I saw the film version of The Humbling (2014)—Philip Roth’s novel, which I reviewed on this site—on DVD the other day.  Barry Levinson directed the picture imaginatively and Al Pacino is extraordinary as the malfunctioning great actor who gets involved with the strange lesbian (Greta Gerwig), but the undertaking would have been better had the film been a little more faithful to the novel.

Buck Henry and Michael Zebede wrote the script, and I disesteem Henry’s attempts at arch comedy.  For a transsexual character, the ex-lover of Gerwig’s lesbian, to be tossed in is pointless, and the tragic ending is more garish, less believable, than Roth’s ending.  The film could have been a memorable success, but in truth it is too eccentric to even register as something disturbing and important.

The Doris Day mode continued as late as 1968, the year of The Graduate, with Dean Martin and Stella Stevens in the romantic comedy, How to Save a Marriage (and Ruin Your Life).

Eli Wallach is superb as a fiftyish man who cheats on his wife.  His buddy David Sloane (Martin) thinks he has proof that the adulterer’s mistress (Ann Jackson) is fickle, so he tries to save Wallach’s marriage by making advances to her.  But he does so to the wrong girl (Stevens), not the one involved with his friend.

Not far behind Wallach, Stella Stevens is lively and endearing—and drop-dead beautiful.  Martin, on the other hand, is inadequate, but Jackson and some others aren’t.  They’re authoritatively comic.  Fielder Cook’s directing is not quite good and not quite bad, notwithstanding, despite unsatisfying characterization, Marriage contains dollops of wit and some tasty humor.  It’s flawed but entertaining.  In addition, mainly a family pic, it’s hardly sexy at all, released only a year before such films as Goodbye Columbus and Last Summer, with their naked bodies, appeared.

I fell asleep for a minute or so during the first quarter of Aloha (2015), a Cameron Crowe picture, because I didn’t know what was going on.  Later, after I got some idea of what was going on, it was easy to see how insipid and unlikely this Crowe-written stuff was.  Aloha‘s rom com I found tepid and its military-industrial, businessman-bashing element is hogwash.  (Bill Murray plays Mr. Halliburton—er, I mean Mr. Carson Welch, CEO.)

Crowe deserves to eat crow.

Based on the novel by Brian Moore, author of the film version’s screenplay, Black Robe (1991) deals with French missionary efforts among the Algonquin and Huron Indians in the 17th century.  Lothaire Bluteau is miscast as the Jesuit priest Father Laforgue merely because his acting is poor, but this Bruce Beresford-directed movie has plenty of good qualities.

It quickly becomes evident that Laforgue, a virtuous man, is failing miserably to establish a rapport with the Algonquin Indians on whom he depends to take him to the Hurons—a fact that prompts Moore to throw doubt on the value of missionary work at large.  Christianity itself has intrinsic worth, but to Moore (no friend of Catholicism) it is impossible to say it’s a metaphysical worth.  Though he remains a Christian, Laforgue makes concessions to pagan Indian belief (the forest is speaking to us, don’t ya know?).  Thus it isn’t just the acting in BR that makes me wince.

Cover of Black Robe

The title of John Maclean’s Slow West (2015) may refer to the implacable slowness of the Old West in becoming civilized.  To be sure, the film’s characters have it bad precisely owing to an absence of civilization, too often spelling violent death.  The chief figure, Jay (Kodi Smit-McPhee), has left Scotland to search the American West for the runaway girl he loves, which girl bears a Scottish-endowed price on her head.

Its premise and story not wholly agreeable, Slow West is slightly more than okay as a Western and outstanding as a debut feature.  There are many inventive shots (a closeup of ants on a pistol barrel, armed men springing up amid tall wheat) and some potent shoot-out scenes.  Macclean is both writer and director, and he knows enough to never patronize Jay, who is little more than a boy.

This too:  as a Western antihero, Michael Fassbender is a much better actor than John Wayne or the young Clint Eastwood.