Carl Theodore Dreyer‘s Ordet (“The Word”, 1955) is tedious and too theatrical—it is adapted from a play—but also sufficiently strange to end with an astonishing miracle the likes of which humanity never sees anymore.  The film shows us the persistence of religious faith despite what life does to ordinary hopes and pursuits:  possessing a sane mind, having a healthy family, getting married.  But it shows us, too, a madman who thinks he is Jesus Christ before he recovers his sanity (unlikely) performing the aforementioned miracle.  He necessarily performs it through the power of Jesus Christ (and certainly not through his own power).  Dreyer seems to believe that because God is able to create the universe, He can also work any kind of miracle, and he’s right.  His approach for conveying this, however, is not very palatable.

Cover of CQ

In the late Sixties, Roger Vadim directed Barbarella.  In the late Sixties of the movie, CQ (2001), a young film editor named Paul directs Dragonfly, a silly sci-fi picture with a toothsome heroine.  Like Barbarella.

This the debut feature of Roman Coppola (Francis’ son) takes place in Paris and blithely examines the fine arts of making cinematic mediocrity and pining, or half-pining, for a beautiful woman.  The mediocrity subsists not only in Dragonfly but also in the personal, Godardian picture Paul is privately shooting on the side.  The beautiful woman is the supermodel playing the sci-fi heroine.  The problem is that Paul has a French girlfriend, frustrated and sometimes scrappy, whom he is neglecting.  (Paul himself is an American.)  CQ, which is code for “Seek You,” is good at exposing an ignorant young man’s romantic limbo, his aimlessness.

Although it has little wit or insight, the film is fizzy and unusual.  I wish it were better acted.  Both Jeremy Davies (Paul) and Angela Lindvall (the supermodel) are colorless.  Jason Schwartzman was good in Rushmore but not in this.  In contrast, Elodie Bouchez blisters and delights as the French girlfriend, and Billy Zane pleases drolly as a cast member of Dragonfly.  Sturdy Gerard Depardieu is also on hand.  Coppola penned as well as directed this Gallic curio, made in English, and unwittingly pays homage to the most cordial of French-American relations.  You don’t mind watching snow fall on the moon before getting to that homage, do you?

Cover of Swamp Thing

If there were any critics in 1982 who praised the movie Swamp Thing, I don’t want to know about it.  It is ludicrous and cheap and poorly acted.

As well, it is the most sensual movie apropos of a woman’s breasts I have seen.  Usually covered, the breasts are those of Adrienne Barbeau.  I don’t think I’ll be recommending the flick on that basis.

Cover of Swamp Thing

If there were any critics in 1982 who praised the movie Swamp Thing, I don’t want to know about it.  It is ludicrous and cheap and poorly acted.

As well, it is the most sensual movie apropos of a woman’s breasts I have seen.  Usually covered, the breasts are those of Adrienne Barbeau.  I don’t think I’ll be recommending the flick on that basis.

The 1952 Man Bait is the first British film noir for Hammer (Brit)/Lippert (U.S.), and a tasteful, civilized film noir it is.  But most certainly there is heinous behavior:  killings and a near-killing most foul.

Actor George Brent, an American, is not very good, but Peter Reynolds is; and Diana Dors, in her first movie, is passable.  Brent plays Dors’s boss in a bookshop, whom Dors is talked into blackmailing by Reynolds, Dors’s new beau.  Dors is, or becomes, nearly as morally awful as Reynolds, and she soon alienates the cad.  A mistake.  Gradually a fellow bookshop employee (Marguerite Chapman) gets entangled in the dreadful affair.

Directed by Terence Fisher, Man Bait is a not-bad, not-boring caper movie.  Based on a story by James Hadley Chase, though low-budget, it was promising for the Hammer/Lippert association, especially with its likable cast.  I’m glad all British films are not like O Lucky Man! (a dismal dud).