Jake, a black pastor in The Second Chance (2006), is abrasive and insulting, although at other times he is too good to be true.  Not a well-drawn character.

Ethan, a white associate pastor, is poorly acted by Michael W. Smith.  Steve Taylor’s Christian movie doesn’t work.  It has a good feel for inner city life, but is sometimes less than credible: e.g. Ethan doesn’t seem to be secretly hoping other people are watching him give alms in the ‘hood, and yet this is what mean Jake repeatedly accuses him of.

Cover of The Second Chance

Cover of Duel (Collector’s Edition)

Man-made cars and the interstate highway system are not the modern wonders to make us forget, and not be shocked by, the strange brutality in human behavior.  Indeed, it is on the interstate that businessman David Mann (Dennis Weaver)—in Steven Spielberg‘s Duel (1971)—encounters a stranger who tries to off him with a tanker truck, the reason for which is never revealed.  It is activity as absurd as it is horrible.

Spielberg’s first notable success, Duel is a made-for-TV action thriller which has been called “Jaws on wheels” except that it’s a better flick than Master Steven’s Jaws.  It has a shaky climax, but is consistently fun and nicely economical.  The smart script is by Richard Matheson, and Weaver is constantly on screen but never abandoned by skill.  As well, Duel is one of those many 1970s films enamored of rural American settings, as though it is only in these pristine outdoor places that insights about life may be had.

Film poster for Starting Over – Copyright 1979, Paramount Pictures (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What might be a decent novel is, here, an unsatisfying film.  The script is wobbly, and the strikingly handsome Burt Reynolds, with his star quality, is miscast as an ordinary, somewhat less-than-virile gent.

Starting Over (1979) does effectively focus, though, on the internal psychological ping-pong experienced by divorced and recently unattached people.

Directed by Alan J. Pakula.

In Wild Strawberries (1959), an old man and esteemed professor gets, in a way, bludgeoned for being less virtuous than others would suspect.  (He’s expressionistically bludgeoned.)

Is there anything that saves this famous Ingmar Bergman film?  NO.  It’s tiresome glop.  When it isn’t fatuous (the despairing husband who also serves as figurative judge) it’s sentimental (the old man’s gentle eyes fixed on a remembered Bibi Andersson).  Plus the protag’s selfishness, etc. is usually revealed through exposition, not drama. . . In truth, art should not be as unentertaining as this.

Wild Strawberries (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)