What do you do when God speaks to you, but says He is a figment of your imagination? That's the question this film -- the revisionist story of Joan of Arc -- poses, even though the real Joan, so far as we know, never questioned her sanity and certainly not her faith. Here, the poor farm girl is clearly nuts. We know that because Milla Jovovich plays her as a twitchy shake-voice schizophrenic of whom it is hard to imagine anyone following her to the milking barn, let alone to war. (Critics complained of Jean Seberg's performance in Saint Joan; Jovovich's is infinitely worse.) Having dispensed with theology, Besson and co-writer Andrew Birkin go about the task of motivating Joan with imaginary events from her life, like the one that starts it all: the murder followed by the rape of her sister by an invading Englishman, to which little Joan is a witness. Common vengeance is the best they could come up with for an uncommon woman who claimed to be directed by saints from Heaven. The real Joan, of course, heard voices; here, she has visions -- not of saints but of a single male, suggesting she believed she had a direct line to Christ himself. When does historical accuracy matter? When the alternative is the construction of one straw man after another so that you can fob off a lie as modern understanding. With, unlike the earlier Saint Joan, long battle sequences replete with beheadings and dismemberment, some misplaced and misguided humor, and Dustin Hoffman as Joan's vision of the god of self-help psychiatry.
+1/2
What do you do when God speaks to you, but says He is a figment of your imagination? That's the question this film -- the revisionist story of Joan of Arc -- poses, even though the real Joan, so far as we know, never questioned her sanity and certainly not her faith. Here, the poor farm girl is clearly nuts. We know that because Milla Jovovich plays her as a twitchy shake-voice schizophrenic of whom it is hard to imagine anyone following her to the milking barn, let alone to war. (Critics complained of Jean Seberg's performance in Saint Joan; Jovovich's is infinitely worse.) Having dispensed with theology, Besson and co-writer Andrew Birkin go about the task of motivating Joan with imaginary events from her life, like the one that starts it all: the murder followed by the rape of her sister by an invading Englishman, to which little Joan is a witness. Common vengeance is the best they could come up with for an uncommon woman who claimed to be directed by saints from Heaven. The real Joan, of course, heard voices; here, she has visions -- not of saints but of a single male, suggesting she believed she had a direct line to Christ himself. When does historical accuracy matter? When the alternative is the construction of one straw man after another so that you can fob off a lie as modern understanding. With, unlike the earlier Saint Joan, long battle sequences replete with beheadings and dismemberment, some misplaced and misguided humor, and Dustin Hoffman as Joan's vision of the god of self-help psychiatry.
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++++1/2 Fascinating early werewolf novel that is not, even so, the werewolf equivalent of Dracula. Dracula is myth brought to life; Endore reverses the formula and equates life, in all its ugliness, to myth. Convinced by overwhelming circumstantial evidence that his "nephew" is a werewolf, a Frenchman tries first to lock him up, then, when the boy escapes, to track him down in Paris. The boy, now a young man, falls in love with a girl with an unusual attraction to death, desperately hoping their love will cure him. Much of the story plays out against the tumultuous backdrop of the Franco-Prussian War. Yes, the book is a philosophical and political allegory (if that is the right word: Endore doesn't even try to mask his thoughts), but it is also a terrific horror story, one that attacks the reader from a multitude of directions -- physical, medical, psychological, sociological. What the boy does to his girlfriend will not soon be forgotten. It's a convoluted tale, but rarely confusing -- so clear is Endore's writing, which is both perceptive and frequently humorous. A truly remarkable book that, like few others (William Peter Blatty's Legion comes to mind), is both thoughtful and deeply frightening. ++1/2 The story of Joan of Arc, minus battle scenes, from being put in charge of Charles VII's army to her trial for heresy and subsequent execution. It's all wrapped up in a dream of Charles', 25 years later, allowing him to tell her that her conviction was overturned in a posthumous retrial. Jean Seberg, still a teenager at the time, turns in a solid performance as Joan, capturing her innocence and her piety, if not the eloquence the real Joan must have possessed to lead so many others into battle: she cries a few times, but it's doubtful that the viewer ever will. Gets its history substantially correct, however. Based on the play by George Bernard Shaw and written by Graham Greene. +++ Odd mystery with title that becomes irrelevant after ten minutes about a small town sheriff (James Garner) investigating a murder and uncovering big city decadence. Nothing special, but Garner is good and the story, with its not-quite-comfortable take on 70s sexual freedom, is just off-beat enough to keep you interested. Also with Katharine Ross, Hal Holbrook, and Peter Lawford. And Hans, playing Murphy, a Doberman briefly thought to be the killer and later adopted by the sheriff. "Never have there been so many quizzically uplifted brows, so many slight pauses in speech, and so many dryly-cynical deliveries of so many forgettable lines." - Roger Ebert, The Chicago Sun-Times, November 22, 1972 "This is the most original and likable whodunit I have seen in years." - Howard Thompson, The New York Times, November 23, 1972 + Glorified fan fiction masquerading as a serious sequel to one of the greatest horror novels of all time. Only in this case, to borrow one of the few cliches left out of this book, the fan is demented and his object is to destroy that which he most loves. On its own, The Un-dead is a grotesquerie of roll-your-eyes writing, adolescent thinking, and the sort of vampire worship that would turn these undead denizens of Earth into tortured, godlike souls. Souls? Oh, yes. This "sequel" begins with the premise that Stoker got everything wrong. Rewriting his novel -- its plot, characters, and themes -- is the backdrop