Posted: March 23, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: 8 ½, A Better Life, Alice Adams, Antonio Banderas, Armin Mueller-Stall, Bill Murray, Bob Nelson, Brian Dennehy, Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Cinderella, Clive Owen, Confirmation, Federico Fellini, Hardcore, Jaeden Lieberher, John Gielgud, Kitty Foyle, Knight of Cups, La Dolce Vita, Liam Neeson, Mario Bella, Matthew Modine, Natalie Portman, Patton Oswalt, Paul Schrader, Robert Forster, St. Vincent, Stephen Tobolowsky, Taken, Terence Malick, The Bicycle Thief, The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Searchers, Tim Blake Nelson, To the Wonder, Vittorio de Sica, Wes Bentley, Working Girl | 173 Comments »
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Warning: SPOILERS
Knight of Cups, the new film from art house fave writer/director Terence Malick, begins with some excerpts from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, spoken, I believe, in the dulcet tones of Sir John Gielgud. The Pilgrim’s Progress is an allegory about a man who is weighed down by his sin and must seek a path to righteousness, but he finds many dangers, toils and snares along the way.
I suppose the allegory in that classic is supposed to also be an allegory for Rick, the central character in Malick’s drama, and his journey. Rick is a screenwriter who basically just drifts from place to place, observing the world he encounters while avoiding screenwriting as much as possible. It’s sort of like a movie by Federico Fellini, 8 ½ or La Dolce Vita, character studies of a men who are spiritually lost or have writer’s block, set against dwarfing architecture and a somewhat impressionistic view of the local’s lives.
I have to say I liked Knight of Cups, though I also have to say I’m surprised that I did. In Malick’s last film To The Wonder, the filmmaker told an almost impossible to understand story, made almost impossible to understand because it was not told in chronological order. And since you were spending so much time just trying to understand what was going on, it was difficult to become emotionally involved in the movie. And it didn’t help that when you did figure it out, it was a pretty bland and banal story line. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: March 20, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Ben Chaplin, Cate Blanchett, Chris Weitz, Cinderella, Derek Jacobi, Helena Bonham-Carter, Holliday Grainger, Kenneth Branagh, Lilly James, Nonso Anozie, Richard Madden, Sophie McShera, Stellan Skarsgard | 4 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
and check out my Script Consultation Services: http://ow.ly/HPxKE
Warning: SPOILERS
There is one absolutely lovely and magical moment in the new live action, non-musical Disney version of the animated, fully musicalized Disney version of the classic Charles Perrault fairy tale Cinderella.
Our titular character, frustrated and defeated by the cruel treatment at the hands of her step-mother and step-sisters, takes to horse and rides off into a distant woods where she stops the Prince from hunting down a stag.
What’s wonderful about this scene is that the previously optimistic (and rather annoyingly Pollyanish at times) Cinderella is finally the person she really is, beaten down, sad, furious at the circumstances she has found herself in, while the Prince, in turn, is finally the person he isn’t: here he pretends to be a mere apprentice and not royalty.
Who’d have thought something this sophisticated, clever and witty would have come from a carefully fine-tuned and micromanaged to the nth degree movie from the Disney studios, but the screenwriter Chris Weitz (who has given us such fun bon bons as Antz and About a Boy) pulled off something of a coup in this particular scene.
Other than that, for my money, Cinderella is something of a mixed bag when it comes to success. I know it’s been socking it away at the box office, but I’m afraid that it only intermittently works for me. Read the rest of this entry »
