THE GOOD, THE NOT SO BAD AND THE UGLY: AFI Films, Part I-The Clan, Mustang and Son of Saul
Posted: November 20, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alice Winocour, Clara Royer, Deniz Gamze Erguven, Esteban Student, Geza Rohrig, Guillermo Francella, Julian Loyola, Laszlo Nemes, Matyas Erdely, Mustang, Pablo Trapero, Peter Lanzani, Son of Saul, The Clan | 5 Comments »First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
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Warning: SPOILERS
As regular as Thanksgiving, the AFI Film Festival has come and gone. And as regular as Thanksgiving, I over gorged myself.
This year I actually did rather well. Out of the thirteen, count ‘em, thirteen movies I saw, six I would highly recommend, five I felt were okay, and two I thought to be absolutely abysmal
Three of the films are currently a country’s entry in the Foreign Language Film Category for the Academy Awards: The Clan from Argentina; Mustang from France; and Son of Saul from Hungary.
The Clan is a crime film with slight, and in my opinion, not enough, overtones of a political drama.
Based on a true story, written by Julian Loyola, Esteban Student and the director Pablo Trapero (he also directed Caroncho, which was Argentine’s 2011 entry for the Oscars), the film tells the story of the Puccio family. The pater familias, Arquimedes, once worked for the secret police, the ones responsible for making the word “disappeared” into a noun by adding a “the” to the front of it. Read the rest of this entry »
DADDY ALWAYS LIKED YOU BEST: Spectre
Posted: November 14, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Ben Whishaw, Christoph Waltz, Daniel Craig, Dave Bautista, Javier Bardem, Lea Seydoux, Monica Bellucci, Naomie Harris, Ralph Fiennes, Rory Kinnear, Sam Mendes, Skyfall, Spectre | 11 Comments »First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
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Warning: SPOILERS
In the most recent 007 thriller Skyfall, James Bond was beset by mommy issues as a metaphoric brother played by Javier Bardem tried to destroy M, his metaphoric mother, because she always loved Bond best.
Now in Spectre, the new 007 thriller, Bond is beset by daddy issues. You see, Bond’s father died in a skiing accident. His “adoptive father” and “brother” died two years later in an avalanche (lesson here? don’t go to a winter resort with 007). And his present day metaphoric father, the new M, has to disown him at one point.
However, Blofied, Bond’s new enemy, who is actually his old enemy (but you’ll need to see the movie for that), is actually that “brother” who isn’t actually dead, and who killed his own father and is now trying to take over the world because, well, daddy always liked Bond best.
Somehow it’s funnier when the Smothers Brothers perform this routine.
Spectre is not the worst of the Daniel Craig Bond films. For those keeping score, it’s better than Quantum of Solace, but not nearly as good as Skyfall. Read the rest of this entry »
THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES… Movie Reviews of Suffragette, Crimson Peak and The Assassin by Howard Casner
Posted: November 9, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Abi Morgan, Ben Wishaw, Brendan Gleeson, Carey Mulligan, Charlie Hunnam, Crimson Peak, Guillermo del Toro, Helena Bonham-Carter, Hsaio-Hsien Hou, Jessica Chastain, Matthew Robbins, Meryl Streep, Mia Wasikowska, Sarah Gavron, Suffragette, The Assassin, Thomas Hiddleston | 5,134 Comments »First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
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Warning: SPOILERS
In the new historical semi-epic Suffragette, women fight for the right to vote. Not a particularly controversial topic these days, except perhaps in some remote regions of the radical right.
Written by Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady, Shame and the TV series The Hour) and directed by Sarah Gavron (Brick Lane), there’s nothing that wrong with the movie and it does its job admirably enough, and all the while backed by impeccable period settings and costumes ranging from working to the more leisurely classes.
At the same time, there’s nothing that exciting about it either. It’s a movie that does what it does, but that’s about all that it does.
The strongest parts of the film are in the first third which dramatizes in often devastating detail the life of Maud Watts who works in a laundry. Here the women are paid less than the men (and do more work and have longer hours); endure horrifying working conditions; and are the victims of their bosses sexual predilections.
Maud is your everywoman here, great at her job, a loving mother and wife, reluctant to rock the boat, but equipped with a righteous conscious. In other words, everything the central character of a movie should be so as not to alienate the audience.
