For starters, I do believe the Palestinians have legitimate grievances.  But in Hany Abu-Assad’s solemn film Paradise Now (2005), a new Arab terrorist, Said (Kais Nashef), after experiencing doubt and bewilderment, glumly sets off to do his dirty work in Tel Aviv.  To Abu-Assad, however, the work is not dirty.  He’s sympathetic to Said from beginning to end.  He doesn’t care about the Israeli men, women and children his hero will murder.  All are nonentities living in a country that was nevertheless willing to yield a lot of territory to the Palestinians in 1998 and to pull its Israeli citizens from Gaza several years later.  Said is not impressed.

Cover of Paradise Now

Predictably, characterization means nothing in a movie as unspeakably raunchy as Maggie Carey’s The To Do List (2013).  Not a trace of insight arises about why the valedictorian virgin here (Aubrey Plaza) decides to experiment with every form of erotic gratification known to man except for gay stuff.  Indeed, none of the major characters is fully believable.

I did get a few laughs from this poorly plotted mess, but everything in it still blurs into one big dirty joke.  In Tulsa, The To Do List lasted no more than two weeks and was never even shown in the second-run, dollar theatres.  Somehow audiences knew to stay away.

English: Aubrey Plaza at the 2010 Comic Con in San Diego (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Black” cinema in America still has not reached a level of high merit, as evidenced by the content in Malcolm D. Lee’s The Best Man Holiday (2013).

That I never saw the 1999 flick The Best Man, to which this is a sequel, hardly prevents me from forming a proper opinion of the current film, which I see as superior to something like Lottery Ticket but not even as palatable as the Sanaa Lathan vehicle, Something New.  Lathan is in the Lee film, too, and as usual she’s decidedly effective.  She never blows it with facial play, timing, or restraint; but, moreover, she’s part of a mostly agreeable cast.  Terrence Howard is okay in his role, but the comic character he plays is slimy and offensive.  And here’s where the flaws come in.

Critic Stephanie Zacharek at The Village Voice appreciates the movie’s “joyousness” and doesn’t want to talk about the flaws (“flaws be damned”).  I agree that a joyousness is there, but I’m not very impressed by it—because the flaws ruin the picture.  For one thing, Holiday loses its edge and becomes maudlin.  For another, its spirituality is nothing more than pseudo-spirituality.  (The holiday in the title, by the way, is Christmas.)  Along with utter bawdiness, there is in the film a superficial Christianity—Monica Calhoun’s “Christian” Mia mentions a woman with a “big booty” whom she hates—of which I want no part.

Sanaa Lathan at the 2009 Comic Con in San Diego. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Mark Robson’s ’67 film version of Valley of the Dolls (novel by Jacqueline Susann) is a very hokey show-biz drama, more interesting than good.  As millions are aware, poor Sharon Tate is in the film, but hers is not the only unsatisfactory acting.  Barbara Parkins (as the heroine) and several others are no better.  Patty Duke, on the other hand, is disturbingly successful as big star Neely, the meanest Lindsay Lohan in American cinema.

To my mind Dolls is a guilty pleasure, whereas to someone else it would be simply trashy.  So be it.  It interests me that it’s pure mid-Sixties, with its coy sex, attention to American prosperity, Jack Jones-like singer, etc.  What’s more, the film’s last few moments are pleasingly strong.

Cover of Valley of the Dolls (Special Edition)

One wishes Girl With A Pearl Earring (2004) were better.

The great Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer takes a shine to a new servant girl named Griet, but their relationship is chaste.  He has her aid him in his work, instructs her somewhat about art, and makes her the model for his “Girl With A Pearl Earring” painting.  Vermeer’s materialistic wife is scandalized, wild with jealousy.  But this first film by Peter Webber induces to me to ask:  Why, really, does the Dutch master befriend Griet?  The story I have just described is absurd; how can we be expected to swallow it?  Indeed, the Vermeer-Griet relationship is not even compellingly drawn.  Screenwriter Olivia Hetreed, adapting the Tracy Chevalier novel, underwrites it, as it were, providing scant flavor.  And how is Vermeer able to love a revolting wife who has no interest at all in his work?

The film is no masterpiece, although possibly Eduardo Serra’s cinematography is.  Formally it is reminiscent of, and as sublime as, Vermeer’s art.  Lighting evokes everything from placidity to menace, and Serra agreeably stays away from European melancholy.  The dandy cast consists of Colin Firth, Scarlett Johansson and Essie Davis among others.  Handsome Firth makes Vermeer as likable as he is imperfect and brilliant.

Girl with a Pearl Earring (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)