Boomerang – Mainly true story by Elia Kazan about how a
straight-arrow attorney (Dana Andrews) tries the case of a man (Arthur Kennedy)
accused of murdering a popular priest. Boomerang is promising for a good
portion of its running time, as the film lays out the drama about the
townspeople pressuring the authorities to find someone – ANYONE – to pin the
murder on. However, when the action settles down into the courtroom, things
peeter out, because we get all the same cinematic courtroom tricks that we’ve
seen a hundred times. Thus, I can’t quite recommend it. Lee J Cobb has a good little role as a
hard-bitten police captain, and Karl Malden has an uncredited turn as a
detective.
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The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner – Another “Angry
young man” film from Britain, this one from Tony Richardson. Tom Courtenay stars as a youth confined to a
tough reform school who finds a salve for his damaged life in cross-country
running. The film shuffles scenes of life in the school with flashbacks to life
on the outside for Courtenay’s Colin, and we see how his father’s illness and
suspicious death and his mother’s taking up with a new man drive him into a
poor decision. Colin is a filmic cousin of Albert Finneys’ Arthur from Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (which was set in Nottingham, like this movie)
Contact – When Roger Ebert wrote about Contact in his Great
Movies series, he stated that it took place at the intersection of science,
politics, and faith. That assessment is accurate, but it also points up the
weak points of what is a pretty good movie. I really liked how the films story
of a scientist (Jodie Foster) who receives a signal from another plant evolves
into an examination about where God fits into the scientific equation. Fosters
Elly is an atheist who lost both parents at a young age. Matthew McConaughey
plays a religious writer who falls in love with her, even as they lock horns,
and their scenes together are the strength of the film. There is one exchange
where he stops her in her tracks with an argument that neither she nor us can
see coming. The film sort of alludes to the possibility that Elly really does
hope to find a heaven in the hopes of finding peace for her dead parents, and
the climatic exchange with the alien race looks as much like heaven as anyone
could hope to imagine. That is not lost on Elly, either. The film has faults,
notably a supercilious US government official played by James Woods, who is
taken directly from the handbook of evil movie bureaucrats. Still, I recommend
it, because it tackles subject matter that Hollywood usually won’t touch with a
ten foot pole.
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