That’s perhaps a bit unfair because Carey Mulligan, who plays Maud, gives a very empathetic performance and makes her more than a construct.
But the film begins to lose its way in the second third as the suffragette movement starts taking center stage. It’s hard to say exactly why the movie starts flailing a bit here, except that the screenplay, perhaps, can’t seem to make the idea of women’s right to vote as compelling and interesting as their work and sexual exploitation. Read the rest of this entry »
NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT and PRAVDA: Movie reviews of Steve Jobs and Truth by Howard Casner
Posted: November 3, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Aaron Sorkin, Cate Blanchett, Dan Rather, Danny Boyle, Dennis Quaid, Dermot Mulroney, Elizabeth Moss, James Vanderbilt, Jeff Daniels, Kate Winslet, Marla Mapes, Michael Fassbender, Michael Stuhlbarg, Noni Hazlehust, Robert Redford, Seth Rogan, Sixty Minutes, Stacy Keach, Steve Jobs, Topher Grace, Truth | 1,110 Comments »First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
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Warning: SPOILERS
There’s a moment in Steve Jobs, the new biopic written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle, when Steve Wozniak (who, it is suggested here, seemed to have done most of, if not all, the work on the Apple Computer which is what brought fame first to Jobs) lists all the things that Jobs cannot and did not do (such as write code). When he finished, Wozniak asks what seems to be one of the most appropriate questions of the entire film: Just what do you do?
In response, Jobs says that he’s the conductor that plays the orchestra.
Fair enough. But then I so wanted Wozniak to ask the obvious follow up question: So why do you get all the credit when you haven’t really done any of the essential work?
Because think about it. Quick, name five conductors off the top of your head. No, don’t google it, just do it. When I did, all I came up with was Bernstein, Toscanini and Stokowski. Now, quick, name ten composers who created the music these conductors, well, conducted? I immediately zipped through Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Copland, Verdi, Liszt and Stravinsky.
This last is especially interesting since at one point Jobs compares himself to Stravinsky, when to really be fully parallel, in this metaphor he’s Serge Koussevitsky. Who is Koussevitsky, you ask? He was the conductor at the premier of the riot inducing The Rite of Spring.
Never heard of him, right?
Exactly. That’s because conductors don’t create art, they interpret it. That is why the composer gets the credit, not the conductor.
If one was of a suspicious nature, one might wonder if sneaky little Aaron Sorkin wasn’t, in these scenes, taking more than a few potshots at film directors. After all, what do they do? Generally speaking, they don’t write the screenplay; they don’t design the costumes and sets; they don’t edit; they don’t create the cinematography; they don’t write the music; they don’t act; they don’t provide the money for it. Read the rest of this entry »
A BRIDGE NOT FAR ENOUGH: Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Oscar Season and Bridge of Spies
Posted: October 22, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alan Alda, Amy Ryan, Bridge of Spies, Ethan Coen, Gary Powers, James B. Donovan, Janusz Kaminski, Jesse Plemmons, Joel Coen, Mark Rylance, Matt Charman, Norman Rockwell, Sebastian Koch, Steven Spielberg, Tom hanks | 4 Comments »First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
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Warning: SPOILERS
It is now autumn in America. This means that leaves are changing their colors and becoming richer and deeper in tone; that we are transitioning in time between the salad days of yore and winter’s cold meat of the future until we again reach spring when life sprouts once more anew; and that the youth of yesteryear is giving way to middle aged thoughtfulness.
Yes, it’s a metaphor for the state of movies in the U.S. We have now departed the blockbuster summer where the most desirable demographic took center stage, to the more melancholic and self-contemplative movies that appeal more to the mature in us.
Now, there is one thing that should first be stated here, shouted from the rooftop in clarion clarity. This does not mean that the movies will be getting any better. No matter what people will claim, subject matter and weightiness is in no way a guarantee of quality.
In fact, I predict that you won’t be finding many American Hollywood films that will surpass Spies and The Martian.
But change is still upon us.
