I have seen the first two episodes of the new Netflix series, The Umbrella Academy. We need another visual narrative about X Men-like superheroes like we need Jussie Smollett giving campus lectures on the subject of hate crimes. The action scenes have been fun, but the rest of the stuff is rather stale and sophomoric. Plus, Ellen Page‘s acting has been indifferent, phoned-in.
Directed by Ivan Passer, Born to Win (1971) presents us with J. (George Segal), a drug addict who considers himself . . . born to win, which actually means born to get the fix he needs. Only he usually doesn’t. What he does is fall in love with Parm (Karen Black), who immediately, strangely likes him and accepts him as he is. They have a good time, but it’s without drugs and J. wants to score. There is excess in the film in that too many bad things happen to J., and yet, to be sure, BTW asks: Does the opposite of being “born to win” exist?
Another fault is that an episode of zany comedy fails to blend in with the film’s enjoyable drama. Passer and David Scott Milton, however, wrought an original screenplay, and there is a load of fine acting. Segal is at his thoughtful best, not at all miscast as a junkie. Black is superbly convincing, and Jay Fletcher does an estimable job as J.’s black junkie friend. Marcia Jean Kurtz and Robert De Niro are gratifyingly realistic. But Born to Win is a work of seriousness and certain artistry more than it is a truly good work.
Directed by Ivan Passer, Born to Win (1971) presents us with J. (George Segal), a drug addict who considers himself . . . born to win, which actually means born to get the fix he needs. Only he usually doesn’t. What he does is fall in love with Parm (Karen Black), who immediately, strangely likes him and accepts him as he is. They have a good time, but it’s without drugs and J. wants to score. There is excess in the film in that too many bad things happen to J., and yet, to be sure, BTW asks: Does the opposite of being “born to win” exist?
Another fault is that an episode of zany comedy fails to blend in with the film’s enjoyable drama. Passer and David Scott Milton, however, wrought an original screenplay, and there is a load of fine acting. Segal is at his thoughtful best, not at all miscast as a junkie. Black is superbly convincing, and Jay Fletcher does an estimable job as J.’s black junkie friend. Marcia Jean Kurtz and Robert De Niro are gratifyingly realistic. But Born to Win is a work of seriousness and certain artistry more than it is a truly good work.
It is after a talk with a psychoanalyst that Jill (Merle Oberon) develops an uncertain feeling about her marriage to Larry (Melvyn Douglas)—this in the film, That Uncertain Feeling (1941), by Ernst Lubitsch—and she starts pulling away from him. But Jill’s marriage is not a bad one. Soon, nevertheless, she takes up with a frowning pessimist (Burgess Meredith) who is not the man for her because he couldn’t possibly be the man for any woman. Still, a divorce is in the works.
Lubitsch’s movie, a comedy, is rather slight, and the subject of a couple’s desire for sensible reunion was funnier in 1939’s The Awful Truth. Also it could be asserted that Feeling is not entirely convincing except that Oberon and Douglas have a way somehow of making it convincing. Besides, it’s romantic comedy, as as such it is fantasy with the ring of hard truth. It isn’t one of Lubitsch’s best, but it is wry and skillfully acted.
Larry Peerce’s Goodbye Columbus (1969) is a Hollywood movie for adults since the Philip Roth story from which it derives is a novella for adults. It is well known that it has to do with the attitude of rich American Jews toward low-income Jews (and vice versa), but when Peerce isn’t proving what a romantic he is, he is imposing on us some ugly, very raffish, and insulting satire. Romantic? Yes, in the scenes where Neil and Brenda, falling in love, are together, and these can be pleasant. Richard Benjamin and Ali MacGraw enact the lovers with savvy and heart. But Goodbye Columbus is pushy and fails to adequately convey the ultimate meaning of Roth’s story (in the diaphragm sequence). It is, I think, worth seeing but just barely.
Goodbye, Columbus (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)