Sunday, March 6, 2011

Sublime, Ridiculous, and points Inbetween














































Lilies of the Field is a cute, fun movie. . . but I can't help but feel that I would have enjoyed it much more  if I had seen it thirty years ago.

As it is -- the set-up relies on the piling up of coincidences, and once you've seen the set-up, if you've seen many movies at all, you know exactly where this one is going to go.

Is there anyone out there who can't tell what's coming? Who doesn't know that Poitier is so going to build the damn chapel? Who doesn't know that the Mother Superior is going to get everything she wants and then some, and make him like it? And so on, to a wistful, inspiring end?

To my mind it's poorly directed, but it's beautifully shot and acted, and I was enjoying myself. On the other hand, I had errands to run, and wasn't suffering from any delusion that there would be a twist somewhere along the way. . . so -- maybe I'll finish it off the next time TCM airs it.

Inexplicably, I did sit through every dumb minute of Ghost Rider tonight. It's not the worst comic book movie ever made (although it makes Howard the Duck look like A Midsummer Night's Dream), but that's not me calling it good.

There are some good bits, I guess, but they don't amount to anything. I agree with my friend BC that they spend a lot of time building up the Old West version of the character, only to have him ride off into the sunset just when he could have been making himself useful. But that's Hollywood for you: The world belongs to the young, and God Forbid you had any of those Upitty Old People thinking that they were still good for something. . .

Really, there's only one thing wrong with this picture: the script and the direction. TWO -- TWO things wrong! The script, the direction and the special effe-- THREE things wrong, the script, the direction, the special effects and Nick Cage. ..

--FOUR!

. . . and so on. Cage is really bad in this movie, almost a parody of himself.

So why did I sit through every frame of Ghost Rider while walking away from Lilies of the Field?

 I guess that I'm morbidly fascinated by failure. That, and the chick was hot. It had a good beat. I could dance to it.

-- Freder.

1 comment:

  1. I *did* see Lilies 30 years ago (or more) when I was staying with my grandmother over a school vacation. It remains in my memory the perfect film to watch with grandparents. One of the few times I remember us being engaged in the same TV show. Because grandparents didn't do Star Trek, and I didn't do The Waltons. :)

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