The Sea Hawk (1940)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Sea Hawk (1940) – M. Curtiz

Another rousing swashbuckler from director Michael Curtiz and starring Errol Flynn.  This time Flynn is a pirate captain working for Queen Elizabeth I, plundering Spanish ships and freeing the galley slaves that have been entrapped by the Inquisition.  At his side is Alan Hale and others who may be familiar from earlier similar pictures.  However, The Sea Hawk is a slight notch down from Captain Blood (1935) or especially Robin Hood (1938) because Brenda Marshall makes a duller love interest than Olivia de Havilland (Flynn’s usual starring partner) and Henry Daniell is wicked but not quite as wicked as Basil Rathbone.  Both of these stellar co-stars turned this picture down to seek different horizons.  Claude Rains is here but with little to do.  Still there is no denying the thrilling adventure scenes, often shot in the giant Maritime soundstage at Warner Brothers where giant sailing ships battle each other and men leap from one to the other cutlasses drawn.  Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s score undoubtedly adds to the effect. 

Spotlight (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Spotlight (2015) – T. McCarthy

Investigative journalism can be exciting -- and Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Michael Keaton, among others, help to make it so.  Taking a page from All the President’s Men (1976), director Tom McCarthy tells us the story of the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize winning exposure of the Catholic Church’s cover-up of an epidemic of paedophile priests.  The story is still reverberating today and around the world.  Despite the absorbing nature of the hunt for clues, evidence, or a smoking gun, at its heart this is a profoundly depressing story.  After all, it is child sexual abuse we are talking about.  Howard Shore’s music is suitably downbeat and ruminative.  The actors temper their zeal with gravity.  Yet, is the issue really given enough of a serious treatment?  Viewers may be able to focus on the newspaper room without having to think too carefully or clearly about abuse, even though we hear victims describe their experiences and are told that many have committed suicide or engaged in self-defeating behaviour.  Not that I’d want to watch a more harrowing version of this – so perhaps the journalistic thriller genre is the best way to bring the issues into the public eye (if they weren’t already).  McCarthy and Josh Singer won the Oscar for their screenplay, which is all talk but engaging and not sensationalistic, and of course the film won the Best Picture Oscar as well.