The Nun's Story (1958)

Those who know me know that I like Catholic movies, but most of those tend to center around the priesthood, which is a decidedly more vibrant institution then the sisterhood. This was very clearly demonstrated in the recent movie Doubt, with contrasting scenes of priests enjoying liquor and jovial conversation, while nuns ate their dinner in silence. The Nun’s Story likewise demonstrates that contrast, in ambition and theme not that different from the later Otto Priminger film The Cardinal, this is however a far inferior entertainment. Here Audry Hepburn is a Belgian girl from a well off family who joins a nunnery in the late 1920's following an unspecified parting of ways with her boyfriend (my opinion of said boyfriend: breaking up with Audry Hepburn = profound stupidity). As if the image of Audry Hepburn in a habit isn’t tragic enough, the film is long and boring, punctuated with only one somewhat interesting character (Peter Finch as an atheistic doctor at a Catholic hospital in Africa) and a couple of scenes of semi intense nun battery.

This is a film I’d even describe as a sort of horror story. The first forty-something minutes giving us a very detailed (and slow) rendering of the process of becoming a nun. The austerity, the de-individualization, the constant critical emphases on even the most benign imperfections, such as ever looking at yourself in a mirror, or having a glass of water between meals. I defiantly appreciate that the film doesn’t minimize the difficulty of a Nuns life, but many of the scenes and events here-in that I think were meant to seem spiritual, rather seemed kind of abusive. The fact that the film ended the way it did, I think was gutsy and can even be read as a vindication of some of the criticisms one could direct towards nunnly life from watching this film. Still the movie was not entertaining enough to sustain much attention over its 2 ½ hour running time, and though competently made by Fred Zinneman I can not recommend it. 2 out of 5.

Boston Legal: Season 3 (2006-2007)

These Boston Legal reviews are going to get a little redundant, you know I love the show. Some times it gets a little more sexual then I’d like it to be, of course all within the bounds of what can be broadcast on a network show. Yet the characters are so fascinating (I’m a big Jerry Espinson fan), the story lines so intriguing, and the cases so interesting, that this program remains my current entertainment drug of choice. Most impressive episode this season: Son of the Defender. Character who could have supported a spin-off program: Jeffery Coho. 5 out of 5.

The Book of Daniel (2006)

This short lived show about an Episcopalian priest and his unconventional family seemed designed to draw controversy. Six Feet Under meets Desperate Housewives is still the best descriptor for this program, which is largely serial melodrama with dashes of poignancy. I really liked the Webster clan, their more functional then the Fishers, still flawed but warm. I thought the show really had some moments, especially in the later episodes that were never aired on TV. The story lines are intriguing enough that I’m disappointed I’ll never get the chance to see many of them resolved. Far better then most network TV shows, 4 out of 5.

Some Recent Deaths

Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino (1920-2009): He may been Mr. Roarke and stared opposite Esther Williams in Neptune’s Daughter (ironically playing character by the name of O’Roark) but to my geeky demographic he will always be Kahn. Still seemed vibrant a couple of years ago from what little I saw of the Spy Kids movies.

Kathleen Byron (1921-2009): She freaked me out as a Nun driven wild with lust and jealousy in the Powell/ Pressburger oddity Black Narcissus, and for this she deserves to be remembered.

Bob May (1939-2009): He was the voice of The Robot on Lost in Space, it is enough.

The Assassination of Trotsky (1972)

In college I wrote a paper on Trotsky for a history of socialism class. During the course of my research I learned that there had been a film made about the exiled communist leaders assassination, and according to my sources the movie was bad. Well I have now seen this movie and know with a surety my sources to have been correct. This movie was nothing so much as slow and boring, I was only kind of half (more like a fifth) paying attention through most of the film. You know regardless of what one thinks about Trotsky, he was a charismatic and capable revolutionary who earned the ill will of Stalin, spent much of his life in exile, and was eventually killed by an ax to the back of the head. This movie should have been exciting, it was not. 1 ½ out of 5.