PAST INTENSE: Movie reviews of The Final Girls and Labyrinth of Lies by Howard Casner
Posted: October 20, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Adam Devine, Alexander Fehling, Amelie Syberberg), Elizabeth Bartel, Gert Voss, Giulio Ricciarelli, Joshua John Miller, Labyrinth of Lies, M.A. Fortin, Malin Akerman, Taissa Farmiga, The Final Girls, Thomas Middleditch, Todd Strauss-Schulson | 2 Comments »First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
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Warning: SPOILERS
The Final Girls is one of those low budget independent films that comes out of nowhere and give low budget independent films that come out of nowhere a good name. Well, maybe I’m exaggerating since most low budget independent films that come out of nowhere are so bad these days, I’m not sure that anything could actually give them a good name, but you know what I mean.
At any rate, this new post modern parody of horror films that is also not just a parody but also a film in and of itself (like Scream in many ways, though Scream is more serious, but unlike the Scary Movie franchise which does nothing but make fun of its precursors), is a ton of fun.
The basic premise revolves around Max, whose mother Amanda made the low budget slasher film Camp Bloodbath that unexpectedly was a success and because of that, Amanda could never do anything else and her acting career languished.
Years later, Amanda dies in one of those car accidents that seems to be the de jour way to kill off people in movies today (does anyone die any other way but in car accidents anymore, and not just car accidents, but accidents where a vehicle is hit and goes bouncing around in multiple somersaults like it’s Olga Korbut, always…ALWAYS…ending up on its roof, like a turtle; I have no idea what that’s about) and Max hasn’t been able to get over her death.
She is talked into going to a late night showing of Camp Bloodbath and when there is a fire incident at the theater, she and her friends exit through the screen, ending up in the movie within a movie itself. And now they must figure out what is going on, how to get back and how to stay alive long enough in order to get back. While providing the audience with tons of chills, thrills and giggles. Read the rest of this entry »
HUMANITY AT ITS BEST AND WORST: Movie Reviews of Sicario and The Martian by Howard Casner
Posted: October 7, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Aksel Hennie, Andy Weir, Benicio del Toro, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Daniel Kaluuya, Darius Wolski, Denis Villeneuve, Drew Goddard, Emily Blunt, Harry Gregson-Williams, Jeff Daniels, Jessica Chastain, Joe Walker, Johan Johannson, Josh Brolin, Kate Mara, Kristen Wiig, Matt Damon, Michael Pena, Pietro Scalia, Ridley Scott, Roger Deakins, Sean Bean, Sebastian Stan, Sicario, Taylor Sheridan, The Martian, Victor Garber | 143 Comments »First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
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Warning: SPOILERS
Sicario, the new thriller about the drug war written by Taylor Sheridan (a first film) and directed by French Canadian flavor of the month Denis Villeneuve (Incendies, Prisoner, Enemies), is, in many ways, two movies for the price of one.
The first is an action/adventure film full of car chases and gun battles and plot twists (many of which, if truth be told, I found just a tad tenuous at best) of the action/adventure variety.
The second is a treatise on the drug war.
The first film is often quite successful and impressive. The second is, at least from my perspective, quite shallow and unconvincing.
This means that for much of the time, Sicario is definitely and highly entertaining. Sheridan and Villeneuve, along with the incredibly soaring cinematography of Roger Deakins (one of our finest today), the film editing of Joe Walker, and the heart throbbing music of Johan Johannson, have crafted an edge of your seat story that never really stops and never really lets you stop watching. Read the rest of this entry »
THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY: Movie Reviews of Pawn Sacrifice and The New Girl Friend by Howard Casner
Posted: October 6, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Anaius Demoustier, Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, Edward Zwick, François Ozon, Isild Le Besco, Liev Schreiber, Michael Stuhlberg, Pawn Sacrifice, Peter Sarsgaard, Raphaȅl Personnaz, Romain Duras, Ruth Rendall, Steven Knight, The New Girlfriend, Tobey Maguire | 3 Comments »First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
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Warning: SPOILERS
I do remember, somewhat vaguely it must be admitted, when the notorious and neurotic (to be polite) Bobby Fischer played Russian behemoth Boris Spassky for the world Grand Master of Chess back in 1972.
The portrait that was being painted of Fischer by many in the media at the time was of someone who was acting outrageously, unreasonably and very, very strangely in order to out-psyche his blindsided opponent. In other words, everyone thought there was a method to Fischer’s madness.
But writer Steven Knight and director Edward Zwick, in their version of the match in their new film Pawn Sacrifice, take a different approach. In their perspective, Fischer came by his outrageousness honestly. According to Knight and Zwick, Fischer’s actions were the result of some pretty serious mental issues rather than fully conscious choices.
