by Dean | Sep 5, 2017 | General
Once again, in 2011, we had Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn, this time from the perspective of Anne’s close friend Meg Wyatt. Sandra Byrd‘s novel, To Die For, is about both Anne and Meg, with the latter as narrator—and, I might add, nonsupporter of Katherine of Aragon.
Meg accepts Anne’s marriage to Henry but has vexing difficulties regarding marriage for herself. The man she loves joins the priesthood and Meg blames God, implacably rebelling against Him. She is also a mistreated woman, but as Anne Boleyn tells her, “You blame God for the deeds of men, I blame the men themselves.” In the middle of the novel, Meg repents and becomes a genuine Christian. She starts giving more attention to Anne, who needs it, and less to herself.
Now, in the 1530s, Protestantism lives, and Byrd does a good job of depicting an England where, as Byrd herself puts it, “God was now on His way to being at home in both the cathedral and the croft” (although I happen to believe it was actually that way before the Reformation). Byrd is more of a craftsman than an artist. Although her prose is not quite perfect, she does know how to write. Hers is a Christian vision, and she can make both Young Adult novels and period novels engaging. She has done so with To Die For.
by Dean | Sep 3, 2017 | General
Cover of The Women (Keepcase)
George Cukor, in filming Clare Booth Luce’s play, The Women, put out in 1939 a jangled, vivacious—almost too vivacious—domestic comedy about female dreadfulness and female resilience. There is also an element, to be sure, of a woman-needs-a-manism (i.e. a man to love).
Norma Shearer is too weepy as Mary Haines, but provides otherwise distinguished acting. Rosalind Russell plays bitchy Sylvia exaggeratedly and exhaustingly, though Joan Crawford does commanding work as a home wrecker. The woman who sparkled in Modern Times, Paulette Goddard, tries too hard as a saucy divorcee. Virginia Weidler, a child actor, however, is unself-consciously true as Shearer’s daughter.
The Women is quite a confection, smartly directed and in black and white with, nonetheless, an in-color fashion show sequence.
by Dean | Aug 29, 2017 | General
I could not care less about the perverse, monstrously irresponsible father (played by Woody Harrelson) of a New York magazine writer named Jeanette Walls. Admittedly, The Glass Castle (2017), based on Walls’s memoir, is incessantly interesting—and vivid—but that’s all. I mostly agree with Stephen Whitty: “This is grim material, but well worth a movie. The problem is that this film seems reluctant to really confront it.” MAYBE it’s well worth a movie; I don’t know. The stuff about its reluctance, though, is incontestably true.
What is not reluctant, or unknowing, is the honest acting. It nearly makes this an valuable film.
by Dean | Aug 27, 2017 | General
Cover via Amazon
Suddenly (1954) is a pulp fiction film about a trio of punks hired to murder, as he passes through the tiny town of Suddenly, the President of the United States. It’s properly economical with some vigorous action, as in a strong scene where one of the killers uncontrollably fires his rifle, tat-tat-tat, while being electrocuted.
The movie is respectful of middle-class—and certifiably small-town—American values. E.g., Sterling Hayden (as a sheriff) keeps inviting Nancy Gates to ride to church with him. And, yes, the main assassin is a WWII veteran, but was enough of a cur to be discharged from the army. Frank Sinatra is the star here. Suddenly is such a basically conservative pic, I’m surprised Ol’ Blue Eyes was initially a Democrat.
Directed by Lewis Allen, written by Richard Sale.
by Dean | Aug 24, 2017 | General
The Nutty Professor (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
The “inner man” Prof. Julius Kelp releases from himself through chemical means is the rude, unspeakably conceited Buddy Love—not a good inner man. Julius, a college chemistry teacher, fails to realize this, and never expects Stella (Stella Stevens) to fall for him. We don’t expect it either; he’s a nutty professor—played with farcical adroitness by Jerry Lewis in the Lewis classic, The Nutty Professor (1963).
However, the movie ends on a dandy note by having Julius and Stella walk off to get married as Stella, unknown to her fiance, bears on her belt two bottles of the weird chemical that turned Julius into masculine Buddy. Sincerely wanting the qualities of Prof. Kelp, she also wants, I would say,—for Julius—some of the qualities of Buddy Love.
Lewis’s film is a sassy, leisurely, corny delight—with “some scenes that can hold their own with the classic silent comedies” (Pauline Kael). One such scene contains a tracking shot of people on the street looking astonished at an unseen, very, very cool Buddy. Another shows, in a flashback, Julius’s darkly, grimly funny parents while goofy baby Julius is in a nearby playpen. . . Stella Stevens fills the bill as the lady-love, and is youthfully beautiful. Del Moore, as the college president, and Howard Morris, as the professor’s father, are successful as well, hilariously right.
In ’63, The Nutty Professor may have been the best American comedy since Pillow Talk.
by Dean | Aug 21, 2017 | General
Unread by me, an A.S. Byatt novel, Possession, became in 2002 a weak film directed and co-written by Neil LaBute. Such LaBute films as Your Friends and Neighbors and Nurse Betty are dismally offputting, while this one is merely poorly written.
In it, two literary researchers in London (Aaron Eckhart and Gwyneth Paltrow) try to solve the mystery of whether an illustrious 19th century poet, Randolph Henry Ash (Jeremy Northam), began an extramarital affair with a fellow poet, the lesbian, or bisexual, Christabel LaMotte (Jennifer Ehle). It so happens he did, and so does Eckhart begin a licit if dullish affair with Paltrow, playing an Englishwoman. The crosscutting between time periods yields on screen the two researchers more often than the two luminaries, which is a shame since Ash and LaMotte are the more interesting couple—and with Northam and Ehle outacting Paltrow.
The script, one of whose writers is the playwright David Henry Hwang, has its people saying things like “I have known incandescence and must decline to sample it further.” To the scenarists’ credit, though, elsewhere the dialogue shines. But characterization matters little here—less, in fact, than dialogue. We wish to know more about Ash, this fictitious poet laureate to Queen Victoria, a man whom Paltrow’s character calls “a soft-core misogynist.” Ostensibly a feminist, Paltrow’s character herself is a zero. Then there’s Blanche (Lena Headey), Christobel LaMotte’s lesbian companion who turns out to be mostly a punching bag.
Possession was not a mature work for LaBute. He may have avoided his usual misanthropy, or whatever it is, but why do it in an adaptation of a book by A.S. Byatt? Generally his directing is not only good but expert, and once again he gets plenty of vitality from Aaron Eckhart. Luciana Arrighi did the spot-on production design, Jean Yves Escoffier the cinematography. Thanks to this pair, the look is modestly painterly—appropriate for a small but artful opus. Alas, a small but artful failure. LaBute is a gifted man with a baffling career.