Black Widow (1954)

This was just fun, all star mystery thriller from the under-remembered Nunnally Johnson. Van Heflin is a Broadway producer who becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a young women he hardly knew. As circumstances squeeze in on him Heflin makes a run from the cops in an effort to find the real killer. Evocations of Laura (1944) and All About Eve (1950), this is suppose to be serious and it is, but its also so gloriously of a type of film we don’t see anymore, its just a satisfying ride with lots of fun red herrings. Plus, Gene Tierny, Ginger Rogers, Reginald Gardiner, and even George Raft, who can say no to that cast, I certainly couldn’t it’s the only reasons I picked the film up, and I’m glade I did. 4 out of 5.

Changeling (2008)

I ws more then prepared to think of Changeling as a vanity project, a long circulating screenplay finally brought to film in service of Angelina Jolie’s Oscar nomination. However I had neglected to consider three major factors: First, screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fam would not have wanted to get this movie made for a quarter century if there wasn’t a good story there, and knowing a good story is something for which experience should have taught me to trust him implicitly. Second, Clint Eastwood directed films are always worth seeing, even if you have no idea what the stories about or who’s in it, its in your interest to plop that money on the counter and see it, it will be worth it. Thirdly, Angelina Jolie really is a good actress worthy of being taken seriously, she is so much the ‘celebrity’ that sometimes we forgot she is a legitimate thespian.

Changeling is a beautiful looking movie, I always prefer seeing special effects used to create the past rather then something that never was, and the 1920's Los Angelas of this picture is not quite like anything else you’ve seen. There’s good performances here, mostly Jolies, but also John Malkovich as a crusading Presbyterian minister, a reformist type of clergyman we seldom see these days. Jason Butler Harneris also quite good in a part that emerges in the later half of the film, while watching him I couldn’t help but notice his resemblance to the late Robert Walker, and if they ever made a Jennifer Jones bio-pic he’d be a perfect choice to play husband number one.

The story of Changeling is the true story of Mrs.Christine Collins, a single working mother who returns home from a reluctantly taken extra shift at the phone company, to find her beloved nine year old son Walter missing. An investigation is mounted, and five months later the police inform Mrs. Collins that they have found her son in the company of a drifter in De Kaleb, Illionis. The boy is brought to Los Angels by train, but when he arrives at the station the mother instantly knows that this is not the son, despite his protesting to the contrary. To avoid a scene, the notoriously corrupt police department who had intended to use this ‘reuniting’ as a photo op, convinces the emotionally shocked Mrs. Collins to take the boy home on a ‘trial basis’. When she is able to provide physical evidence that this boy is not her son, he’s three inches shorter and circumcised (which she discovers giving him a bath), she returns to report this to the police department. There Captain Jones (Jeffrey Donovan) attempts to convince her that this is her son, first through logic, then pressure, then scorn. Mrs. Collins finds an allie in ministerJohn Malkovich, who wants to expose the police force, and Captain Jones launches a crusade to discredit the ‘ungrateful and probably immoral, reluctant mother’. Eventually Mrs. Collins is forcefully committed to a mental institution.

At this point our story intersects with another true story of the period to provide a turning point, but I can not go into this ‘secondary story’ without giving to much away. Suffice it to say, its quite the twist, and a compelling piece of largely forgotten history. Changeling is quite the movie, as said above worth your time. Jolie will get her Oscar nomination, and if I were an Academy voter, I might very well cast my ballot for her. 4 ½ out of 5.

The Golden Age of TV Drama (1950's)

A collection of live and filmed American televison drama’s from various anthology programs of the 1950's. As a whole enjoyable as artifacts of their time, dramatically however a mixed bag. Productions such as ‘The Comedian’, directed by John Frankenhimer would have been Oscar worthy as a motion picture. In it Mikey Rooney gives what I would call the greatest performance of his career, as a self-centered television comedian who destroys the lives of those around him. On the other end of the spectrum the religiously themed disc 4 contained two ironically uninspired depictions of the life of Jesus, as well as a hackneyed ‘Letter to Loretta’, whose basic concept (child saved by vision of patron saint) has surely been done better else where. A lot of the productions seemed to have worthwhile actors performing in parts below their ability, like Edward G Robinson giving the only worthwhile performance in 'For the Defense'. Some of these low budget productions use there name star to good effect such as David Niven as a film critic, or Jack Palance giving a heck of a performance as the conflicted though ultimately boring Manolete in a tele-bio of the famed but ill fated bull fighter. I was disappointed that Palance’s 'Requiem for a Dream' was not included in this set, though there was a production featuring Michael Landon as an out of his league young boxer that I enjoyed. Ultimately the trash weighed down the gems so only 3 out of 5.

