to that of Christie and Rene Auberjonois, who are merely going through the motions.
The costumes and production design are exactly what a non-mythological Western should have. Even so, I said the Beatty character, John McCabe, is a profane cynic; hence it comes as no surprise that Altman’s film is an offputting, foul-mouthed (and unfocused) mess.
by Dean | Apr 20, 2017 | General
Initially, Doris Day‘s acting in the 1953 Calamity Jane is self-conscious, rather phony, but it improves as the movie goes on; and needless to say she performs outstandingly in her musical numbers.
The choreography for the song, “Just Blew In From the Windy City,” really has Day travelling, doing everything but jumping through hoops, and the tune resembles the other tunes by being snappily fun. The nice ballad, “Secret Love,” is a truncated “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas,” but both it and another ballad, “The Black Hills of Dakota,” deserve their places here.
Doris is a lot cuter than the real—and homely—Calamity Jane, although for a long time zero femininity emanates from her. Enter the undeniably feminine Allyn Ann McLarie to balance things out. A good singer, she arouses the interest of a great singer, Howard Keel (as Wild Bill Hickok).
Most of the films of David Butler, who directed CJ, I’ve never heard of, but I’m glad I’ve heard of this one. It is a winsome entertainment.
Calamity Jane (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Apr 18, 2017 | General
I finished watching on DVD the fourth season of The Americans.
Like so many other Communists, from Lenin to Mao, from Beria to Che Guevara, Elizabeth and Philip are murderers. Out of self-protection, they kill people. It’s pretty gripping when the distraught black woman insists that she and Elizabeth confess (not to spying but to another crime) to the police, and this prompts Liz to kill her.
Pastor Tim (Kelly AuCoin) gets spared, though, albeit his wife Alice (Suzy Jane Hunt) hotly and frantically accuses Elizabeth and Philip of having had the dude rubbed out in Ethiopia. Mom and Dad really appreciate your telling Pastor Tim that they’re Russian spies, Paige.
Oh, well. Be that as it may, 15-year-old Paige (Holly Taylor) is a pleasant girl. Indeed, we all thought she was a Christian, but . . . is she?
Also: sorry to see good-looking Annet Mahendru (Nina) go.
by Dean | Apr 16, 2017 | General
A woman, Leslie Strobel, converts to Christianity in the new Pure Flix film The Case for Christ (2017) and, wisely, it is depicted with subtlety. Her husband Lee also converts (at the end of the film), but by then subtlety is gone. The unbelievers in the audience squirm. The Case for Christ is ALMOST squirm-proof, however, as it proffers some interesting material about a busy atheist and his uncommon marriage.
Lee and Leslie are real-life persons, Lee being a former Chicago journalist. Selfish and loutish, he cannot accept Leslie as a Christian and he tries to discredit the faith through interviewing skeptics and Bible experts about the Resurrection. The info in the interviews supporting the Resurrection we have long been familiar with, but Lee Strobel in the late 1970s was not familiar with it. To be sure, it isn’t quite as intellectually strong as screenwriter Brian Bird and director Jon Gunn think it is, but it is strong. All the same, Kevin McLenithan is right that “Brian Bird’s great contribution [to the film] is to make Strobel’s marriage, rather than his investigation, the centerpiece of the story.” It is this that is interesting. Leslie tells a frustrated Lee that now that she has found Jesus Christ, she loves her husband even more than she did previously, and it rings true. The very thing, this, that no atheist or agnostic can possibly, truly understand.
As Lee and Leslie, Mike Vogel and Erika Christensen are splendidly persuasive, and effective also are Alfie Davis and Robert Forster. The movie has a knowing, talented cinematographer in Brian Shanley.
Onward, Pure Flix, and next time, more subtlety!
by Dean | Apr 10, 2017 | General
Cover of The Collector
I stopped reading John Fowles’s absorbing novel, The Collector, once it seemed to be getting philosophically dark; my own philosophy of life is not dark.
The book’s plot concerns an English art student, female, who is held prisoner by an unstable English bank clerk who claims to love her. Released in 1965 was a William Wyler film version—an intelligent quasi-Hitchcock version starring Terence Stamp as the bank clerk (and collector of dead butterflies) and Samantha Eggar as the student.
As usual, Wyler knew how to direct the film—notwithstanding there is too much of Maurice Jarre‘s music on the soundtrack—and the Stanley Mann-John Kohn screenplay, though dark, is without philosophical despair. It never reaches a philosophical plateau; but, yes, it is dark. As John Simon informed us, evil here prospers in the end. Certain people in society have an appetite for violation. Those on whom the appetite is turned may not survive.
Stamp and Eggar are just about the only actors in The Collector, and what a job they do! Eggar, incidentally, later commented that Stamp had a “nasty attitude” toward her. If this is true, I’m sorry Stamp didn’t believe in gallantry. Up to a point, the disturbed guy he’s playing does.
by Dean | Apr 9, 2017 | General
There is stale armed rebellion stuff (the rebellion is justified) in the recent Star Wars pic, Rogue One (2016), but the film is typically pleasantly energetic and photographically flawless, with smart lighting, etc.
To my mind, its jabba-the-hutt creepies do not make Rogue One rich enough. Felicity Jones, however, provides femininity and okay acting as Jyn Erso, a survivor-warrior; and there’s an enjoyable robot, or droid.
Directed by Gareth Edwards.
by Dean | Apr 5, 2017 | General
Cover of Counsellor-at-Law
I don’t quite understand what the film Counsellor at Law (1933), derived from a play by Elmer Rice, is about, but it certainly holds the viewer. This is thanks mostly to director William Wyler and his actors.
John Barrymore carries the film beautifully, with force and despair, and the women here are nigh enthralling. A successful New York lawyer (Barrymore) becomes imperiled in more ways than one as Wyler’s camera captures the unceasing contacts and interaction in this particular law firm. Regarding his direction, Wyler said, “No critic ever wrote that [the movie] was just a photographed stage play.” No, indeed. The play has been thoroughly cinematized. Indeed, Wyler’s directing is so astute and sensitive we can forgive the film’s irritatingly pat conclusion.
![Cover of "Cinderella Man [HD DVD]"](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XS0V12S2L._SL350_.jpg "Cover of \"Cinderella Man [HD DVD]\"")
