O WHAT A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE: Movie Reviews of Baby Driver and Spider-Man: Homecoming by Howard Casner

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Warning: SPOILERS

I can certainly see why people are so in love with Baby Driver, the new heist film from writer/director Edgar Wright. It’s about as stylish as you can get, and with a stylishness that has a bouncy feel good quality to it that gets you to sit up in your seat, tap your foot and just generally groove out.

It begins with a bank robbery and a car chase orchestrated to a song chosen by the title character (a getaway driver with pouty lips and baby face). It’s followed soon after by a one take with said character bopping down the street to another song, barely dodging people on the street, and backed by some nice gymnastics (this is important because there comes a time when suddenly he’s bumping into people right and left, signaling a sea change within the character).

Everything is calculated and carefully choreographed to be cool and hip. And it is pretty cool. In fact, the movie is not only pretty cool, it’s fully aware as to how cool it is and revels in this coolness to such an extent that it knows that the audience knows that it knows just how cool it is.

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DEATH, CAN’T LIVE WITH IT, CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT IT: Movie reviews of The Fault in Our Stars and Dormant Beauty by Howard Casner

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

Warning: SPOILERS

Jeffrey: You loved Darius. And look what happens. Do you want me to go through this, with Steve?

Sterling: Yes.

                                   Jeffrey, Paul Rudnick

fault in our starsI’m not sure why, but I always get the feeling that when Romeo and Juliet is made into a movie it’s a hit and that teens tend to flock to that story as if their life depended upon it as much as it does the title characters of the play.

I’ve never quite understood why people so young are so fascinated by their own mortality, and even more so, find the need to have it represented in such a gorgeously tragic manner. Read the rest of this entry »