Month: January 2022

Based on the novel of the same name by Flannery O’Connor, war veteran Brad Dourif returns to the remains of his family home a changed man and decides to head for the city. There he runs into a blind street preacher Harry Dean Stanton and his young daughter Amy Wright. The latter immediately develops a crush on him while the former inspires him to create his own antireligion church. An absurd indictment on religion, I had been really interested in seeing Dourif leading a film since he generally stands out in any of the works I’ve seen him in. I was not disappointed at all with his portrayal. He often plays characters just on the line between unhinged and sane and that works to great effect here.

Set in 1920s Kansas and based on writer-director Gordon Parks’s semi-autobiographical novel, this film centers on Kyle Johnson as a teenager who is quickly forced into adulthood through the events he experiences over the course of a year. Over the short period of time, he is exposed to issues of first love, sex, race, and injustice and how to navigate each as a Black man in small town America. His actions and development are in sharp contrast to those of his friend and later foe Alex Clarke whose path crosses but whose experiences widely deviates from those of Johnson. Overall, the film doesn’t overdramatize the events or force a particular perspective for the viewer. It just offers one man’s realistic, and likely uncommon, experience growing up in middle America.

When she is almost busted for selling bootleg DVDs, undocumented immigrant Dina Shihabi is forced to hide out in the apartment of Martin Starr, a former soldier who worked with her uncle in Iraq. Against their better judgment, the two fall in love even while immigration officials are closing in. The two actors have a casual chemistry between them that grows as they get to know each other. Delightfully, Shihabi’s smile lights up the screen during their courtship. I find it interesting whenever a work has a woman who wears hijab on her own terms and here it reflects on her attempts to meld her traditional Muslim with her new-found American culture. 

Richard Widmark is an American conman living in London looking for his next big score. He finds it in the form of a veteran Greek wrestler though he has to contend with the wrestler’s son who effectively controls wrestling throughout London. It’s a somewhat convoluted plot where Widmark must manipulate his associates to get the permissions and the money that he needs to pull the scheme off, but that doesn’t detract from dark desperation that Widmark soon finds himself in. The extras on the Criterion DVD include a comparison of the British and American versions of the film which goes a long way to explaining how much a score can change the tone of a film.    

I don’t know why there were so many of these delinquents being inspired by an idealistic teacher films in the 60s (nor their revival in the late 80s-early 90s) but there is so much sameness to them that they become fairly indistinguishable. Sidney Poitier is the teacher here, a Guianese immigrant to the UK who has taken the job temporarily while he awaits an engineering position. Poitier is always appealing and it’s interesting to see him here as a teacher when he was one of the thugs in the similar Blackboard Jungle. The moralizing lessons and condemnation of non-traditional ways can be eye-roll-y at times, but it’s sweet to see the students change, particularly the females, as they develop more confidence and awareness in themselves.

Based on the novel by Chester Himes, the action begins at a Back to Africa rally being hosted by reverend Calvin Lockhart that is hijacked of tens of thousands of dollars. Soon after the hijacking, junk collector Redd Foxx runs across a large bale of cotton that fell of the hijackers’ truck. I’m still unsure how the cotton came to Harlem. It’s somewhat of a MacGuffin, but does provide an amusing centerpiece for a dance performance toward the end of the film. Though some dispute the categorization, it’s sometimes cited as an early Blaxploitation film. Regardless, it has many similarities to that genre with a mostly Black cast, a great urban setting, and some memorable characters. I really dig the Harlem detectives here, played by Godfrey Cambridge and Raymond St. Jacques, and would enjoy seeing the whole series had been filmed. A Rage in Harlem is the earliest story of the characters, but that film somehow doesn’t feel in the same universe.  

Hedy Lamarr is a beautiful but manipulative young woman who finagles a marriage to the richest man Gene Lockhart in town but then coerces his son Louis Hayward to arrange for the death of his father. She later sets her sights on her best friend’s fiancé George Sanders. It’s not often such a cruel, devious woman gets to lead a film and Lamarr uses her beauty to great effect. The ending is a bit of a let down in its contrived reversal, but it’s a intriguing ride getting there.