REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST: Movie Reviews of Lion and Jackie by Howard Casner
Posted: December 18, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Beth Grant, Billy Cruddup, Dev Patel, Garth David, Greta Gerwig, Jackie, John Carroll Lynch, John Hurt, Lion, Luke Davies, Natalie Portman, Nicole Kidman, Noah Oppenheim, Pablo Lorrain, Peter Sarsgaard, Richard E. Grant | Leave a comment »For questions: hcasner@aol.com
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Warning: SPOILERS
About a third of the way through Lion, the new film from director Garth David (he worked on the TV series Top of the Lake) and screenwriter Luke Davies (Candy), the central character, Saroo, has a Proustian moment when he sees a plate of jelebies, a lusciously bright red sweet popular in India. He suddenly has a memory of being a boy less than six years old, deeply desiring such a confection while out working with his older brother in a remote Indian city.
This has a profound effect on him, because as a child he got separated from his brother and ended up on a train that took him to New Delhi where he ended up in an orphanage, subsequently adopted by an Australian couple.
He hasn’t thought about his early life much at all. He doesn’t even really consider himself Indian. But the rush of memory has a profound existential effect on him and he becomes obsessed with finding his way back to his birth mother and family. Read the rest of this entry »
CUT THE CRAP: Movie review of Joon-ho Bong’s Snowpiercer by Howard Casner
Posted: July 11, 2014 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Chris Evans, Ed Harris, Jamie Bell, John Hurt, Joon-ho Bong, Kelly Masterson, Octavia Spencer, Snowpiercer, Tilda Swinton, Vladimir Ivanov | 27 Comments »First, a word from our sponsors. 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
There is one clever and rather effective scene in Snowpiercer, the new movie about a train containing all the survivors of a global warming apocalyptic event that travels the world and can never stop.
Just as a battle royale is about to erupt, everyone is ordered to stop and wait while some of the participants count down from ten as the train passes over a certain bridge, a bridge the train passes over only once annually, meaning that it’s, wait for it…yes, New Years.
Once the countdown is over, it’s back to the bloodshed.
But outside of that, I’m sorry, but I have to say…no, you know what? I’m not sorry.
Snowpiercer is crap.
GOOD HELP IS HARD TO FIND: Movie Reviews of Ilo Ilo, Joe and Only Lovers Left Alive by Howard Casner
Posted: April 18, 2014 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Angeli Bayani, Anthony Chen, Benoit Soler, David Gordon Green, Gary Brown, Ilo Ilo, Jim Jarmusch, Joe, John Hurt, Koh Jai Ler as the holy terror Jiale, Mia Wasikowska, Nicolas Cage, Only Lovers Left Alive, Tian Wen Chen, Tilda Swinton, Tom Hiddleston, Tye Sheridan, Yann Yann Yeo, Yorick Le Saux | 1,655 Comments »
The family of Jiale, a young boy growing up in Singapore in the 1990’s, is, shall we say, not having the best of times.
His mother Hwee Leng is, well, quite pregnant, to say the least, and works for a company where she types the dismissal notices for a mass layoff; her job seems secure, but no one else around her is so confident. The father, Teck, works as a salesman for a company that makes shoddy protective glass and he soon finds himself out of a job (though he doesn’t tell the family). And Jiale, well, Jiale is simply a terror, a combination of Damien Thorn and Rhoda Penmark. Read the rest of this entry »
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