From a Tom Perrotta novel, the 1999 movie Election is a smartass piece of goods with some thoroughly cheap—and, yes, progressive—stuff concerning a teenage lesbian (Jessica Campbell). (It’s schematic too.)

What’s acceptable is that the film is about a man (Matthew Broderick) who fails as a moral representative to a younger generation. But it is also about those of the younger generation who will themselves fail as moral representatives when they get older, for corruption is seeping in. But there isn’t much on the plus side of Election, for all the effective acting. I don’t like it. Director Alexander Payne gave us more salutary productions in later years.

World Traveler, from 2002, is about a weak young man (Billy Crudup) who leaves his wife and small son in search of a more fulfilling life.  Traveling the interstate, he tormentedly takes to booze and adultery, besides establishing no important connections with the few persons he meets.  At long last he returns to his family.

For the most part Bart Freundlich, who wrote and directed the film, wins out with this personal concoction.  Why he didn’t create for Crudup’s man any genuine mea culpa I don’t know; Crudup’s having sex with other women condemns him more than anything else.  He is truly deplorable.  Over and above, the story is sometimes hard to swallow and Clint Mansell’s music is occasionally overripe. 

But the good news is that WT is serious and Freundlich directed it with imagination.  He keeps it tightly but not too tightly controlled (his fine editor is Kate Sanford), allowing his actors ample time to flesh out a part.  Crudup is absorbing.

Cover of World Traveler

From 1948, directed by Lew Landers, Inner Sanctum is a curious thriller in which a fleeing killer (Charles Russell) spends time in a boarding house. Jerome Gollard penned the engaging screenplay with its nifty particulars. Suspicion about Russell arising within two of the boarders, Mike and Jean, is handled astutely. Character traits are seldom less than interesting. The horror-movie twist at the end still holds up, still satisfies.

A 62-minute feature film (!), Inner Sanctum is a small, shoestring-budget success.

Like S. Craig Zahler‘s Bone Tomahawk, his Brawl in Cell Block 99 (2017) is a pop movie (more or less) about the effort to survive or prevail and the human use, so often vile, of extreme violence.

Vince Vaughn plays Bradley, a man convicted and sentenced for delivering illegal drugs, whose biggest problem is that he is “indebted” to a beastly cartel boss (Dion Mucciacito). The boss takes Lauren (Jennifer Carpenter), Bradley’s pregnant wife, hostage—with the threat of killing her unborn child—in exchange for Bradley’s murder of a particular inmate in Cell Block 99.

Zahler both directed and wrote Brawl, with the savvy help of film editor Greg D’Aurin, purveying a realistically slow speed and mature, matter-of-fact action. It’s a brutal film, more uncompromising than anything you’ll see nowadays. One of the most striking things about it is the way Bradley and Lauren are forced to stay in two utterly medieval sites, fit only for mistreatment. The film’s cast is grippingly true, Don Johnson and Udo Kier no less than Vaughn. It has a blah title, but it’s an explosive picture.

Christopher Beha‘s 2014 novel, Arts & Entertainments, tells of Eddie, a teacher of acting who never succeeded as an actor, although his comely lover, Martha, patently did. Eddie and Martha split up, and now Eddie, married to Susan, badly needs money. He acquires it by selling an erotic tape he made with famous Martha, lying to Susan about the source of the money. Discovering the truth, Susan throws Eddie out of their home, the entire mess surprisingly paving the way for a reality TV show.

Without bitterness Beha bluntly attacks today’s entertainment media as deeply deceptive vulgarity—exactly what the book’s reality show is. The debasing of identity (Eddie’s mostly) joins such elements in American society as ill-gotten gain and the foolish attraction to fame.

Arts & Entertainments is a palatable read. Critics have said it is funny; I didn’t find it so. But I did find it clever and meaningful. The novel is 272 pages long, and, true, by page 220, I got tired of it. Still, I’m glad it was written.