1/22/24
Newsletter #550
The Crack of Dawn
I reviewed movies for several college newspapers, then for a free, local Detroit, entertainment newspaper, called Magazine, for a couple of years. I finally stopped because I didn’t enjoy giving bad reviews to most of the movies I saw. I was put in mind of Jean Luc Godard’s quote, “Critics are soldiers who fire on their own men.”
About ten years ago I returned to film reviewing for True West Magazine. They asked me to review old western movies. My single stipulation was that I would only write about movies that I liked. That gig lasted a couple of years and was wonderful. I literally spent more money than I made searching out and buying cool old westerns so I could write about them, but I never had to be negative.
Meanwhile, having just written several negative film reviews in a row, on Barbie, Killers of the Flower Moon and Maestro, I find that I still don’t enjoy writing negative reviews. They leave a bitter aftertaste in my mouth.
But the universe has stepped in and immediately supplied me with two good movies that I had never seen before, Decoration Day (1990), with James Garner, and The Valley of Light (2007), with Gretchen Mol, both produced by Hallmark. I just looked up Hallmark and they are an oddball, weirdly individualistic company with a long-running series of radio, TV and movies, starting in 1948 and still going today. They have been producing TV shows and TV movies for as long as I can remember. Bruce Campbell has been in a couple of Hallmark movies.
As a young person I abjured Hallmark movies, which represented both blatant commercialism (solely sponsored by a greeting card company?) and rank sentimentalism. I now understand that Hallmark remaining their own entity, somewhat apart from the Hollywood studios, was a good thing. But mostly, I now realize that sentimentalism is my favorite aspect of drama. Therefore, I was unnecessarily cruel and dismissive of Hallmark’s movies throughout most of my life, but now I like them. I think that their intention of trying to emotionally move me is a legitimately noble goal. And since I avoided them, I now have most of them I can still see.
I just started a book about Voltaire (real name, Francois Marie Arouet). Somehow, I’ve made it to 65 years old and I don’t know damn thing about Voltaire. I do know from reading about Benjamin Franklin that he and Voltaire were considered the two greatest minds of their day. When Ben Franklin was our ambassador to France, they sold big commemorative coins with Franklin on one side and Voltaire on the other. But until a week ago when I got the book, I wouldn’t have even been able to name the field in which he was famous – philosophy? No, as it turns out, it was playwriting. Philosophy, too, and poetry. It seems – I’m early in the book, Voltaire: A Life by Ian Davidson – his greatest desire was to be left in peace – uncensored – so that he could write plays that “made you cry.” He ended up instead as the voice of the French Enlightenment, causing him to be twice locked up in the Bastille and three times sent into exile.
What Voltaire attempted with his playwriting is what Hallmark is trying to do, and what I’ve always tried to do. We want the audience to empathize with our characters and feel their pain and their joy.
Personally, and I do realize it’s very common, I like redemptive stories where everything works out well, although I certainly don’t demand it in any way from what I watch.
For instance, I flash on the last shot of Blue Jasmine (2013), with Cate Blanchett sitting on the bench with nowhere left to go. No redemption. Woody’s last great movie. Woody Allen is 88 years old. And I nearly got thrown out of a bar for quoting him recently. I used to get big laughs quoting and imitating him as a kid. In junior high and high school I read short stories from his first story collection, Without Feathers, for speech class.
Well, I’m off the Amsterdam. I expect to have a few new tales to tell.
It’s cold as a motherfucker here in Detroit.