Re Taylor Swift‘s Red CD (2012), which I recently heard for the first time.  (I’m not much interested in her current CD, 1989.)

1) Predictably, there are too many love songs on this 16-track recording.  2) When Taylor isn’t boring me with “I Almost Do,” “Sad Beautiful Tragic,” “Everything Has Changed” and a couple of others, she’s delighting me with . . . the following:

With Liz Rose, Swift wrote the remarkable, nicely worded ballad “All Too Well,” which presents our girl as a country-pop Carly Simon, and by herself Swift wrote the calm, melodically fine “Begin Again.”  “22” sounds a bit like Rebecca Black’s “Friday”:  it’s optimistic catchiness.  The song’s college-girl boyfriend stuff continues in “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” a fun song of exasperation.  By herself Swift also wrote “State of Grace,” which could use some better lyrics but is musically vivid and exciting.

Terrific as she is, Taylor Swift is not a great songwriter, but Red is an almost great CD.  There is more artistry than art in her many decent-sounding songs.

Change (Taylor Swift song) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Beware if a man in a film noir complains about his humdrum life, as Dick Powell does in Pitfall (1948).  He’s destined to have his life stimulated by violence and, possibly, the kiss of a woman who’s not his wife.  The said woman is played by Lizabeth Scott, whose boyfriend is in the clink.  A nerdy aggressor (Raymond Burr) wishes to take advantage of this imprisonment by running away with lovely Scott, but Powell, the would-be adulterer, remains in the way. . . Whatever Jay Dratler’s novel is like, presumably it was good material for a movie, for a very involving story—solidly directed by Andre de Toth—gets underway.  The casting alone is very involving.

Pitfall (1948 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Powell and Scott aren’t perfect—indeed, they’re superficial (for more nuance, there’s Jane Wyatt)—but they still fit noir material like a glove.  I only wish Pitfall was on DVD: I had to watch it on YouTube.

At bottom Margarethe von Trotta’s German film, Marianne and Juliane, is a bore, just ultra-leftist or radical enough not to condemn a woman who has gone from activism to terrorism in the (figurative) war to end Third World agony, and even in 1981, the year of the film’s release, was such ultra-leftism ludicrous.  The terrorist in question is Marianne (Barbara Sukowa), and although von Trotta probably prefers the merely social, not terrorist, activism of Marianne’s sister Juliane (Jutta Lamp), it is abhorrent that she seems little bothered by Marianne’s bombs.  How boring this is; we’ve lived with such sentiments for many years now.  And it doesn’t improve matters that Marianne is such a bland character.

(In German with English subtitles)

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

The only good thing about No Escape (2015) is that it is wildly suspenseful.  Critics who have called it trashy—trashy in the sense of sloppily dumb—are right.  The film stars Owen Wilson and Lake Bell (acceptable).  Sterling Jerins, the young girl who plays one of their daughters, is a talented cutie, but the two brothers who made this thing are talented exploiters.