by Dean | Aug 18, 2018 | General
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Seemingly a straight-to-DVD product, The Parable of the Christ (2006), by George Jiha, could have been better acted and better directed, in that order, but after seeing it five times I now consider it a commendable film. Mick Shane is incisive and pleasantly subdued as the almost morally perfect lover and then husband of a prostitute he calls Violet (real name: Lucy), played by Sylvie Hoffer. Indisputably Hoffer is beautiful–and capable of real sweetness–but her acting is poor, as is that of several other cast members. Jiha’s bright story has the Shane character, Josh, fall in love with and actually start spying on Violet before he learns she is a hooker. Subsequently he befriends her and the two go out on platonic dates. Josh is not interested in sex, albeit Violet, after Josh’s kindness to her, is—and she can no more depersonalize Josh than he can depersonalize her. Not long after he tells Violet he loves her, Josh proposes marriage. It is only after the wedding that they have sex.
Happy times do not last, though. The former prostitute has a life-threatening venereal disease and she unwittingly infects her husband with it. Both she and Josh are now dying, but Josh directs no blame at Violet. Remorseful, Violet runs away from Josh, though not for very long. It pleases Violet’s husband, the “Christ” of Jiha’s film, that Violet has bloomed, has changed, via his love-giving, and he is content, well, to die for her. And die he does. He and Violet are granted immortality, however, being reunited in Paradise. There is transcendence, then, and their love need not perish.
It is valid to say that Josh is not really a Christ figure–he does spy on Violet, after all–or that he is only a partial Christ figure. To be as precise as possible, he is simply a character in a parable who loves his inamorata with a Christlike love. Violet is “reborn” because of him, although it would seem she is reborn also because of something else since, after she dies, she makes it to Heaven. Perhaps she is the Mary Magdalene to Josh’s Christ-man (notwithstanding Josh is not the one who takes her to Heaven) and so is free to enter the Kingdom. Mirabile dictu, she is made a Christian while Josh, with his Christlike love, already is one.
Nonverbal friendship and marital love scenes in Parable are frequently trite, although the final sequence in Heaven is lovely. The talking scenes are the ones that matter. . .
The Parable of the Christ has its assets. It isn’t boring. Jiha has something to say and says it in a tasteful and charming way. Some may find the film pallid, but after five viewings I don’t think it is. It has its own vitality. It deserves to be seen.
by Dean | Aug 16, 2018 | General
Medicare-for-all, Mr. Sanders?
No doubt the socialists among us believe we can have such a thing, and, truth to tell . . . we can. In fact we can something far better than Medicare—but not through socialism. It can be attained through spending cuts (and, yes, entitlement cuts), a reasonable surtax on the well-to-do, and the elimination of government waste. Medicare and Medicaid are stupidly, egregiously wasteful; and little have politicians cared. They don’t sufficiently care about spending cuts either. Correlatively, they’re unconcerned about dismayingly high medical costs for the lower middle class and even the poor. THEY think the answer for the poor is Medicaid. It isn’t.
Senator Elizabeth Warren is wasting her time proposing that the U.S. nationalize all billion-dollar businesses. It’s an unserious idea at a time when politicians’ unseriousness could become the bane of our existence.
by Dean | Aug 14, 2018 | General
Mountains and broad clouds in a blue sky make a great photographic difference between one Western film and another, and so we have the Henry Hathaway piece from 1958, From Hell to Texas, looking more handsome than his piece from 1969, True Grit. Both, however, are knowingly directed and edited, notwithstanding True Grit contains the better tale. Hell, even so, is no hell to sit through as it tells of a cordial saddle tramp (Don Murray) who is weary of being treated like, well, a nineteenth century black man. He is being chased by an unjust accuser (R.G. Armstrong), convinced that Murray murdered the man’s feisty son and not that the whippersnapper fell on his own knife. A fine gun handler, Murray has nevertheless never killed a man until he shoots down a paid swine. It isn’t something he would ever get used to.
It’s an agreeable Western with some dandy personalities, such as those of Armstrong and Chill Wills, even though more vitality springs up when Jay C. Flippen (as Jake Leffertfinger) is on screen than when anyone else is. It makes From Hell to Texas pretty robust.
by Dean | Aug 9, 2018 | General
- It pleases me to report I was able to see a filmed production of Neil LaBute‘s play, Reasons to be Pretty (2008), on YouTube. It was mounted by the Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute.
- The plot purveys for us the hurt Steph, a young woman whose lover, Greg, remarked to another person that Steph has a regular face (not a pretty one). This news finds its way to Steph, and she is infuriated. She walks out on Greg, but two married friends begin to have even worse troubles—the fellow likes a hottie—with residual vexations thrown upon Greg.
- This is meant to be a serious play, but Reasons to be Pretty is annoyingly slight in its meaning and content. What it says about physical appearance is not very important and quite predictable. Even so, it is one of LaBute’s few palatable artworks. Although it despises the proclivities of young men, it throws darts at those of both sexes, but without misanthropy. Properly structured, it is incessantly engaging, and free of the subpar characterizations in The Shape of Things and the lousy film Your Friends and Neighbors. To me it’s plebeian fun, albeit it should be more than that. Re the acting in the filmed production, I particularly enjoyed Paul Rush and Zoe Sidney (Steph).
by Dean | Aug 7, 2018 | General
When a person loses freedom in every way imaginable, he loses it for good.
This is the meaning I infer from the Robert Enrico short, “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (1961), a well-known French-made film from a story by Ambrose Bierce. Low-angle and overhead shots show us so many sturdy trees and so much grand river water, with perpetual bird and insect sounds, that it is almost as though the men in the film hope to compete with nature for something just as momentous. So they intend to ceremonially execute a man (Roger Jacquet) who has committed wartime crime. (The war is the American civil war.) Somehow, in truth, a lawbreaker’s loss of freedom through death matters.
I have never read Bierce’s story, but if it deserves skillful film directing, it gets it from Enrico.
by Dean | Aug 4, 2018 | General
Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again (2018) is a delightful sequel to the fine Mamma Mia—er, wait a minute. Mamma Mia (of 2008) is not fine: it’s unspeakably insipid. Here We Go Again is superior to it. It is delightful. With Oliver Parker as director, the moviemakers got this one right.
Kyle Smith, who loved the picture, nevertheless opined that most of the ABBA songs proffered here are “second-raters.” I take exception. “One of Us” and “My Love, My Life” second-raters? The former is a jaunty, heartfelt, lyrically smart item, and the latter a very dulcet ballad. Both are performed moderately well. A madcap dance routine gives the pleasurable “Waterloo” a run for its money, and “The Name of the Game” is a dignified worthy. Although Lily James has little charisma, musically the movie is formidable.
The cast is fun and, along with there being breathtaking locations, Here We Go Again is awash in dancers; and, boy, do we see this when the zippy “Dancing Queen” is revived from the first film. . . MM The Sequel is not gay, as one professional critic happily considers it. It is simply fantastic (i.e. fantasy-filled) and weird. However, there does arise a lot of off-screen pagan fornication between James’s Donna and several men (Amanda Seyfried, meet your mother, Lily James), so the moviemakers decided to dilute this with a final church christening of a newborn baby. It happens during the singing of “My Love, My Life,” with its “God bless you” line. God bless you, ABBA.
