Trigger Warning

Film: The Entity
Format: Internet video on Fire!

When I started this blog all the way back at the tail end of 2009 (Jesus…2009. I was young-ish once), one of the decisions I made was that any reviews I posted would come from watching the film, even in cases where I had seen the film a bunch of times. I didn’t want to rely on memory of a film, but address how I approach it in the moment of watching it anew. Opinions change, after all, and some movies don’t hold up--Stripes was a classic comedy film when I was much younger, and the last time I watched it, I barely got through it. There are times when this strategy pays off, though. Such a case is The Entity.

I was not a fan the first time I watched this. I think my problem with it was simple—it purports itself to be based on a true story and it deals with, essentially, a sexually active poltergeist. As someone who has no actual spiritual beliefs, the “based on a true story” angle for films like this frustrates me. It’s the kind of thing that dupes the credulous and makes them vulnerable to scamming. So, I had a bit of a grudge against it, and I held it against the film. It was a mistake; this is a better movie than I thought it was.

Lady Day

Film: Lady Sings the Blues
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on laptop.

In my head, I have a tendency to mix up Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker. I’m not sure I’ll do that again after seeing Lady Sings the Blues, the biopic of Billie Holiday. This is a film that reminds me a great deal of La Vie en Rose, but only because I saw that one first. Both films cover the meteoric career of a supremely talented but ultimately tragic singer. I have to admit, I was nervous about a film featuring Diana Ross in a dramatic role. My nerves were unjustified. Ross is tremendous, both as a singer (duh) but also playing a woman torn apart by her talent and her evident unending appetite for heroin.

The film opens with Holiday in a padded cell, strapped in a straitjacket, and raving from crushing heroin withdrawal. What follows comes in flashback, starting with young Billie when she was still named Eleanora (but is still played by Diana Ross). As a young girl, Eleanora works in a brothel cleaning, and before we get too far, she is raped by one of the customers. Her mother packages her off as a maid to a woman who mistreats her, and before too long, Eleanora is working in a brothel herself.