THE FRENCH THEY ARE A FUNNY RACE: Part Trois, Movies at the Col-Coa Film Festival: Mea Culpa and Turning Tide by Howard Casner
Posted: May 4, 2014 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Christophe Offenstein, Francois Cluzet, Fred Cavaye, Frederic Petitjean, Gilles LeLouche, Guillaume Lemans, Jean Cottin, Mea Culpa, Olivier Marchal, Pierre Marcel, Turning Tide, Vince Lindon | 1,950 Comments »
At the end of Mea Culpa, the exhilarating and electrifying slam bang, no thank you ma’am, action thriller written by Fred Cavaye, Guillaume Lemans and Olivier Marchal and directed by Cavaye (all of which, especially when it comes to Cavaye. is probably a pretty redundant statement when it comes down to it), I turned to the person sitting beside me and said, “Well, I don’t know about you, but I am utterly exhausted”.
Mea Culpa is a movie in which every actor must have lost about fifty pounds by the time the shoot was over since half the time all they do is run. They run away from crooks at a bull fight into an deserted marketplace; they run away from crooks at a night club cum brothel (yeah, yeah, cum brothel, I get it); they run after crooks at an ambush at a police headquarters; they run away from crooks on a train (unless they are running to get on the train to stop the crooks).
I mean, these guys really run. A lot. I’m still exhausted just thinking about it. Read the rest of this entry »
THE FRENCH THEY ARE A FUNNY RACE: Part Duex, Movies at the Col-Coa Film Festival: 9 Month Stretch and Me, Myself and Mum by Howard Casner
Posted: May 3, 2014 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 9 Month Stretch, Albert Dupontel, Claude Mathieu, Diane Kruger, Gasper Noe, Guillaume Gallienne, Hector Cabello Reyes, Jean Dujardin, Me, Myself and Mum, Nicolas Vassiliev, Olivier Demangel, Philippe Uchan, Sandrine Kiberlain, Terry Gilliam, Yolande Moreau | 12 Comments »Are you sitting down?
You maybe ought to be sitting down for this.
You see, there’s this judge. And she’s female. And she doesn’t like men and thinks they are all cowards because of something her father did to her mother, yadda, yadda, yadda. She is all work and no play, doesn’t drink or have sex. And she’s up for a major promotion.
But then on New Year’s Eve, against her better judgment, she lets her colleagues talk her into joining the party. She gets down and boogies; imbibes a bit too, too; leaves the merrymaking ministry in a haze…and six months later discovers she’s pregnant. And can’t remember how it happened or with whom.
No, no, that’s still not it. Don’t get up yet. You probably should stay seated. Read the rest of this entry »
THE FRENCH THEY ARE A FUNNY RACE: Part Un, Movies at the Col-Coa Film Festival: Trapped, Not My Type and How I Came to Hate Math by Howard Casner
Posted: April 27, 2014 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Amandine Escoffier, Emilie Dequenne, How I Came to Hate Math, Jeremie Galan, Loic Corbery, Lucas Belvaux, Not My Type, Olivier Peyon, Pascal Elbe, Patrick Giminez, Trapped, Vincent Crouzet, Yannick Saillet | 603 Comments »
In Trapped, the new minimalist thriller written by Vincent Crouzet, Jeremie Galan, Patrick Giminez, Yannick Saillet and directed by Saillet, a French patrol is ambushed by the Taliban in Afghanistan. In the ensuing battle, all but two French soldiers are killed.
But upon investigating their ambushers, the two soldiers discover a truck piled high with blocks of heroin and a female hostage, a beautiful, blonde and blue eyed Aryan of course (as beautiful, blonde and blue eyed as Fay Wray in King Kong—well, I think she was blue eyed, I mean, King Kong was in B&W, so I guess, I can’t be sure…)
Anyway, one of the soldiers is killed, the other, our hapless hero Denis, steps on a land mine and can’t move or, well, boom goes the dynamite. Read the rest of this entry »
BRAIN DEAD: Movie Review of Transcendence by Howard Casner
Posted: April 24, 2014 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Clifton Collins, Colossus: the Forbin Project, Jack Paglen, Johnny Depp, Jr., Kate Mara, Morgan Freeman, Paul Bettany, Rebecca Hall, Transcendence, Wally Pfister | 9 Comments »
Transcendence (or perhaps more aptly titled Trance-enduscence), the new sci-fi thriller written by Jack Paglen and directed by Wally Pfister (a first feature for both, though Pfister was the cinematographer on many Christopher Nolan films), is about a scientist, Will Caster, who tries to turn the world into a dystopian Eden when his brain is uploaded into a computer.
