by Dean | May 26, 2016 | General
Film poster for Starting Over – Copyright 1979, Paramount Pictures (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
What might be a decent novel is, here, an unsatisfying film. The script is wobbly, and the strikingly handsome Burt Reynolds, with his star quality, is miscast as an ordinary, somewhat less-than-virile gent.
Starting Over (1979) does effectively focus, though, on the internal psychological ping-pong experienced by divorced and recently unattached people.
Directed by Alan J. Pakula.
by Dean | May 25, 2016 | General
Cover of The Song of Bernadette
The central character in The Song of Bernadette (1943) is a good girl who becomes a devout and holy one. In Lourdes, France she sees a vision of a lady who eventually says “I am the Immaculate Conception” and so convinces all that she is the Blessed Virgin. The film, well directed by Henry King, is about changes and revelations related to the soul. . . Really, a Protestant doesn’t know what to make of a pronouncement like “I am the Immaculate Conception,” but this might induce one to contemplate whether all his theological beliefs are true. . .
Although I’ve never read the Franz Werfel novel on which the movie is based, I can declare Bernadette a beautiful and sensitive cinematic work. Jennifer Jones enacts a spiritual person flawlessly.
by Dean | May 24, 2016 | General
I was never drawn to regularly watching the FOX series, Gotham, but Monday’s season finale was a barn burner. It was busy but not too busy, with a cliffhanger involving monsters, and everything is at stake!
Also, Ben McKenzie (Jim Gordon) released his acting chops in a pronounced way.
by Dean | May 23, 2016 | General
The ten-page short story “Substitutes,” by Viet Dinh, takes place in Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. Expectably, the Vietnamese Communists resemble Nazis and the Vietnamese people resemble Jews, with the story’s setting almost entirely limited to a classroom where a succession of teachers disappears at the hands of the new rulers. Work over education, false propaganda over the truth—it transpires that this is what the victorious Communists represent. With its fine premise, Dinh’s story is savvily and straightforwardly written.
So is Judy Troy’s “The Order of Things.” Here, a Lutheran minister, Carl, ultimately thinks he must walk away from the pastorate after having an adulterous affair. Some words by Saint Theresa, however, leave him understanding that although he has been unthinking, he has not been unloving, and perhaps this is a fulcrum for a certain spiritual renewal. It is an absorbing tale whose setting in Wyoming feels absolutely fitting. . . Both of these pieces won PEN/O. Henry awards, and are included in the 2009 edition of The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories.
by Dean | May 18, 2016 | General
Cover via Amazon
The 2004 Spider-Man 2 is another Sam Raimi success. Again Tobey Maguire plays the titular superhero: not a very interesting actor here, he is nonetheless passable. Kirsten Dunst was cast in these flicks before she got good.
The film asks: What does it take to create in Peter Parker the desire to be a superhero (a desire he is losing)? The answer is when Mary Jane (Dunst) urgently needs a savior. Above all—or just about—Spider-Man 2 is a love story.
Raimi’s scenes and footage are pleasantly resonant, if often familiar. It was smart of him, after showing Spidey merrily swinging amid the tall buildings, to end his movie with a closeup of Mary Jane watching at a window. A touch of class.
by Dean | May 18, 2016 | General
Monday’s season finale of Jane the Virgin was sometimes silly, as in the church right after Jane got hitched, but always rich.
Near the end, the lesbian policewoman (who is actually evil Rose!) shoots Michael, Jane’s new husband, leaving us with the gripping question: Will even a married Jane have to remain a virgin?
I’m certain Jane the Virgin is good for one more season but beyond that, who knows? Let’s have new characters replacing old ones: that will probably bolster it.
by Dean | May 16, 2016 | General
Cover via Amazon
Another movie written and directed by Preston Sturges, the 1948 Unfaithfully Yours stars Rex Harrison as the conductor of a symphony orchestra. After asking his foolish brother-in-law to keep an eye on his beloved wife (Linda Darnell) while the conductor is away, the chap learns that the brother-in-law hired a detective to do so. Appalled by this, Harrison is also eventually told of circumstantial evidence pointing to possible unfaithfulness. Refusing to give Darnell the benefit of the doubt, the conductor becomes a fierce basket case.
Bits of drama and chunks of comedy in this seriocomic romp do not gel, but amusement is certainly there. This time Sturges is uninterested in American manners and mores, which makes Unfaithfully Yours a little less winning than his other films. Even the romance with its gushing and glibness is less attractive. Claudette Colbert and even Joel McCrea showed us how it was done.
by Dean | May 15, 2016 | General
Cover of Summer Hours (The Criterion Collection)
Summer Hours (2009), a film by Olivier Assayas, is gratifyingly intelligent but it bored me a bit both times I saw it. Its fiction about a French family reveals Assayas’s concern with what threatens French culture: namely, global interests and global markets (doubtful) and the ignorance of the young (I agree). Nothing is said about Muslim immigrants, though.
The acting in SH is first-rate. Juliette Binoche is sheer genius with aplomb and emotion and facial activity. From others too—Jeremie Renier (Jeremie), Valerie Bonneton (Angela), and so on—there is anything but conventionality; all offer mesmerizing freshness. The film is quite memorable for one so static.
(In French with English subtitles)
by Dean | May 12, 2016 | General
Cover via Amazon
The Sam Raimi picture, Spider-Man (2002), starring Tobey Maguire, might have been released about the time the bullying of kids was starting to receive a whole lot of contempt, for Peter Parker is bullied disgracefully by bigger dudes. However, after turning into Spider-Man, he never avenges himself on his personal bullies but becomes a crime fighter instead, often rescuing the popular girl he loves, M.J. Watson (Kirsten Dunst). Proof, this, that the boy is now a (Spider) man, as is the awful guilt he feels concerning the death of his uncle—which is no small burden for a young mensch.
Alas, the garish Green Goblin is sort of a villain on the cheap, but he certainly doesn’t spoil the nicely photographed fun. Spider-Man is involving, vivacious, jokey—not to mention sexy-with-Dunst (and so not a complete family film).
by Dean | May 8, 2016 | General
Cover of A Touch of Class
The 1973 romantic comedy, A Touch of Class, is too mendacious to be good. There is much about the extramarital union of Steve (George Segal) and Vicki (Glenda Jackson) that seems unlikely, including their early hotel-room wrangling, which is in fact worse than unlikely. It’s bizarre and ill-fitting.
Although there is little romantic charm in Glenda Jackson, her acting is delightfully successful, as is that of Segal and others in the cast. Directed and co-written by Melvin Frank, Class is intermittently funny, not to mention devoid of intercourse scenes and nudity. And yet, truth be told, the film wants to be lighthearted or nonchalant about sexual perversion of more than one kind. It isn’t, quite, but it wants to be. Hence I say it has no more than touch of class.
