In The Prowler (1951), a nonexistent prowler is the fulcrum of the arrest and trial of Webb, a police officer (not a good man), and his peculiar marriage to Susan. Director Joseph Losey had a riveting crime drama in this item, wherein Van Heflin enacts Webb knowingly and authoritatively. As his new wife, Evelyn Keyes is a largely sympathy-winning jewel, overplaying and underplaying nothing. Intense and filler-free, this is one of the few Losey movies I’ve been able to see. As with The Go-Between, he had good material to film.
Strongly in favor of religious liberty and even a morally right distribution of government funds, God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust (2024) follows the Rev. David Hill (David A.R. White), recruited by a former political consultant named Lottie (Samaire Armstrong), as he runs for a Congressional seat. His opponent is Peter Kane (Ray Wise), a vain liberal secularist. With a big advantage or two going to Kane, the race is very bumpy, often vexing for the pastor and Lottie and, yes, even Kane. The director is Vance Hull, who does palatable work; it’s too bad he’s directing a screenplay (by Tommy Blaze) that turns feeble.
A man as averse to religion as Kane would not win massive approval. Those scores of Christians to whom the movie refers, who fail to vote, would be motivated to vote against him. Numerous Christian Democrats would dislike him. What’s more, the false information about Kane that Lottie wishes to use against him would not have emanated from Dean Cain‘s Marc Shelley, the man who is financing Hill’s campaign. He would have considered it too risky.
Speaking of Cain, I wish we could see more of him in the film. He is smoothly compelling. At least Armstrong and Wise, who are lively and perceptive, have a lot of screen time. But my preference is for God’s Not Dead 2. And exactly what is wrong with the pastor’s tie, Lottie?
Rene Clair‘s 1931 film, A Nous la Liberte, ends (almost) with a comically ironic look at the replacement of man with machine in the factory—before it was known that society would weather this storm—and it induces us to wonder how relevant this matter is to our own time. In any case, what is actually central to the film is that an escaped convict, Louis (Raymond Cordy), is hungry for freedom but, after becoming a wealthy manufacturer, leads other men into forms of captivity. He means no harm, though, and finally he loses his business and is free only in the way he was after escaping from prison. He hits the open road.
Liberte is such a weird little flick it is not exactly my favorite Rene Clair. Again, statements are put to music and the plot is bulging. It is as artificial as it is satirical (more so). But uniqueness is uniqueness; Clair is cannily and charmingly daring. And Liberte does succeed at making you think.
(In French with English subtitles)
Much of the dialogue in Nicholas Stoller’s The Five Year Engagement (2012) is strictly for adolescents. It’s childishly raunchy. Also, it’s a movie other people have found funnier than I have.
And yet . . . it’s not bad.
Tom (Jason Segel), a chef, and Violet (Emily Blunt), a psychology grad student, are forced into a five-year engagement–as they incur various problems–after Tom proposes marriage. Besides some agreeable details in the script (by Stoller and Segel), what interests us is that this is one romantic comedy that takes romantic love seriously. Such love truly exists between Tom and Violet, and the chemistry between Segel and Blunt is palpably good. Blunt, by the way, is excellent; Segel passable.
The writing doesn’t always hold up, as when Tom all but loses it over Violet’s admission that a psych professor forced a kiss on her one night. But Engagement, smutty as it is, has its charms. And it has quite a cast–hooray for Alison Brie, but let’s see more David Paymer, please.
NEW YORK, NY - APRIL 18: Actor Jason Segel walks the red carpet at the 2012 Tribeca Film Festival at the Ziegfeld Theatre on April 18, 2012 in New York City. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)
Z is a 1969 Costa-Gavras film based on the actual event of the 1963 murder of a Greek pacifist, Gregoris Lambrakis. It is a robust piece about political fervor and obsession and official depravity. Played by Yves Montand, the victim (one of them, actually) is an honest, brave but unprotected liberal, the anti-Tim Walz. He lives in the Greece of the virile, anti-communist colonels, who want for their country a kind of spiritual unity: beyond Left and Right, they say. But they are profoundly corrupt. Why, up to a point they anticipate today’s Democratic party in America with its election fraud, lawfare, Antifa, and Bennie Thompson.
(In French with English subtitles)