Cover of All the King’s Men (Special Edition)

All the King’s Men, the 2006 remake, is as stupid as it is tired, as overblown as it is unnecessary.  This despite the fine, authentic production design and the “Christian worldview” applauded on Ted Behr’s Movieguide website.  Also, I disesteem much of the acting.  James Gandolfini is all sleazy balderdash.  Kate Winslet and Patricia Clarkson are uninteresting.  Sean Penn, however, may be mannered now and then as Willie Stark, but for the most part his performance is solid and lived-in.

Re Vanity Fair (2004), I couldn’t get through William Makepeace Thackeray’s great novel, but I am utterly certain that what Mira Nair and Focus Features put on film in the early Aughts is greatly detached from it.  Something meaningful becomes something ultimately pointless.  It’s gorgeous, though; many, I’m sure, have found it quite watchable.

If you haven’t read Martin Ford‘s nonfiction book, Rise of the Robots (2015), you should, notwithstanding some of the language is too technical for me.  The subtitle reads: “Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future,” so, yes, it’s a book about vocations that might be swallowed up by automation.  If we’re dumb—be sure to read Chapter 8—they will be.  Everything in moderation.

Rise of the Robots (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Cover of T-Men

T-men, in T-Men (1947), are agents of the U.S. Treasury Department’s law enforcement division.  Early on, the movie more or less informs us that these taxpayer-supported agents do not make that much money (lest moviegoers then were understandably worried about massive federal spending) and, anyway, the story begins with a murder!  Treasury has its work cut out for it.

What happens is that an informer is killed by counterfeiters, and off go two likable-looking T-men (Dennis O’Keefe and Alfred Ryder) to infiltrate the band of culprits.

This is recommendable film noir, better than most pics at presenting the unusual nature of crime investigation.  Granted, the characters are ciphers, but this was perennially the case in old crime movies, and at least the drama in T-Men is rough-and-tumble fun.  What’s more, there are two alluring femme fatales, played by Mary Meade and Vivien Austen (shamefully uncredited; she plays Genevieve).

Directed by Anthony Mann.

The third season of Jane the Virgin, on the CW, has begun, with the married Jane retaining her virginity because hubby Michael has been shot and is in critical condition!

Trauma and pathos are intertwined with mildly comic flashbacks of Jane and Michael developing their mutual crush, and all of this is conventional.  The unconventional stuff is on the periphery, as when Michael’s would-be killer turns out to be Sin Rostro—and what sin there is in this woman!—masquerading as a police officer.  And not just any police officer, but Michael’s partner Susanna!  Is this show crazy, or what?

At least it isn’t just crazy—and it isn’t tiresome yet either.  Gina Rodriguez was brilliant in last night’s episode, as versatile as ever.  And now that she’s playing two roles (sort of merging into one), Yael Grobglas is more of a grabber than she ever has been.

Will the following film ever be out on DVD or Blu-Ray, and not just VHS?

Directed by Claude Goretta, the 1977 French film, The Lacemaker, offers lovely images, lovely music, lovely nude scenes (it’s true), and a compassionate script.  Its plot concerns a doomed romance between a well-to-do student and a shy working-class girl, and its theme is failure:  the failure of the young, the failure of amor, the failure of sex, even psychical failure.  Starring Isabelle Huppert and Yves Beneyton, it is, to me, Gallic art at its finest.