Squishy TV shows, from The Voice to The Talk, keep lying to us with the message that we’re Able and Strong and Good Enough. We’re dreamers whose dreams can come true. They even intimate that we can create, and are worthy of, some kind of national utopia. It’s a false edification. It’s part of a therapeutic culture which mostly ignores the horrors of life. It would NEVER believe in something like the judgment of God on the United States. Its TV shows never explain, cannot explain, why we are Good Enough.
Squishy TV shows, from The Voice to The Talk, keep lying to us with the message that we’re Able and Strong and Good Enough. We’re dreamers whose dreams can come true. They even intimate that we can create, and are worthy of, some kind of national utopia. It’s a false edification. It’s part of a therapeutic culture which mostly ignores the horrors of life. It would NEVER believe in something like the judgment of God on the United States. Its TV shows never explain, cannot explain, why we are Good Enough.
Because he badly needed money, Orson Welles churned out The Lady from Shanghai (1947), an unusual pulp movie with some tragic elements. The seaside party in Citizen Kane re-emerges in this flick and receives expansive treatment with a number of dandy shots. The script, however, is ineptly written, and Welles miscast himself as an Irish-American toughie who, by and by, gets pretty quiet and confused. (Not believable.) Rita Hayworth needs more magnetism in the titular role and, thanks to Welles, is insufficiently glamorous with her cut and bleached-blond hair. A flop, even at the box office.
Because he badly needed money, Orson Welles churned out The Lady from Shanghai (1947), an unusual pulp movie with some tragic elements. The seaside party in Citizen Kane re-emerges in this flick and receives expansive treatment with a number of dandy shots. The script, however, is ineptly written, and Welles miscast himself as an Irish-American toughie who, by and by, gets pretty quiet and confused. (Not believable.) Rita Hayworth needs more magnetism in the titular role and, thanks to Welles, is insufficiently glamorous with her cut and bleached-blond hair. A flop, even at the box office.
An intense, fast-moving film was made from journalist Mariane Pearl’s book about the kidnapping and murder of her husband Daniel, also a journalist, by Islamicist fanatics in Pakistan. The movie, bearing the same title as the book, is A Mighty Heart (2007) and is patently built around the theme of anti-American and anti-Jewish sentiment in Muslim jihadism.
Directed by Michael Winterbottom, Heart is a detailed piece of journalistic cinema like All the President’s Men, than which it is a better film. The stakes here are higher and the film knows it. Angelina Jolie is thoughtfully remarkable as Mariane Pearl, a stoic (and pregnant) woman who loves her husband. Denis O’Hare does some marvelously grounded acting as a Wall Street Journal publisher. Irrfan Khan is very good as a Pakistani police captain, and Will Patton (as Randall) is satisfyingly earthy. A Mighty Heart is earthy. And, in its own way, brutal.
Reviews by Dean