The Rare Review

Movies, books, music and TV

Looking At Babylon Bee Videos

In the comic, satirical webzine The Babylon Bee, the hits outweigh the misses. It’s worth reading. To me, the misses, though, are quite frequent in the Bee’s short videos I watch on YouTube; but the hits are certifiably there too. This is political satire—right-leaning hilarity. One of the best videos is “What If We Abolished Prisons and Defunded the Police?,” a pet democratic socialist cause. Here, a judge’s “harshest sentence” for murder is . . . to pleadingly ask the defendant not to do it again. The defendant must be an illegal immigrant.

Clever, too, is a skit in which a pair of adults cannot define the word “woman” for a boy in a spelling bee who requests the definition. I also like the very brief “Upsides to Socialism.” These are funny items coming from the same folks who recently purveyed on their website the header, “Lindsey Clancy Honored With Planned Parenthood Lifetime Achievement Award.”

“Wichita”: Earp Was Never Marshal There

Wyatt Earp (Joel McCrea) is the main character in Jacques Tourneur‘s Wichita (1955). Wichita is not yet a boom town in 1874, and local bigwigs are afraid Earp, the new marshal,* is a threat to the town’s prosperity and existence. Earp tries to disarm the visiting, cattle-driving cowboys—Wichita providers—because their rowdiness routinely turns to violence. Scripted by Daniel Ullman, the pic would be a perfect Fifties TV movie. As it is, it’s a non-great but involving Western in color and with a palatable Western hero in McCrea. The cast is familiar and enjoyable, except that Edgar Buchanan is just Edgar Buchanan and Vera Miles is underwhelming.

*Ahistorical

Engaging “Obession”

Written and directed by Curry Barker, Obsession (2026) is a decent entertainment, a comedic horror flick that by and by loses the comedy. Which is fine; it retains its integrity. Michael Johnston plays teenaged Bear with amiable authority and sensitivity, while Inde Navarette plays teenaged Nikki with hair-raising credibility, with stunning stamina. Too, she is unforgettably sensual. This is the one about an occultic wish that comes true and leads Nikki not just to love but also to obsess over, with a deranged mind, the too-shy Bear. It’s very interesting if not quite perfect, and a big moneymaker.

It’s Romantic, Crude And Other Things: The “Goodbye Columbus” Movie

Larry Peerce’s Goodbye Columbus (1969) is a Hollywood movie for adults since the Philip Roth story from which it derives is a novella for adults.  It is well known that it has to do with the attitude of rich American Jews toward low-income Jews (and vice versa), but when Peerce isn’t proving what a romantic he is, he is imposing on us some ugly, very raffish, and insulting satire.  Romantic?  Yes, in the scenes where Neil and Brenda, falling in love, are together, and these can be pleasant.  Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw enact the lovers with savvy and heart.  But Goodbye Columbus is pushy and fails to adequately convey the ultimate meaning of Roth’s story (in the diaphragm sequence).  It is, I think, worth seeing but just barely.

Goodbye, Columbus (film)

Goodbye, Columbus (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Blue Dahlia, Black Reality

Except for its specious final minutes, 1946’s The Blue Dahlia, written by Raymond Chandler, is a smashing crime picture.  A horrid, unfaithful woman (Doris Dowling) whom no man truly loves is murdered, and Johnny Morrison (Alan Ladd), her husband and an ex-military officer, tries to find the killer.  He himself is a suspect, but so is the smooth club owner Eddie Harwood (Howard Da Silva)—the “lover” of Dowling and the husband of a character played by Veronica Lake (my gosh, he’s cheating on Veronica Lake!?)—and the irritable, mentally unbalanced veteran, Buzz (William Bendix).

With his foursquare direction, George Marshall and his cast have delivered a sober, classy but not too classy melodrama.  Chandler’s fine dialogue means little in the mouth of Alan Ladd, dull and Shane-like as he is, but it means a lot coming from the memorable Da Silva, Dowling, Will Wright, et al.  Lake, who is serviceable, is perfect-looking; Bendix, who is unhandsome, is scary.  Have fun.

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