by Dean | Oct 18, 2016 | General
The third season of Jane the Virgin, on the CW, has begun, with the married Jane retaining her virginity because hubby Michael has been shot and is in critical condition!
Trauma and pathos are intertwined with mildly comic flashbacks of Jane and Michael developing their mutual crush, and all of this is conventional. The unconventional stuff is on the periphery, as when Michael’s would-be killer turns out to be Sin Rostro—and what sin there is in this woman!—masquerading as a police officer. And not just any police officer, but Michael’s partner Susanna! Is this show crazy, or what?
At least it isn’t just crazy—and it isn’t tiresome yet either. Gina Rodriguez was brilliant in last night’s episode, as versatile as ever. And now that she’s playing two roles (sort of merging into one), Yael Grobglas is more of a grabber than she ever has been.
by Dean | Oct 17, 2016 | General
Will the following film ever be out on DVD or Blu-Ray, and not just VHS?
Directed by Claude Goretta, the 1977 French film, The Lacemaker, offers lovely images, lovely music, lovely nude scenes (it’s true), and a compassionate script. Its plot concerns a doomed romance between a well-to-do student and a shy working-class girl, and its theme is failure: the failure of the young, the failure of amor, the failure of sex, even psychical failure. Starring Isabelle Huppert and Yves Beneyton, it is, to me, Gallic art at its finest.
by Dean | Oct 16, 2016 | General
In the tight thriller Don’t Breathe (2016), by Fede Alvarez, three young felons attempt to rob a lot of settlement cash from a blind veteran, but are neither competent nor superhuman enough to best him. The dude is ridiculously powerful, and himself evil—for one thing, an atheistic quasi-rapist! He was the wrong monster to pick on, and a body count slowly rises. Two of the young felons deserve better.
Alvarez is a committed director, never awkward and with a talent for sobering images. A night-vision camera (or whatever it’s called) reveals the female thief, Rocky (Jane Levy), looking vulnerable as she walks around in pitch black darkness with wide, coal black eyes. Don’t Breathe is over the top but disturbingly palatable. It’s a horror show without torture porn.
by Dean | Oct 12, 2016 | General
Whit Stillman has a delectable film in Love & Friendship (2016), based on Jane Austen’s short novel Lady Susan. A fascinating Kate Beckinsale knows how to play a perfectly in-control (if wicked) woman, and there are other terrific performers to boot.
Stillman has said that his aim in writing the movie’s script was to “up” the morality and the religion in Austen’s novel. Whether this made an ultimate difference in the finished product I don’t know, but it is a work of moral resonance as well as refreshing intelligence.
by Dean | Oct 11, 2016 | General
The Fog of War (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Errol Morris‘s documentary, The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003), is a fancy and portentous flop (ugh—all those arty closeups and jump cuts!), and those “eleven lessons” in the title are simply pedestrian, banal. McNamara, LBJ’s defense secretary, claims to have learned them from his World War II days, Vietnam days, etc. The first one is Empathize with your enemy—a therapeutic, flower-child phrase. Does it mean the Kurds—and the French—should empathize with ISIS? Does it mean ISIS should empathize with . . . Westerners? Fat chance of that happening!
Another lesson is Belief and seeing are both often wrong. How elementary can you get! And how clumsy that phrase is! Then there’s Get the data and Rationality will not save us. Er, okay, but rationality certainly has a way of helping a lot; and, anyway, what’s the alternative?
As for the Vietnam conflict, it was a Vietnamese civil war within the context of the Cold War. So McNamara apparently thinks. I dislike our military involvement in that conflict almost as much as McNamara, but this is an inaccurate description of it. Worse, particularly since it involves a former defense secretary, that Cold War context is more important than he seems to realize.
by Dean | Oct 9, 2016 | General
![Cover of "The Illusionist [Blu-ray]"](//ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514UM2MxoJL._SL350_.jpg "Cover of \"The Illusionist [Blu-ray]\"")
Cover of The Illusionist [Blu-ray]
I got bored with Steven Millhauser’s short story, “Eisenheim the Illusionist,” and so stopped reading it. I’m glad it was transferred to the screen, however, for there is much to love in this curious movie. Norton’s Eisenheim works as a mind-boggling illusionist in 19th-century Vienna and is in love with Sophie von Teschen (Jessica Biel), the aristocratic inamorata of a callous prince (Rufus Sewell). Illusions are everywhere in the film, all performed by Eisenheim—unless the illusions are real. Burger keeps us guessing. What the whole of Vienna believes to be reality, in fact, turns out to be a happy falsehood.
The film uses a couple of the iris-outs so appreciated by director Francois Truffaut, and indeed The Illusionist greatly resembles Truffaut’s period pieces, e.g. The Story of Adele H., though without the customary charm. Cinematographer Dick Pope’s lighting cannot be improved on; truly the film has a look. Prague nicely stands in for Vienna, and the costumes of Ngila Dickson are unpretentiously agreeable. Philip Glass’s score is respectable if sometimes shopworn.
