The Rare Review - Movies, books, music and TV

Love’s Decline: “The Lacemaker”

On July 15, 2026

Claude Goretta‘s 1977 French picture, The Lacemaker (La Dentelliere), deals with a shy, gentle working-class girl (Isabelle Huppert) and a smart, unassuming college student (Yves Beneyton) who simply do not belong in a serious amatory affair with each other. It is also about lives that become empty and disillusioning and even nonsexual, and are thoroughly secular. After seeing it on videotape years ago, I was never able to see it again except recently on YouTube in an auto-translated version—not the best subtitles; in fact they’re worthless. Still, I’m grateful for it.

The film is an excellent one, splendidly, poetically directed by Goretta. There are beach scenes as lovely as the camera placement is inspired. There is dandy camera movement too (the crane shot) and meaningful fades to black. The Lacemaker derives from a novel by Pascal Laine. On its own, Goretta’s screenplay impresses. As in his film The Invitation, he loves his characters. Huppert and Beneyton are persuasive actors; Florence Giorgetti even more so.

When Sturges Observed “Christmas in July”

By EarlD

On July 11, 2026

In Movies

Christmas in July (1940), by Preston Sturges, is a nice short story of a film. It isn’t novelistic, yet it is a feature film. Jimmy MacDonald (Dick Powell) is tricked by co-workers into believing he won a commercial slogan contest. He can’t possibly afford the purchases he then makes; enter the police, etc. As in other Sturges movies, a pendulum swings from being poor to being rich or vice versa, and it happens one way or another. An American fond of Europe, Sturges looked at New World wealth with European guilessless and consternation but also hope.

Christmas is slight but pleasurably rowdy. Not as good as, say, the more novelistic Sullivan’s Travels, it is nevertheless engaging. Powell’s acting is ready for tragicomedy and successful. The daughter of an Irish-born barber, Ellen Drew is likable as Jimmy’s wife but seems to have a bit of an accent which harms her voice appeal in lengthy speech.

A “Citizen Vigilante” In Europe

By EarlD

On July 6, 2026

In Movies

Film critics are offended by the “fascism” and the politics of Uwe Boll‘s Citizen Vigilante (2026), but it doesn’t matter. Nobody is reading these reviews, few though there are, and scores of people are renting the film from Amazon Prime and Apple TV; and it’s resonating with them. Yes, the film is irresponsible—and agitprop—but it makes the point that the authorities in Western society are also irresponsible. They cruelly represent progressive indifference to rampant immigration, incompetence about immigrant crime (and crime in general), and wimpy permissiveness.

Banned in Germany, where Boll was born, the English-language CV is pulpy, gory, grim, and even sexy. Armie Hammer‘s performance probably cannot be improved on. Margarita Mladinic is never false as a prostitute and has a clearly comely body.

Living On African Time: The “Stanley and Livingstone” Movie

By EarlD

On July 3, 2026

In General

The nineteenth century in Stanley and Livingstone (1939) is much like the twentieth century in that the work that men do takes them far from home and into remote areas, and the men aren’t even soldiers. One of them, Dr. Livingstone (Sir Cedric Hardwicke), is a missionary who might have died in Africa, but didn’t. Henry Stanley (Spencer Tracy) is a newspaper man assigned to hunt down Livingstone if rumors of his death are false.

What would be corny in movies today, such as some stuff involving Walter Brennan, was not considered corny in 1939, although there is not that much corniness at all in this absorbing Henry King film. Much of it is quite mature (there is intelligent talk) and well-meaning, with some captivating, Kenya-provided safari footage. Even the less than believable hot pursuit of Stanley and his helpers, who have virtually no arms, by many hostile natives is something to see. As for the acting, a lot of grounded work gets done. Spencer Tracy is just Spencer Tracy—but this works. Hardwicke is truly fine as a man of God, while Brennan, Charles Coburn, Nancy Kelly and others are exactly right. Congrats all around.

Left Cool By “Medium Cool”

By EarlD

On June 27, 2026

In General

Cover of Medium Cool

In the 1969 picture, Medium Cool, Robert Forster skillfully purveys a TV photographer’s calm extroversion and no-nonsense defiance. He is true, and Peter Bonerz, as the sound man, is even truer. Verna Bloom (as Forster’s love interest) does everything possible to create a complex character, and shines with authenticity and poise.

There. I comment on the acting because, seemingly, far less has been opined about it than about everything else in this Haskell Wexler film. Highly topical in ’69, it is partly about social agitation and, especially, violence in what used to be present-day America. Its flaws have been well explained by critics like William Pechter, which flaws, I believe, sink Medium Cool. Though very imaginative, it’s a New Lefty political film which goes almost completely awry.

It is set in Chicago, indeed the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Talk about violence. Consider today’s violence in Chicago, New Lefties. Murder on top of murder.