The Gunfighter (1950) is a Western that resembles a theatrical drama in that its action is there but minimal.

Gregory Peck plays a no-longer-mean shooting ace pursued by the brothers of a man he killed in self-defense.  Henry King directed the film tidily and knowingly, and had a good editor in Barbara McLean.  Peck never stumbles as a troubled man, though Millard Mitchell is too stiff as a tough marshal.  Karl Malden proves his reliability in an early role.

This is King’s baby, but even more it is the baby of one William Bowers, who co-invented the story and co-authored the script.

The Gunfighter (1950) is a Western that resembles a theatrical drama in that its action is there but minimal.

Gregory Peck plays a no-longer-mean shooting ace pursued by the brothers of a man he killed in self-defense.  Henry King directed the film tidily and knowingly, and had a good editor in Barbara McLean.  Peck never stumbles as a troubled man, though Millard Mitchell is too stiff as a tough marshal.  Karl Malden proves his reliability in an early role.

This is King’s baby, but even more it is the baby of one William Bowers, who co-invented the story and co-authored the script.

There are two reasons you might want to see the new Ben-Hur movie (2016):  1) the vivid, naturalistic visuals (as in the set design) and 2) the performance of Jack Huston as Judah Ben-Hur.  Aside from this . . . no sale.

It is literally incredible that Judah Ben-Hur would refuse to name the Zealot who tries to assassinate Pontius Pilate when not only he but also his mother and sister are under threat of being killed.  In the hell-for-leather chariot race, Ben-Hur holds on to the horses’ reins while being dragged on the ground, but manages to defy physics and pull himself back to, and climb up on, the chariot.  These are just two of the many absurdities in the film.

Here’s another:  Jesus Christ is more of a Love teacher than a Redeemer, except that through the death on the cross an awesome miracle occurs with its implications. . . Admittedly I found the ending of Ben-Hur quite edifying (but to me the ending of God’s Not Dead 2 was edifying as well).  I readily assert that Roma Downey and Mark Burnett should be executive-producing better Christian movies than this.  Many, I fear, would deem the film not only dissatisfying but unwatchable too.

Directed by Timar Bekmambetov.

In a recent Wall Street Journal, Terry Teachout reviewed a play titled A Day by the Sea by N.H. Hunter, a British dramatist who died in 1971.  Greatly admiring the play, Teachout asked why it was mounted in New York in 1955 but never after that until now, in 2016.  What he believes to be the answer is that critic Kenneth Tynan unfairly crushed the opus in his ’50s review of it, thus creating a hands-off attitude among theatre directors.  According to Teachout, Tynan “had little use for plays without a political message” and non-political, I take it, is what A Day by the Sea is.

That a professional critic did such a thing doesn’t surprise me.  And I can be confident that Tynan lapped up plays with a political message when the message was one he agreed with (i.e., a leftist message).

Mark Holcomb of The Village Voice is right:  Jennifer Lopez, in Angel Eyes (2001), is “winningly brassy/bashful.”  In this Luis Mandoki film, written by Gerald DiPego, she plays a brassy/bashful policewoman, while handsome Jim Caviezel plays a shaken fellow on a moonbeam.  The two fall in love.

For about an hour Angel Eyes sustained me because of J. Lo’s performance and pulchritude and the film’s considerable freshness.  Indeed, it is not oblivious to the spiritual dimension of human life.  But by and by DiPego throws all credibility and unsentimental honesty out the window, as witness the silliness about Caviezel’s newly received blessing of a pet dog named Bob.  That spiritual dimension hardly means very much alongside material like this.  Let it be lamented, too, that Hollywood folks do not care how sentimental their movies are so long as they’re unabashedly commercial; that’s all that matters.  But I want to believe that Lopez and Caviezel rise above the money-mindedness enough to respect their craft of acting, for neither of them lets us down.  And there’s still that worthwhile first hour.