The Rare Review - Movies, books, music and TV

We’re Game For “Game Of Thrones”

On March 25, 2014

Fire and Blood (Game of Thrones) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Man—such an ill-fated creature.

His ill-fatedness is very much a theme in the HBO series, Game of Thrones, wherein one would expect quite a few of the major characters (not just Ned Stark and the primitive Big Boy married to Daenerys) to tragically die. It’s a terrible world they live in, a very arduous environment, sinful and pagan, natural and magical. There is a lot of surviving, though, and it must be said that the slender young queen, Daenerys (Emilia Clarke), really knows how to triumph as a warrior, as at the recherche end of the show’s first season.

Probably Season 3 is one of the finest “movies” of 2013. (Season 2, on the other hand, was often a lot of noise and meandering.) The drama has engrossing and colorful incidents, such as the dwarf Tyrion’s marriage to young Sansa and the mad battle with the bear, and heart and momentum. The acting is mostly solid: consider Peter Dinklage, Charles Dance (Daddy Lannister), Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark). The very pretty Natalie Dormer is also on hand, flavorful and capable of coyness.

I hope it’s not an ill-fated series.

(The photo is of Emilia Clarke.)

Is The 1941 Film, “The Blood Of Jesus,” Worth Watching?

By EarlD

On March 17, 2014

In Money

The Blood of Jesus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Technically The Blood of Jesus (1941) is quite bad, and this includes the acting. An American indie film, it was directed by a black director-writer, Spencer Williams, and features an all-black cast in what is a sincerely, thoroughly Christian piece of work. Beyond the technical shortcomings, though, it offers not much more than theological fantasy, by which I mean its theology is usually dubious or even nonsensical. But not always.

A new convert, Martha Jackson (Cathryn Caviness), is accidentally shot by her feckless husband and undergoes what I take to be a near-death experience. Her spirit leaves her body and, in a transcendent world, she is persuaded by a henchman of the Devil to enjoy the pleasures of the juke-joint life she undoubtedly never knew when she was on earth. But the Devil has prostitution in mind for Martha, and of course she flees. She resists the temptation. Running to what is called the Crossroads in this supernatural sphere, she beholds an image of the crucifixion and is treated to the salvific blood of Jesus.

Okay, but why Martha would encounter such goings-on in the next world I have no idea. Being a Christian, she dies—or “dies”—in a state of grace, and yet the Devil is there to tempt her. Possibly we can see an implication here that the blood of Jesus Christ is to be applied to human beings for the whole of eternity, for the moral perfection of man can never, or will never, be dissociated from it. The movie’s appreciation for the salvific blood, in any case, is real and deep, and the scene where the blood starts dripping on the prostrate woman’s face has an impact. I sense that it’s one thing that does make the film worth watching.

There is also some enjoyable music and dancing in The Blood of Jesus. It’s a low-budget curio more interesting than good, and, yes, it is worth watching.

If It Must, It Must: “Night Must Fall,” From 1937

By EarlD

On March 14, 2014

In Movies

Night Must Fall (1937 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In 1937, what I assume to be a suspenseful play by Emlyn Williams became a suspenseful motion picture. I mean Night Must Fall, superbly directed for the screen by Richard Thorpe and featuring crisp and clever acting from Robert Montgomery, Dame May Whitty and Rosalind Russell.

In it, an extroverted page boy (Montgomery) wins the heart of, and is hired to work for, a nasty old woman and pseudo-invalid (Dame Whitty) who is daily disappointed by the ministrations of her live-in niece (Russell). The page boy is sexually attracted to the niece and she to him, except that a news report of a missing girl in this English vicinity induces the niece to suspect that the page boy is in reality a Jack the Ripper. Of course this leaves her cold but also fascinates her. In fact both characters are eccentrics, one of them creepy and the other, the niece, repressed. The latter makes the claim, in effect, that the page boy has taken away her reason.

Night Must Fall is about a world of ordinary petty spite (the old woman’s) and ordinary vulnerabilities when it confronts a devilish phenomenon. It has to do with when there arises a perversion greater than your own—greater, that is, than the old woman’s, but also greater than the niece’s temporary perversion when she loses her “reason.” Moreover, it is about the mystery of human motives. It is a thriller about terror, made by Thorpe with an eye for cinematics.

A Middle-Ager In “Love”: “Gloria”

By EarlD

On March 12, 2014

In Movies

The excellent Chilean film Gloria (2014), by Sebastian Lelio, concerns a woman in her (late?) 50s who desires a man, acquires one, and then suffers because of his curious behavior. Intercourse takes place right away, followed by pleasurable hanging-out, followed by the overcautiousness and divided attention of Rodolfo, the near-elderly “boyfriend.” For Gloria, the heroine, a mini-disintegration goes on, and her conduct is sometimes repellent. When a reasonably strong person is agonized is a concern here, and the simple uplift at the film’s end amounts to very little. But it is there.

The picture is like an extended artistic short story, with enticing cinematics (everything from the cinematography to the white peacock). The middle-aged nudity is ugly, though; Gloria does the full frontal. In truth, this is part of the evidence that actress Paula Garcia (Gloria) goes the whole nine yards for her stellar role, but I wish Lelio had not required her to go that far.

She does an extraordinary job of acting, however—now amiable, now solemnly bitter—and Sergio Hernandez is unbeatable as sheepish, unthinking Rodolfo.

(In Spanish with English subtitles)

Frank Capra’s “American Madness” Is A Gem

By EarlD

On March 9, 2014

In Movies

American Madness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Tom Dickson (Walter Huston) is a bank president who nobly considers depositors his friends and is unconcerned about profit. Though serious about banking, he is the most humane of businessmen—and the hero of Frank Capra’s Depression-inspired film, American Madness (1932).

The madness of the title is a foolish run on Dickson’s bank by depositors terrified by a big loss of money owing to an embezzler named Cluett (Gavin Gordon). Dilemmas befall the bank president: he begins to fear losing both the bank and, as it happens, his marriage.

Hollow optimism about human nature—Capra’s familiar trait—finally springs up in the film, and there is an inconsistent tone (which is why Madness is a semi-comedy). Yet Robert Riskin’s script is a pretty effective character study, not incisive but humanly appealing. Too, it’s beguilingly smart, filmed by a dedicated and likable craftsman who worked well with his actors.