The film is entertaining as well as marred by plenty of flaws. For one thing, it’s a bit plebeian, and for another, I wish Jessica Biel’s acting had more sparkle, more imagination, for all her good looks.
by Dean | Oct 6, 2016 | General
Edith Wharton’s “Atrophy” is a first-rate short story about . . . well, the atrophy, the wasting away of human relationships. It parallels the physical condition of the ailing illicit lover of Nora Frenway, married to a man with his own “weak health” as well as a “bad temper” and “unsatisfied vanity.” So, yes, there has been adultery: Nora tries to visit the ailing lover, who is unmarried, but is coolly prevented by the man’s sister. If an illegitimate affair is not insufficient in one way, it will be insufficient in another.
As good as “Atrophy” is, I’m glad Wharton didn’t write about adultery in the late story, “All Souls’.” This, as the narrator remarks, “isn’t exactly a ghost story,” although it is assuredly a mysterious one wherein the practice of the dark arts might be taking place. After breaking her foot, the recuperating Sara Clayburn believes her house is, except for herself, empty of people and completely, eerily silent, but her maid Agnes denies this. That a strange woman on All Soul’s eve might have something to do with this phenomenon is perhaps what keeps Sara from seeking the “natural explanation of the mystery” she hopes is there. We may hope it is too, but what if the dark arts are involved?
After reading these stories, and two others I perused some years ago, I have to wonder if it was possible for Wharton to pen a bad short story. She was a born fiction writer.
by Dean | Oct 4, 2016 | General
Cover of Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl
The Chinese actress, Joan Chen, has a fine if very unhappy film in Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl (1999), which Chen directed and co-wrote.
Clearly influenced by the artistic drive and anti-totalitarian pessimism of such directors as Zhang Yimou and Tian Zhuangzhuang, Chen’s story is that of a city girl’s emotional and spiritual decline after she is sent by the Mao government to work in the country as a horse-herder. This is during the 1970s, and the imposed duty is supposed to be temporary, but . . . Xiu Xiu comes to learn of the Red system’s cruel neglect and dehumanization of its citizens.
Lu Lu enacts the title role with spunk and sparkle and convincing pathos. Lopsang provides manliness and charm as the Tibetan horse-herder in charge of young Xiu Xiu—he who never has sex with the girl (unlike some vile Communist officials) because he has no male organ. But what stands out more than the performances is the way this compelling film was made. The editing and Chen’s directing are mercurial but adept, as is evident from the footage of the plains. Adroitly captured are the boredom and solitude in this region of wind, grass, horses and expansive skies. A surfeit of closeups appears (a common gripe of mine) but nice things are done with proliferating medium and long shots too. As for Lu Yue’s cinematography, it is decidedly suitable for the bald realism in the film; it is dim only when it ought to be and never overlighted. It avoids the postcard beauty that critics are always objecting to, and yet its colors aren’t ugly either. It is a memorable film. Good choices, Miss Chen. Good work.
by Dean | Sep 29, 2016 | General
American Beauty (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
American Beauty (1999) is about a discontent suburbanite whose go-getter wife and truculent daughter disdain him, and who falls in love with his daughter’s beautiful best friend. It involves some other folks too, among them a harsh Marine officer who is a repressed homosexual. Whoa! Bad idea, you say? Yes, it is; as hoary as it is cheap. The Marine’s homophobia is frowned on, his “reactionary” love of discipline scorned. He must be made to pay. Curiously, however, his dope-pushing, dope-smoking son receives the filmmakers’ sympathy (though, in fairness, his father receives some too) and is never made to pay.
Homosexuality, though, is not a major subject here. Heterosexuality is. The heterosexual lives, that is, of the characters played by Kevin Spacey (the discontent suburbanite), Annette Bening, Thora Birch, et al. While watching the film I thought another subject it was about was the folly of the American dream, but not exactly. It makes the point that this dream is not such a folly after all, that it is perhaps . . . one of the beauties of America? In my view the beauty of the American dream goes only so far, but in any event, whatever is being said, the movie’s conclusion doesn’t cut it: it’s both rosy and stupidly implausible. It doesn’t convince us of the goodness of the American dream. It merely confirms that the film has gone awry.
Though deeply blemished, American Beauty does have its assets. What with Sam Mendes‘s bright direction, Conrad Hall’s flawless cinematography, and Thomas Newton’s eccentric yet restrained music, it tries to be art. Many images are superbly sensuous, and not just the sexy ones. The technicians here knew what they were doing; the screenwriter, Alan Ball, didn’t. His script’s profundity is nil.
If you want an inoffensive, non-tendentious opus about an unhappy married man who falls for a teenage girl, read John Cheever’s story, “The Country Husband.” It is five times as appealing as American Beauty, for all its dandy visuals.
by Dean | Sep 27, 2016 | General
The Bridge on the River Kwai (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), by David Lean, is a film of elevations. People move around on top of mountains, banks, bridges; and there are shots of the sky above treetops. Natural (and manmade) grandeur is frequently close to where men are working and warring and suffering.
Lean has a perfect sense of this grandeur, while—-regrettably—his film is weak in characterization. Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) and the soldier Shears (William Holden) seem like prototypes of something but not much more, and so they’re obscure. However, it is fine for the picture to ask what is and what is not insanity in war, and to point out the insanity of helping the enemy: the Japanese army in WWII.
A British-American effort filmed in Ceylon, Bridge is Lean’s first epic. It’s not necessarily one of his best movies, but it shares with his other works the benefit of unmistakable art.
![Cover of "The Illusionist [Blu-ray]"](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514UM2MxoJL._SL350_.jpg "Cover of \"The Illusionist [Blu-ray]\"")
