PROLOGUE TO GLORY: Movie Reviews of Southside With You and Sully by Howard Casner
Posted: September 13, 2016 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Aaron Eckhardt, Anna Gunn, Captain Phillips, Chesley Sullenburger, Clint Eastwood, Do The Right Thing, Jamey Sheridan, Laura Linney, Michael Rappaport, Mike O’Malley, Parker Sawyers, Pauline Kael, Richard Tanner, Saving Mr. Banks, Southside With You, Spike Lee, Tika Sumpter, Tom hanks, Tom Komarnicki, Tom McElroy, Valerie Mahaffey | 8 Comments »For questions: hcasner@aol.com
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Warning: SPOILERS
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare
When Pauline Kael reviewed Abel Gance’s Napoleon, she talked, somewhat negatively, of Gance’s approach to the future emperor. She said something to the affect that when Napoleon is an adult, Gance treats him as a man of destiny; when the subject is young and in school, he’s presented as a child of destiny.
This isn’t an unusual way to approach biopics of famous people; treating them as archetypes, rather than human beings like anyone else one might meet on the street, an approach closer to what George Bernard Shaw tried to do in such works as Caeser and Cleopatra and St. Joan.
But even Shaw’s plays seem more like the Fast and Furious franchise when compared to Southside With You, the chronicling of an early and ordinary day in the life of two people who later became two of the most powerful people in the world.
MAN AT WAR or THE CERTAINTY PRINCIPLE: Movie review of American Sniper by Howard Casner
Posted: January 2, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: American Sniper, Bradley Cooper, Chris Kyle, Clint Eastwood, Jason Hall, Jonathan Groff, Sienna Miller | 2 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
Every war has its heroes who are used to symbolize the conflict and try and bring it meaning in some way.
The Great War had Sgt. Alvin C. York who led a raid on a German machine gun nest, killing 28 soldiers and taking captive more than 100 others.
His story was turned into a movie starring Gary Cooper that was used to support American’s entry in World War II (it was playing in the theaters as Pearl Harbor was being bombed).
The Second World War had Audie Murphy, who became a hero after holding off a company of German soldiers and then leading a counterattack, all the while wounded and out of ammunition.
Murphy became a movie star after the conflict was over, starring in such films as The Red Badge of Courage and The Quiet American, as well as a series of B westerns. He also played himself in the film To Hell and Back.
In the Viet Nam war we had Ron Kovic, memorialized in the book and movie Born on the Fourth of July, and played by Tom Cruise in the film. Read the rest of this entry »
REAL LIFE, REEL LIFE, STILL LIFE: Movie Reviews of The Last Sentence and Jersey Boys by Howard Casner
Posted: June 29, 2014 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Christopher Walken, Clint Eastwood, Erich Bergen, Frankie Valli, Jan Troell, Jersey Boys, Jesper Chrsitensen, John Lloyd Young, Joseph Russo, Klaus Rifbjerg, Marshall Brickman, Michael Ballhaus, Michael Lomenda, Mike Doyle, Rick Elice, The Last Sentence, Torgny Segerstadt, Vincent Piazza | 1,393 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
If you’ve seen the previews or read about the new Swedish film The Last Sentence, you will most probably come to the conclusion that the movie is about a brave man, one Torgny Segerstadt, who spent his later years as a newspaper editor fighting against fascism in the 1930’s during the rise of Nazism.
But if you actually see the movie, you quickly discover that this is only a small part of the story, and that the film is really about Segerstadt’s relationship with three women: his mother who died when he was young and whose death haunted him the rest of his life; his disintegrating marriage to a woman who spiraled into a depression after the death of one of their sons and for whom he has lost all affection; and his love affair with the Jewish owner of the newspaper he runs, a drug addict whose husband knows about the affair and who is not particularly bothered by it. Read the rest of this entry »
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