RULES ARE MEANT TO BE BROKEN: Movie Reviews of Rules Don’t Apply and Allied by Howard Casner
Posted: December 1, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alden Ehrenreich, Alec Baldwin, Amy Madigan, Annette Bening, Brad Pitt, Candice Bergen, Dabney Coleman, Ed Harris, Hart Bochner, Jared Harris, Lily Collins, Marion Cottilard, Martin Sheen, Matthew Broderick, Matthew Goode, Oliver Platt, Paul Schneider, Paul Sorvino, Robert Zemeckis, Rules Don’t Apply, Simon McBurney, Steven Knight, Warren Beatty | 2,304 Comments »For questions: hcasner@aol.com
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Warning: SPOILERS
Rules Don’t Apply, the latest, and from what I understand, the last film from Warren Beatty who wrote, produced and plays famous recluse Howard Hughes here, has some charming moments in the first half.
The story revolves round Frank Forbes (Alden Ehrenreich, who has the looks, charisma, but a lot more talent than B-movie actor Audie Murphy) who is one of Hughes’s many drivers who escort one of the billionaire’s many starlets around Los Angeles. The starlet assigned to Frank is Marla Mabry (Lily Collins).
Both are quite religious (Hughes chose his drivers from church goers as a guard against them trying to bed his starlets). They say grace before meals, watch The Billy Graham Crusade on television, and attend church every Sunday. And not only do they do this unapologetically when others are around and in the streets where they might scare the horses, Beatty himself presents this spiritual side of the characters just as unapologetically. Read the rest of this entry »
I’M READY FOR MY CLOSEUP, MR. DEMILLE: Movie Review of Hail, Caesar! by Howard Casner
Posted: February 8, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alden Ehrenreich, Alex Karpovsky, Caesar!, Channing Tatum, Ethan Coen, Francis McDormand, George Clooney, Hail, Joel Coen, Jonah Hill, Josh Brolin, Michael Gambon, Ralph Fiennes, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, Veronica Osorio | 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
and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE
Warning: SPOILERS
Hail, Caesar!, the latest comic satire from Joel and Ethan Coen, is one of those films that has so much that is right with it, plus a bit more that is brilliant, that it makes it all the more disappointing that it doesn’t quite come together.
The basic premise has as its center piece one Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), head of production at the fictional Hollywood studio Capital Pictures (the same studio that the Brothers used in Barton Fink). Over the course of one or two days, he has a difficult decision to make: should he remain at Capitol where he’s constantly having to put out fires both large and small and is constantly confronted by the insane antics of his stars, or will he take a position as head of Lockheed, a safe position with a guaranteed future (this is the 1950’s after all, and TV is more than making its presence known), fewer hours and less stress on the nerves?
Well, so far so good. Read the rest of this entry »
Movie of Review BEAUTIFUL CREATURES by Howard Casner
Posted: February 20, 2013 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alden Ehrenreich, Beautiful Creatures, Eileen Atkins, Emma Thompson, Jeremy Irons, Margo Martindale, Richard LaGravenese, Viola Davis | 173 Comments »Beautiful Creatures, the new slough of despair, riddled with angst teenage film written and directed by Richard LaGravenese, is one of those movies that preaches against intolerance and bigotry and then makes cartoons out of every Christian in town, except for the one who’s black and therefore a true believer (stereotype much?). It’s also a teenage version of Bewitched in which a mortal falls in love with a witch (oh, all right, Christine O’Donnell, they are not witches, they are casters—happy now?), but with more adolescent ennui and existential dread. Finally, it’s also one of the myriad of films that we’re going to be plagued with (and I mean plagued) as various producers desperately try to fill the void that has been formed by the absence of the Twilight franchise.
I think it’s safe to say that Beautiful Creatures didn’t do a lot for me (I only went because I finally decided it had a better chance of working than that new Die Hard film—unfortunately, from what I’m hearing, I made the right choice).
To be fair, there is one marvelous scene near the beginning of Beautiful Creatures that did suggest the movie might actually go somewhere. Not anywhere great, mind you, I wasn’t that optimistic; but, you know, somewhere. In this scene, our hapless hero Ethan (played by Alden Ehrenreich, who has such an unnerving resemblance to Leonardo DiCaprio, he could play his younger brother) is put under a spell by caster Macon (Jeremy Irons—yes, that Jeremy Irons) and asked what he’s going to do with his life. It’s already been readily established that he is applying to every college more than a thousand miles away in order to get out of his podunk, one-horse town. But instead of going there, he instead finds himself spouting out that he’s going to college locally so he can take care of his father and end up teaching in town, making a disastrous marriage and cheating on his wife and drinking heavily and having a heart attack at age 52, etc., etc., until he dies at age 62 by hanging himself (but with the rather brilliant coup de grace that his body won’t be found for a few days).
But alas and alack, this going somewhere twas not to be, for a few scenes later, Macon and another character, Sarafine, who has taken over the body of the local religious bigot Mrs. Lincoln (played by Emma Thompson—yes, that Emma Thompson), have a lengthy pax de duex in a church that goes on and on…and on. And at this point, this very point, the movie crashes and burns and, to mix metaphors, gets buried so deep, not even George Romero could resurrect it.
And speaking of Jeremy Irons and Emma Thompson, not to mention Viola Davis and Eileen Atkins and Margo Martindale (yes, that David, Atkins and Martindale), why is it in England when they use their great actors and award winners for escapist fare, they give them movies like The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and the James Bond films, but in the U.S. they give them stuff like…like…well, like this?
But you have to hand it to them. All the actors are game and they play it all as if it were written by the bard himself (one doesn’t know whether to give them credit where credit is due for that, or just sit down and weep tears of Dido). At any rate, it hardly matters. Most of the time one just sits there not entranced by their performances, but just trying to figure out why they would make a movie like this.
Yeah, I don’t think Beautiful Creatures did a lot for me.