Destiny Turns on the Radio (1995)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Absolutely Brilliant!

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

One of the more obvious truths in show business is that, since people have different tastes in art, there are many different kinds of movies, and many different ways of talking about them. As my Uncle Al used to say, "Kid, that's why Mister Ford makes 'em in a lot of different colors now."My late father was a lyricist back in the days of Tin Pan Alley; he sold his first song lyric before he was twenty, and he spent his entire life delighting in, and making his living with, his imagination. He treasured imaginative ways of telling stories, and I guess that's why I married a poet. I will forgive an otherwise uninspired movie if it offers an imaginative and unusual way of thinking about an idea.Art, like religion, is a cultural universal; every society on earth makes art. In homogeneous cultures, and in all totalitarian societies, artistic orthodoxy is highly valued. The more diverse a culture becomes, the more tolerant it becomes of subversive art. The American film industry today is the most diverse in the world. Instead of an unchanging stream of movies glorifying the fatherland or the revolution, we Americans, or at least some of us, have been entertained by the animated fantasy of Walt Disney, the profound vision of Orson Welles, and even the as-yet-immature imagination of Jack Baran. Who's Jack Baran? I'm coming to that.One of my father's favorite songs was Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen's "That Old Black Magic," which contains the line, "You're the mate that fate had me created for." And that's what DESTINY TURNS ON THE RADIO, directed by Jack Baran, is all about, a comedic fable about luck or fate or destiny, and the mythology that our culture has constructed around it. It's not a new idea, but it's an interesting idea, and it's more interesting to me than whether the good guy will get the bad guy before he blows up another building. The fact that young Jack Baran didn't quite pull it off is forgivable.DESTINY TURNS ON THE RADIO was written by two young graduates of Robert Redford's Sundance Institute, which supports independent filmmaking, that is, movies not driven by the major studios and their commercial formulas for box-office success. Well, they certainly avoided formulas. They've also avoided box-office success. I saw this movie twice the week it opened, and I can say for a fact that at least four other people in my town also saw it because they were in the theater with me.I found DESTINY TURNS ON THE RADIO to be provocative, witty and entertaining, but I surely can see why it's not everyone's cup of tea. Its theatrical colloquy and supernatural premise combine to create a script that probably reads a lot better than it plays. The incongruity between the theme and the characters demands an extreme suspension of disbelief, something most film-goers are simply not willing to do. So what's to like? Well, I liked this movie because it appealed to me like a quirky short story by P. G. Wodehouse, lightweight but clever. I liked it because James LeGros does a terrific job in a supporting role. I also liked it because Nancy Travis sings "That Old Black Magic" in a scene that had me tripping over my tongue.I guess what I'm saying is that I liked DESTINY TURNS ON THE RADIO because I think my father would have liked it. It is an imaginative first effort from a bunch of young filmmakers, and investing in it was an act of courage. And evidently, for many people, so was sitting through it.

I picked up Destiny on the Radio on VHS years ago on the grounds that it had Quentin Tarantino slapped on the boxed cover. Sure enough the film was no match for either Revoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction, but it was a very like-able film. Destiny on the Radio is one of those films you can just sit back and enjoy scene by scene, it has a lot of reply value. It does not feature a gripping storyline, it does not really have an outcome, it's just one of those movies that drifts from scene to scene with a whole cast of characters. I'm not even sure i got the movie, i'm sure even sure the viewer is supposed to get the movie. To some it up, the best thing is go out and form your own opinion. I have seen far worse movies and one thing is for sure, Destiny on the Radio is more enjoyable than Star Wars Episode 1, 2, 3 and the Jurassic Park movies.

I guess I must be a bit odd, but this movie represented so many important things to me - Destiny (soul mates), Las Vegas (I was drawn to this city and love it here), mysticism/magic (the gold pool, the coyote, the Marilyn Monroe Motel (like the 'Blue Angel' here in Vegas), and the music - Just My Imagination, always a favorite by the Temptations, and here played by Booker T and the MGs, added just the perfect touch for the two main characters' love scenes. (Plus Louis Prima's Old Black Magic at the end, was perfect for many reasons.) Also, the quirky humor was great - Pappy's sincere discussion with his son about the 'peneal gene', and how 'prisons make him nervous', and his greeting to his new daughter in law. Loved Thoreau's scenes too. I agreed, Quentin Tarantino's role in it was enigmatic, but not 'quite right'. I had the feeling he would have rather played Julian's role. Question: how can I contact the writer and learn how he came up with the plot concept and the choice of music?

...I mean I loved the movie, just like I love every other movie which includes Quentin Tarantino. Besides if not anything else he had a really great nam and the music's pretty good too. I just want to say that I think It should get more that 5.something. Well maybe it's such a low average because it has so few people who've seen it. People check it out is what I say.