Lacey Chabert plays Gwyneth—she whom God is pursuing—in Christian Mingle and is wonderful.  She delights by handling comedy even more confidently than she did in Mean Girls, and she is “natural” enough for a romance picture, for the role of lovelorn professional.  Her acting as varied as it should be, when she innocently declares, “I want Jesus in my life,” it is touching.  Unsurprisingly, there is too much product placement in Mingle—that of ChristianMingle.com—but not too much Chabert.

I say again that religious content in Bernsen’s film is very unsubtle, but how much does this matter?  Does it matter at all?  Unsubtlety here might have its own fascination, particularly since the film, for all its shortcomings, avoids becoming preachy.  Christian Mingle is sort of a curio.

English: American voice actress Lacey Chabert, former voice actor of Meg Griffin, a Family Guy character. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Jesus to His followers:  “Ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.”

Well, not yet.  In America, there is often something different going on.  Gwyneth, the chief character in Christian Mingle (2014), signs up with Christian Mingle, an actual dating website for born-again folks, and meets regenerate Paul Wood, becoming infatuated with him.  This she does despite being secular and unchurched (she just wants to meet a decent guy)—a fact she hides from her beau-to-be lest he reject her.  Lest he reject her!

The pretense proceeds apace, and there are funny moments—Mingle is a low-key comedy—but Gwyneth can’t keep it up.  It’s a sure thing, even so, that nature has trumped the act of refusing a devout person.  Now it is time for spiritual awakening to trump nature.  The movie has less to do with Gwyneth’s romantic problems than with God’s pursuit of her.

Corbin Bernsen wrote and directed this picture, and in terms of religion it is very unsubtle.  Further, the denouement and the part before that are not as satisfying as what precedes them. . . I will write about the acting and more after I see Christian Mingle a second time.  Wait for the next post.

Cover of The Seduction of Mimi

The way Communist ideology is smiled on in 1974’s The Seduction of Mimi, a film by Italy’s Lina Wertmuller, is more offensive than the clunky vulgarity here.  But I disesteem them both, and I disesteem Wertmuller.  That said, I must admit the film is positively riveting because it is funnily satirical as well as oddly enamored of romance—and because it stars Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato.  Oh, how I wish some of its satiric targets had been different!  How I wish there hadn’t been so much crud!  If you want to take the movie’s fascinating little trip, go ahead, but the crud is there.  Thank you, Ms. Wertmuller, but for very little.

(In Italian with English subtitles)

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.”