The basic structure is as familiar as any standard piece of Victorian literature, the period when Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein, a horror story about an egotistical scientist who tries to play God by creating a man out of a bunch of miscellaneous parts from dead bodies. Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL: Movie Reviews of Nymphomaniac: Vol. 1 and Under the Skin by Howard Casner
Posted: April 15, 2014 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Christian Slater, Daniel Landin, Jonathan Glazer, Lars von Trier, Mica Levi, Nymphomaniac: Vol. 1, Scarlett Johansson, Shia LeBeouf, Stacy Martin, Stellan Skarsgard, Uma Thurman, Under the Skin, Walter Campbell | 5,753 Comments »
I feel I should start this review with full disclosure. I do not like the movies of Lars von Trier, I do not like them, Sam I Am. I find them preposterous, ridiculous, over the top, impossible to connect with emotionally, and, most importantly, just plain boring the vast majority of the time. I only keep seeing them because of the critical reception his movies receive and the reputation he has within the film community; so I realize that attention must be paid.
But I’m sorry, he just doesn’t work for me. Read the rest of this entry »
H-2-D’OH: Movie Review of Noah by Howard Casner
Posted: April 12, 2014 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Anthony Hopkins, Ari Handel, Darren Aronofsky, Douglas Booth, Emma Watson, Jennifer Connelly, Leo McHugh Carroll, Logan Lerman, Nick Nolte, Noah, Ray Winstone, Russell Crowe | 8 Comments »
There is one profoundly profound bit of dialog in Noah, the new “Biblical” (I put that in quotes because, well, there have been some complaints about just how Biblical it really is, so, you know, don’t want to make the Big Guy upstairs angry cause, let’s face it, after seeing this movie, one thing is clear, when he gets mad, he gets pissed, know what I mean?…anyway), the new “Biblical” epic from writers Ari Handel and Darren Aronofsky, the latter of whom also directed.
At one point, Noah seems to really lose it and starts planning some rather terrifying and somewhat shocking actions that most people would suggest are not of the most Godly kind, to say the least. His middle son, Ham, states that he thought God chose Noah because Noah was good. Noah’s response is, no, God chose him because he could get the job done. Read the rest of this entry »
THRILLS BOTH CHEAP AND EXPENSIVE: Movie Reviews Cheap Thrills and Captain America: the Winter Soldier by Howard Casner
Posted: April 9, 2014 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Anthony Mackie, Anthony Russo, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Cheap Thrills, Chris Evans, Christopher Markus, Cobie Smulders, David Chirchirillo, David Koechner, E.L. Katz, Ed Brubaker, Emily Van Kamp, Ethan Embry, Joe Russo, Pat Healy, Robert Redford, Samuel L. Jackson, Sarah Paxton, Scarlett Johansson, Sebastian Stan, Stephen McFeely, Trent Haaga | 1,682 Comments »
In the 2012 drama, Compliance, Pat Healy played a sociopath pretending to be a police officer who manipulates the workers at a fast food restaurant into do some pretty disgusting things (and I don’t mean to the food, though from what I understand, fast food workers wouldn’t need much manipulation for that in the first place).
In his newest movie, Cheap Thrills, he’s on the opposite side of the fence, playing a poor schnook being manipulated into doing disgusting things by a pair of sociopaths. Read the rest of this entry »
@#%!!&# Movie Reviews of Bad Words and On My Way by Howard Casner
Posted: April 4, 2014 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Allison Janney, Andrew Dodge, Bad Words, Catherine Denueve, Emmanuelle Bercot, Jason Bateman, Jerome Tonnerre, Kathryn Hahn, On My Way, Rohan Chand | 736 Comments »
It’s easy to see why Jason Bateman wanted to make Bad Words, the new Bad Santa clone written by new comer Andrew Dodge and directed by and starring Mssr. Bateman. It’s a solid vehicle to show off his middle brow, laid back talents and he certainly makes the most of it. He wears the role like a comfy old sweater owned since college that you just can’t bring yourself to get rid of, complete with impeccable comic timing.
It’s also a very entertaining movie. It’s witty and clever and never boring. It’s often a ton of fun. It’s very well crafted.
In fact, it’s so well made that it’s quite easy to overlook the fact that it’s really quite a terrible, terrible film. Read the rest of this entry »
FOOD FOR THOUGHT: Movie Reviews of The Lunchbox, The Missing Picture, Two Men in Manhattan by Howard Casner
Posted: March 28, 2014 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Christophe Bataille, Irrfan Khan, Jean-Pierre Melville, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Nimrat Kaur, Pierre Grasset, Ritesh Batra, Rithy Panh, The Lunchbox, The Missing Picture, Two Men in Manhattan | 588 Comments »
I once worked for an intellectual property law firm. One of the most unusual countries to deal with was India. By the time the renewals for trademark registrations were due, the original registration itself had yet to be accepted. I’m not sure what this says about bureaucracy in that country except that it definitely exists. Read the rest of this entry »
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