One of the songs on the soundtrack of Frances Ha (reviewed above) is David Bowie’s “Modern Love.”

In its review of Frances Ha, the evangelical Christian website Movieguide.org affirms that the song’s lyrics seem to “slightly mock religion and confession while advocating  putting trust in man over God.”

Er, wrong.  The lyrics tell us that modern love is missing a spiritual aspect, and the line “puts my trust in God and man” has nothing to do with people being more trustworthy than the Deity.  Not at all.

What’s to be done if a Christian website can err so badly about such a matter?

On Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha (2013):

A close friendship ceases to be what it was previously.  The dream of becoming a professional dancer all but deflates.  The friendship and the dream belong to Frances Halliday (Greta Gerwig), she who becomes acquainted with transience.

Up to a point the film is a simulacrum of an old New Wave picture, for it was made in black and white and throws in some music Georges Delerue wrote for Truffaut.  Baumbach knows this to be a good mode for 1) showing us free-spiritedness (that of Frances) and 2) reminding us of the desultory nature of life.  In addition, the film can be seen as an homage to Truffaut.

Frances Ha is thin and almost undramatic—far from great.  I’m not sure it belongs in a movie theatre; DVD is fine.  It is, nevertheless, a small and canny work of art.

It is remarkable how advanced cinematography and production design are these days, and how much beauty can be put into costumes.  Go see Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella (2015) and you’ll agree with me.

Better, the film is as innocent as it is enchanting, leaving irony alone and driving home its moral meaning (“Have courage and be kind”) but without getting moralistic.  Lily James is pleasingly sweet and never mushy as Cinderella.  Derek Jacobi is ever the professional, ever the artist, with grace and poise, in the role of a king.

Cinderella is a Disney film and, notwithstanding critic Joe Morgenstern liked it, he also opined that “it’s no replacement for the studio’s 1950 animated classic.”  If that’s true, I am eager to see the said classic since I decidedly esteem the current movie.

Peter Lawford is an inadequate singer but a spirited performer in the 1947 version of the movie musical, Good News, which co-stars June Allyson with her husky charm and splendid voice.  A show about college life, the flick is emphatically social with fine ensemble work, although, to be honest, I didn’t catch the melody in Joan McCracken’s “Pass the Peace Pipe” number.  Maybe I need to see it again.  (McCracken, by the way, is a commanding singer-dancer.)  Such songs as “Varsity Drag” and “Lucky in Love”, however, are solid show tunes, and there is some agreeable dancing.  There: that’s the good news about Good News.

Cover of Good News

In Old West mythology–and not, perhaps, in the actual Old West—it is necessary for a greenhorn to learn how to shoot a gun.  The greenhorn in Hannie Caulder (1971) is a woman (Raquel Welch’s Hannie Caulder) who is expertly taught by a bounty hunter played by Robert Culp.  This goes on after Beauty meets the beasts:  Hannie’s husband is murdered by three wicked thieves who in turn rape her and burn down her house.  Hence a revenge story gets underway.

The gun fights are riveting, even if Burt Kennedy’s film is highly imperfect, including directorially.  But, although Raquel is too much the nonactress, she is so easy on the eyes it is almost uncanny.  The characters are not exactly bland, and there is even a man of sheer mystery thrown in.  Re Westerns, in ’71 ’tweren’t dead yet: Hannie Caulder has a real vitality.

Cover of Hannie Caulder (1971)