Blog
These stories have been around a long time. Some of them I have updated. Many of them I haven’t. This started out when blogs were like, new!
A Weekday Lover Every Week: “The Five Day Lover”
Jean Seberg is the star of a 1961 French film, The Five Day Lover, wherein she plays the mistress---a married one with children---of the currently unemployed Antoine (Jean-Pierre Cassel), regularly kept by his lover (Micheline Presle). This is a Philippe de...
Straight Shootin’: 1999’s “The Straight Story”
David Lynch built a G-rated movie, The Straight Story (1999), around the event of 73-year-old Alvin Straight taking a trip by riding mower to visit his stroke-afflicted brother. The trip, in 1994, began in Iowa and ended in Wisconsin. A gentle picture with humor,...
Look God-Ward, Angel: The Movie, “Angels of Sin”
In Robert Bresson's first feature film, Angels of Sin (1943), which I saw on YouTube, righteous behavior intersects with the worldly behavior of a desperate soul. Here, a zealous young nun, Anne-Marie (Renee Faure), tries to Christianly love a female ex-con (Jany...
Crazy About “Gun Crazy”
Bart (John Dall), one of the central characters in 1949's Gun Crazy, has always been obsessed with guns but horrified of killing. He begins a love affair with a sharpshooter-entertainer, Laurie (Peggy Cummins), who admits to being "no good," by which she means she is...
Half-Full Glass: The Movie, “Beat the Devil”
That it boasts sophisticated dialogue and was filmed in Italy is nearly enough to render the American film, Beat the Devil (1953), by John Huston, an art-house adventure story---or, put another way, a minor work of art. It stars Humphrey Bogart and, because of its...
1990s Ukraine: “A Friend of the Deceased”
A Friend of the Deceased, from 1997, is yet another movie about economic troubles in Central and Eastern Europe, this time in post-Soviet Ukraine. It has a fairly happy ending, but before we reach it there are messages about the gangster-style cheapening of human...
Forgettable, If Pro-Life, “Bella”
The morally healthy Bella (2007), by Alejandro Gomez Monteverde, is a charitable failure. It's unaccepting of abortion--unlike its pregnant main character Nina, well acted by Tammy Blanchard. Nina doesn't want the baby inside her, but receives manly compassion and...
“It Could Happen to You”: Not Happenin’
It shouldn't be this way, but every time a good deed is done in the "inspiring" It Could Happen to You (1994), it seems ersatz. In large part this is because Nicolas Cage, in this Capra-like little film, lacks the liveliness and purity of heart of, say, James Stewart...
Unforgettable: “An Unforgettable Summer”
Lucian Pintilie's 1994 comic tragedy, An Unforgettable Summer, begins, or almost begins, with the Romanian commanding officer of Captain Dumitriu (Claudiu Bleont) putting the moves on Dumitriu's wife, Marie-Therese (Kristin Scott Thomas), before the captain's very...