Boston Legal: Season 2 (2005-2006)

With a more then healthy 27 episode compliment this season, Boston Legal continues to fascinate and thoroughly entertain me. It really is a show about friendship, that is central, the whole Alan Shore/Denny Crain dynamic. Now Shatner’s Denny Crain is fantastic, one of the more original and enjoyable over-the-top characters to come down the TV pipeline in some time. But it is James Spader’s melancholy Alan Shore to whom I really respond. His is also a type we don’t see on TV often, he’s quite complicated, often amoral, but possessing of a rigorously adhered to code of ethics, and always willing to help a friend or acquaintance with the legal skills in which he excels. He is a sympathetic ass, if that is possible. And that odd friendship, they have so little in common demographically, but so much in common at heart. The idea of examining a true friendship is seldom treated on TV, while this show is a veritable ode to the concept. Fascinating. 5 out of 5. This may be the greatest network television program to come out this decade.

Doubt (2008)

Based on director John Patrick Shanley’s Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning play, Doubt has been criticized by some for seeming, well, to much like a play. Though just slightly fleshed out from the theater, I can still see this criticism in terms of staging, though not in terms of dramatic impact. The idea that a movie either needs to be huge, or adhere to certain standards of pacing, I find to be a false one, so long as the drama (or comedy, or whatever the case may be) proves compelling, and in Doubt it certainly dose.

There are many movies in which at one point or another you find yourself out of the story, thinking about what your going to do after the movie, or some other such thing. At no point during Doubt did I feel distracted from the movie, it was gripping, and it was all performance, acting pure and simple. It is no mistake that the multi talented cast has come to dominate the SAG and Golden Globe nominations. Meryl Streep brings her full presence to the film, Amy Adams excels at the sort of naive character role she is always so arresting in. This is not to mention Viola Davis, whose brief supporting role has been rightly praised as the true dramatic standout of the film, she more then deserves an Oscar nomination. Yet it is Phillip Seymor Hoffman’s performance that I find myself dwelling on.

Hoffman I think, (giving emeritus statues to legends like Peter O’Toole and that other Hoffman Dustin) is the greatest working film actor of our time. He never repeats himself, he inhabits his roles, he doesn’t want the audience so much to like him, as wants the audience to believe him. Every tic and gesture of Father Flynn, the possibly pedophile priest he plays (pardon the alliteration) is very deliberately there but also natural. His character is key to the central mystery of the film, a film in which we are never really suppose to know the answer, namely wether or not the Father is guilty of molesting a young black boy. Yet Hoffman provides you with more then enough subtle material from which to gain your own answer to the movies narrative question, though not everyone’ will be the same. I can honestly tell you that my interpretation of what happened has changed as I’ve mediated on the body language, personality traits, and other characteristics present in Hoffman’s performance. The movie is a moral puzzle, a multi-part ethics question that asks the audience more about themselves then any movie I can think of from the last several years. In daring to confront doubt from multiple angles it is also a public service. I totally embrace Doubt. 5 out of 5.

Patrick McGoohan: 1928-2009

I’m a big fan of the 60’s cult television series The Prisoner, so of course that would make me a big fan of its star and creator Patrick McGoohan. You could tell from that show that McGoohan was different, a deep thinker willing to grapple with a lot of internal and geo-political issues, not to mention industry conventions. He seemed to be saying “screw you” to the establishment, while maintaining his Catholic values, his character #6 never slept with any of the parade of beautiful women he encountered on the show, despite ample opportunity (and apparently being single). McGoohan left us a tragically slim film canon, but you were always drawn to him regardless of the part, be it the warden in Escape from Alcatraz or King Longshanks in Braveheart. I will miss the inscrutable Patrick McGoohan.