In other words, while everyone, including Spassky, thought that Fischer was playing Hamlet, in reality, he’s the guy in the hospital who thinks he really is Hamlet.
And they make a pretty good case for it. Read the rest of this entry »
GROWING PAINS: Movie Reviews of Breathe and A Brilliant Young Mind by Howard Casner
Posted: September 30, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: A Brilliant Young Mind, Anne-Sophie Brasme, Asa Butterfield, Beautiful Young Minds, Breathe, Eddie Marsan, Inglourious Basterds, James Graham, Josephine Japy, Julien Lambroschini, Lou de Laage, Melanie Laurent, Morgan Matthews, Pierre Laurent, Rafe Spall, Sally Hawkins, The Simpsons | 2,125 Comments »First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
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Warning: SPOILERS
Melanie Laurent is an artist probably best known in the U.S. for her role as the Jewish girl who escapes the clutches of Christoph Waltz in the opening of the film Inglourious Basterds. But she doesn’t seem to be somebody who is only going to do one thing. Not only does she sing, but she has also branched out into directing and screenwriting.
Her most recent film, Breathe (her second feature), written by her and Julien Lambroschini from a novel by Anne-Sophie Brasme, is a very assured character study of Charlie, a high school teenager who suddenly finds her outer and inner world spiraling out of control.
The cause of this chaos is the arrival at her school of a transfer student, Sarah. At first Sarah seems sweet and good natured (in a rather clever little opening bit on her first appearance) and she quickly and very determinedly ingratiates herself into Charlie’s life.
But it’s not long before the audience sees what Charlie can’t. That Sarah has a darker aspect to her personality. In fact, it almost immediately becomes clear that Sarah is a sociopath. She quickly manipulates Charlie into dropping her present best friend without Charlie realizing she has done so. And it’s not long before the two new friends are inseparable. Read the rest of this entry »
FUHGEDDABOUDIT: Movie Reviews of Coming Home and Black Mass by Howard Casner
Posted: September 27, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Adam Scott, Benedict Cumberbatch, Black Mass, Coming Home, Corey Stoll, David Harbour, Huiwen Zhang, Jesse Plemons, Jez Butterworth, Jingzhi Zou, Joel Edgerton, John Connolly, Johnny Depp, Kevin Bacon, Li Gong, Mark Mallouk, Peter Sarsgaard, Random Harvest, Rory Cochrane, Scott Cooper, W. Earl Brown, Whitey Bulger, Yanshi (Daoming Chen, Yimou Zhang | 7 Comments »First, a word from our sponsors: I am now offering a new service: so much emphasis has been given lately to the importance of the opening of your screenplay, I now offer coverage for the first twenty pages at the cost of $20.00. For those who don’t want to have full coverage on their screenplay at this time, but want to know how well their script is working with the opening pages, this is perfect for you. I’ll help you not lose the reader on page one.
Ever wonder what a reader for a contest or agency thinks when he reads your screenplay? Check out my new e-book published on Amazon: Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader, including my series of essays, What I Learned Reading for Contests This Year, and my film reviews of 2013. Only $2.99. http://ow.ly/xN31r
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Warning: SPOILERS
In 1942, Ronald Colman played a character so shell shocked by the trenches of World War I that he walked out of the hospital where he was recovering, having no idea who he was.
He was taken in by a singer in a vaudeville house (Greer Garson), fell in love and the two married. Then years later, he suddenly, out of nowhere, remembered who he really was, but totally forget that his wife existed. He discovers he’s the scion of a wealthy family and eventually runs for political office, not knowing that his secretary is actually his wife.
This movie is Random Harvest and is perhaps the most romantic and delirious use of amnesia in film. But amnesia has always been a useful tool of storytelling, whether romantic (here and in Law of Desire) or in thrillers (Mr. Budwing and Mirage) or comedy (The Hangover and 50 First Dates).
Coming Home, written by Jingzhi Zou and directed by Yimou Zhang, falls into the more melodramatic end of the spectrum like Random Harvest. It’s unabashedly sentimental and relishes in a sort of 1930’s studio romanticism tone and style, though the grittiness makes it more Warner Brothers than MGM. Read the rest of this entry »
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