Change Your Image
jcarter-1
Reviews
Silent Night (2002)
Absolutely excellent!
A true Christmas season treat, this story is compelling and powerful. The acting is wonderful! All the characters are believable and their interactions are subtle and always convincing. So often, TV uses sleazy situation comedy, me-too Mafia characters or yet another tale of crime, drugs and exaggerated family melodrama. This honest and unsparing look at real people caught in the last stages of a terrible war that has torn their lives apart uses no such cheap tricks.
Yes, their personal circumstances are a tad difficult to believe here and there, and yes, a viewer does have to suspend disbelief. But I think most viewers would willingly accept these limitations because the story is so good.
Especially in the Christmas season, a beautiful and uplifting drama like this about the best in human nature is a reminder that in expert hands, television drama can still be first-rate theater. Highly recommended!
St. Helens (1981)
The best kind of history: involvement with the people who lived through it.
With its low-key acting, and real, believable characters, this film was a superb re-enactment of what became a nightmare for those closest to it. At first, no one is able to believe what is predicted to be coming. Gradually, the reality becomes inescapable. Art Carney, as Harry S. Truman, is completely believable, and understandable, as a man set in his ways and content with his life, unwilling to run away and perhaps unable to comprehend the totality of the disaster that is looming. How very human! We would all like terribly realities to go away, but often they are worse even than the forecasts. In light of 9/11, the poignancy of the human relationships in this film is even greater. We are so vulnerable in the face of many of the events of life, and the most important things we have to cling to are each other, and our relationships to the people we love, and to life itself. A haunting, under-rated film.
St. Helens (1981)
The best kind of history: involvement with the people who lived through it.
With its low-key acting, and real, believable characters, this film was a superb re-enactment of what became a nightmare for those closest to it. At first, no one is able to believe what is predicted to be coming. Gradually, the reality becomes inescapable. Art Carney, as Harry S. Truman, is completely believable, and understandable, as a man set in his ways and content with his life, unwilling to run away and perhaps unable to comprehend the totality of the disaster that is looming. How very human! We would all like terribly realities to go away, but often they are worse even than the forecasts. In light of 9/11, the poignancy of the human relationships in this film is even greater. We are so vulnerable in the face of many of the events of life, and the most important things we have to cling to are each other, and our relationships to the people we love, and to life itself. A haunting, under-rated film.