Movies I’ve Recently Seen: February 20

Here are five films I’ve seen since mid-January. They go from wonderful to “Hey, wake up!”

• Origin
  
• Peeping Tom
  
• Bell Book and Candle
  
• Bob Marley: One Love
  
• Love Affair

A Origin (2023)

Ava DuVernay’s exceptional film is like nothing I’ve even seen. It’s a documentary, but it’s also a drama, and a lecture about the human race. Isabel Wilkerson, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, sets out to bring to light the hidden caste system that underlies our American society. To this end she links the caste systems in Nazi Germany and India with our history of slavery and segregation. A loving couple must hide from the Gestapo. There’s the American South – where hangings were once picnics. And then there’s India’s caste system, where the untouchables clean the sewers with their naked hands.

A- Peeping Tom (1960)

I hadn’t seen this film since I saw it on Laserdisc. This is the film that destroyed director Michael Powell‘s career. This story about a mentally ill young man who murders women was too strong in 1960. The problem was that Powell created a sympathetic serial murderer. When the movie opened, distributors didn’t want it. Today, it’s considered a masterpiece.

C+ Bell Book and Candle (1958)

This magical fantasy is neither romantic nor fantastic. The basic story: A witch (Kim Novak) falls in love with a normal man who is about to be wed (James Stewart). That could have been fun. But there’s very few laughs. Along with Novak and Stewart, the stellar cast includes Jack Lemmon, Ernie Kovacs, Hermione Gingold, and Elsa Lanchester.

C Bob Marley: One Love (2024)

Bob Marley’s life was as exceptional as his music. Violence popped up frequently – often from politicians’ toadies. But with the thick cast’s patois accent, I would have appreciated subtitles. While it’s clear that Kingsley Ben-Adir, the actor who stars as Marley, can’t play the guitar, he makes up for this with his singing and dancing. The music is fantastic, of course, but you can hear that without the big screen.

C- Love Affair (1939)

Here’s a maudlin story about two people who never seem to get together. They meet on a trip across the Atlantic. The man (Charles Boyer) is sometimes rich and famous, and sometimes he’s not. The woman (Irene Dunne) is a singer, until tragedy strikes. A sleepy weepy.