NOSTALGIA AIN’T WHAT IT USE TO BE: Everybody Wants Some!! and Sing Street

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Warning: SPOILERS

rev 1Two movies have opened recently that take place in the recent past (the 1980’s to be more precise).  Each felt pastelled over with a patina of nostalgia, a painful desire for a sweet past.  But the two couldn’t be more different in their approaches.

Everybody Wants Some!! (with two, count ‘em, two exclamation points) is the most recent effort from writer/director Richard Linklater. Like his previous effort, Boyhood, it doesn’t use a hero’s journey or character arc, nor does it use a plot in which a central character must overcome an obstacle or gain a goal, as the basic structure.

No, rather, like such films as Amarcord and Cleo from 5 to 7, it uses a passage of time to hold its story together.

Read the rest of this entry »


THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE NEVER DID RUN YADDA, YADDA, YADDA: Movie reviews of Begin Again, The Empty Hours and A Summer’s Tale by Howard Casner

UntitledFirst, 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

Ah, love. You can’t eat it, but without it, you’ll starve. You can’t drink it, but without it, you’ll never feel quenched. You can’t wear it, but without it, you feel naked. You can’t sleep under its roof, but without it you’ll feel homeless.

And when it comes to love and war, well, let’s face it, love is the more universal language (why else do you think Shakespeare in the Big L won the Oscar over Saving Private Ryan?).

A few films have opened lately that explore the idea of love (and in once case amor and in another case amour), or more accurately, how absolutely awful and moronic we are at it. Perhaps one of the themes that connects all three movies is reflected in Hal David’s lyrics from the musical Promises, Promises, “So for at least until tomorrow/I’ll never fall in love again”.

Whether, then, these stories are comedies or tragedies (or both) is up to you.

Okay, enough of the poetry crap. Or as Ewan McGregor’s character says in I Love You Phillip Morris: Enough romance, let’s fuck. Read the rest of this entry »