I keep hearing on the radio a newish Maroon 5 song called “Animals,” which sounds a lot like earlier Maroon 5 songs (e.g. “One More Night”), but is actually inferior to them.  And here’s an example of the lyrics: “But don’t deny the animal / That comes alive when I’m inside you.”  How stupidly low!  Can you say creative bankruptcy?

Then there’s Taylor Swift, whose “Blank Space” is just as catchy as her “Shake It Off” but is a better song.  The words are better (her femme fatale says, ‘I can make the bad guys good for a weekend”), the music more memorable.  Her best ditties are the pop versions of “Love Story,” “Tears on my Guitar,” ”Fifteen,” ”I Knew You Were Trouble,” and, yes, probably ”Blank Space” (the pop version being the only version of this one).

Cover of Taylor Swift

The Two Faces of January (2014) is an old-style thriller, or Technicolor film noir, set in 1962 and dealing with an elegant swindler who unknowingly digs a deep hole for himself and his wife.

Original screenplays usually don’t tell a story this meritorious, and sure enough the flick is an adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel (directed by Hossein Amini).  With locations of Crete and Athens, it is a gorgeous, humorless Beat the Devil, a classy near-potboiler.

Viggo Mortensen and Oscar Isaac are humanizingly true as unscrupulous men, but Kirsten Dunst is not as effective as she has been in the recent past.  Although she certainly looks like an early 60s glamour puss, her acting is too routine, too ordinary.

I wish to add January to my list of Honorable Mention movies for 2014.  Critics who have yammered about it are the kind who would give a pass to old, better-known Hollywood thrillers with the same “defects.”

The Fantasticks ran in New York from 1960 to 2001, and has been revived there of late.

This Tom Jones-Harvey Schmidt musical has a certain artistic purity—not just merit but purity—to complement the lovely ballads and nice love story.  It’s small but endearing.  Not unserious either, although all those Big Apple audiences might not have cared about that.  It has to do with love’s protectiveness when the surrounding world is harsh.  The libretto can be hokey, but it is also literate.  Satisfying enough to be more than literate are such songs as “Try to Remember,” “Much More” and “It Depends On What You Pay,” wherein the last of which the repeated word rape never means more than abduction.

The Fantasticks (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), the Frank Capra picture, is a strange work of art.  Perhaps never has sentimentality been so smartly and lovingly filmed, never has facile optimism been so impressively crafted.

Patently the film is faulty.  Indeed, it’s stupid about money lending practices, i.e. those of the Bailey Building and Loan Association.  Henry Potter (Lionel Barrymore) is callous, but he’s right to say, “It isn’t fair to the little people to encourage them to live beyond their means.”  Still, it is the humane family man, George Bailey (James Stewart), and not Potter, who must triumph, who—in truth—must be on his way to being as content as his father was. It’s an enticing trip—with images as lovely as those in The Magnificent Ambersons.  I’m not sure it’s one of Capra’s best movies, however, although it is clearly more personal than, say, It Happened One Night.

It’s a Wonderful Life (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The criminal activity in Jane the Virgin is getting complicated—for me, anyway—but it’s good to see something other than the working-out of human relationships (Jane’s still working it out with Rafael).

The stakes never seem very high here, but I guess that’s what you get from a soapy comedy.  The Norman Conquests this ain’t.  It’s still sometimes funny, though—check out what the girl who has seen Titanic has to say in the Chapter 10 episode—and still fun.

Recently Gina Rodriguez won a Golden Globe award.  (A what?  Huh?)  With not only her facial play but also her movement, with her energy and wholesome allure, she nails the character.