for a new alternative history story that features the likes of Elizabeth Bathory and Jack the Ripper, not to mention Stoker himself. Though Dracula lives (never mind how...and how...and how), Bathory is the lesbian badass here, an evil Supergirl with virtually unlimited powers and no kryptonite to keep her in check (because, of course, religion has no effect on her). Her confidence in her ultimate victory is understandable, given that the former vampire hunters now all have problems of their own: Dr. Seward is addicted to morphine, Arthur Holmwood is still pining for his lost Lucy, Jonathan Harker is an alcoholic, and Mina, his wife, can't stop thinking about that time "her dark prince" had his way with her. And Van Helsing is just awfully old. The wild card is Quincey -- not Quincey Morris (Stoker miraculously got that part of the story right), but Quincey Harker, Mina and Jonathan's son. But then he's a rebellious young man who has set his sights on a career in the theater, not in that stuffy old law office where his overbearing dad works. Where but the theater could he hobnob with a man like Basarab, a tall, mysterious European seemingly destined to be the world's greatest actor. "I have met someone," Quincey hilariously tells his mother. "Someone wonderful." (Mina naturally thinks he's speaking of a girl.) With lots of blood and gore, and modern special effects that tell a compelling tale of the source for much of the authors' inspiration for this unimaginative travesty. Not to be confused with Freda Warrington's novel Dracula the Undead, which sounds a whole lot more interesting. Dacre Stoker, by the way, is Bram Stoker's great grand-nephew. ++++1/2 First a book by William March, then a Broadway play by Maxwell Anderson, this film is based on both the play and the book, and it is like nothing you have ever seen before. It's about Christine Penmark (Nancy Kelly), a young mother who comes to the terrifying realization that her 8-year-old daughter, Rhoda (Patty McCormack), is not merely sociopathic, but murderously so. Where the book lacked a certain emotional drama, the film has that and then some -- and then some more. Without the play, this would have been a very different film, but as it is, watching this deliciously dialogue-heavy movie is like walking in on a messy domestic situation and gawking, dumbfounded, at the horror of the human condition. Is it excessive? Yes, at times, but then Rhoda does another of her little manipulative turns or Christine plumbs a little deeper into her moral swamp or the mother of a boy Rhoda has killed, drunk and despondent and defiant, drops by to lay the guilt on just a little thicker or the mean caretaker tries yet again to frighten a girl he really shouldn't be messing around with -- and then it's all back on track again, this relentless tour of all the closets and all the skeletons therein. The story doesn't end quite the way it did in the book, but it's a strangely satisfying ending nonetheless. The ending of the film, on the other hand, is another unusual element, and the viewer is advised not to turn it off during the curtain calls for the actors, for LeRoy offers a final coda of macabre humor. +++1/2 After death, a casanova reflects on his life with women with the man downstairs. Sparkling first half -- as, in flashback, the boy learns that girls like presents, the teenager that French maids can be pleasant, and the man (Don Ameche) that women, even when they're looking for a book called How to Make Your Husband Happy, can still be swept off their feet -- is followed by less energetic second, but overall a very funny film with a clever ending. Gene Tierney plays the woman. Based on a play called Birthday by Leslie Bush-Fekete. +++ This is an odd book, and that goes whether you've seen the movie or not. If you have seen the movie, be prepared for one surprise after another. Oh, it's still about a Chief of Police unwillingly forced into battle with a mammoth great white shark that is eating people off the beaches of his small resort town. It's peopled with the same characters: Chief Brody himself; his wife; the cynical mayor; Matt Hooper the ichthyologist; and Quint, the colorful fisherman Brody eventually hires to kill the shark. Beyond that, however, it's a different story, for though their names and occupations are the same, these aren't the same people, and their unique motivations and personalities lead them (and the story) into waters uncharted by the film. If you haven't seen Steven Spielberg's blockbuster, its weirdness lies in what Benchley has done to fashion his fish tale into a bestseller. To draw in a female audience, he's added an intimate subplot involving Brody and his wife. But he's done it so ham-handedly that if it isn't hijacking the book, it's lurking in the background with empty threats of making a meaningful difference. Strangest of all is that this subplot doesn't kill the book: it may be extraneous, but at least it's suspenseful. (One of the best scenes in the book -- albeit a book about a killer shark -- has Brody hosting a very tense dinner party.) The mashup doesn't work, narratively speaking, but the various pieces are compelling enough in their own right to make the book a reasonably enjoyable one. ++++ Modern wife (Katharine Ross) begins to suspect a frightening connection when she moves with her family to the small town of Stepford, where most of the women are strangely contented housewives and their husbands, including her own, all belong to the same club. Forbes and screenwriter William Goldman wisely let the satire take care of itself and focus instead on creating a believable atmosphere of mounting horror that wastes no time explaining mysteries better left to our imagination. Not much action until the end, but that's as it should be. An underappreciated gem. Forgettably remade in 2004 as a comedy. Based on Ira Levin's novel. + Morally bankrupt "sequel" to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in fact rewrites Tobe Hooper's film then introduces a baby, related to the chainsaw-wielding Leatherface, who, twenty-some-odd years later, grows into buxom Heather Miller (Alexandra Daddario). When her grandmother dies and leaves her her house, Heather and her friends head to Texas where, over the course of 90 minutes, Leatherface is taken from psychotic killer to sympathetic victim. Humorless and greasily pointless. |
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