YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN: Movie Reviews of Manchester By The Sea, It’s Only the End of the World and The Commune by Howard Casner

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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. 

 

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Warning: SPOILERS

rev-2You Can’t Go Home Again is, of course, the title of a posthumously published novel by Thomas Wolfe, and a phrase that has entered common discourse since. I’ve seen three movies lately that are about people returning home or using memories of their early years as the basis for their stories.

The basic premise of writer/director Kenneth Lonergan’s new film Manchester by the Sea revolves around Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck), a janitor living in Boston who is very good at his job, but is a loner with a somewhat self-destructive personality. When he receives word that his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) has died, he returns to his home city of Manchester by the Sea, a fishing and tourist town. There he is shocked to discover that his brother in his will has requested Lee to become guardian to Joe’s sixteen year old son, Lucas. Joe has provided for Lucas’ expenses in his will and just needs Lee to return to Manchester to live.

Why Lee can’t return and the conflicts over how to handle this request make up the bulk of the movie and much of the heart breaking suspense is waiting to find out what happened that led to Lee’s present situation-you know it has something to do with his three children since they are only shown in flashback. The waiting is painfully unbearable at times. Read the rest of this entry »


THE GOOD, THE NOT SO BAD AND THE UGLY—THIS YEAR AT AFI: LOVE STORY – Movie Reviews of Carol and In the Shadow of Women by Howard Casner

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

carol 1There’s a scene in Carol, the new film about lesbian lovers in 1950’s America, where one of the two leads, Therese, a clerk at a department store, joins her boyfriend and his pal in the projection booth of a movie theater that is screening the classic (though it was new at the time period of the film’s action) Sunset Boulevard.

The pal, who has seen the movie before, is taking copious notes because, as he says, he wants to record the difference between what the characters are saying and what they are really feeling and thinking (for those in the industry, this is often called subtext).

This is a conversation that I found to be of prime pertinence to the film because, with rare occasions, none of the characters ever, ever says what they really feel or think.

But of course, this is 1950’s America, the Eisenhower era where there was a lot bubbling underneath everyone’s skin, but it had yet to burst through to the surface as it soon will when the social revelation comes in the 1960’s.

Read the rest of this entry »


Movie Review of THE WOLF OF WALL STREET by Howard Casner

The first two thirds of The Wolf of Wall Street, the new fevered dream about evil doings in the stock market, written by Terence Winter and directed by Martin Scorsese, is a roller coaster ride of sex, drugs and (no, not rock and roll, though there is a lot of that thrown about in the background, along with a marching band in their underwear) greed.

 

This is Scorsese at his glorious best.  It’s a return to (do I dare use the “f” word; I mean, it’s such a “c” word; okay, I’ll do it) form (the “c” word, if your dirty mind didn’t guess it, is “cliché”).  It’s the Scorsese of Raging Bull, New York, New York, and Goodfellas.  The Scorsese that will pull every directing trick he can out of his bursting at the seams bag and explode it on the screen.

 

It’s the old Scorsese where you felt (pardon the vulgarity) that when there was fucking on the screen, he was banging away himself; that when people were stuffing white substances up their noses, he was using hundred dollar bills to do the same; that when people are conning the life savings out of poor hapless people, so was Scorsese (well, maybe that’s one screw turned too many, but then again, maybe it does sort of apply here in a way).

 

But as splendid and invigorating as his directing is, I think this movie demonstrates one very important aspect of Scorsese’s talent.  Scorsese is a great director, but he’s only a great filmmaker when he has a good screenwriter at his back.

 

I mean, to be ruthlessly honest and in full disclosure, I have not cared for a Scorsese film, outside a few documentaries, since Kundun.  But I never thought the issue was Scorsese’s direction.  No matter the film, he seemed as in command of the screen as ever.

 

But what always seemed to let him down was his screenplay.  Scorsese has always been one of America’s finest directors, but he has also been one who seemed especially dependent on his screenwriter.  And over the last number of years, he has careened like a pinball from bad screenplay (The Gangs of New York), to perfectly okay, but nothing great screenplay (The Aviator, The Departed), to awkwardly written and it just doesn’t work screenplay (Hugo), to perfectly dreadful screenplay (Shutter, or is it “shudder”, Island)—and most of the time with the movies ending up in tilt.

 

But here it looks like Scorsese may have found someone to save the day in Winter, a writer who also has many an episode of the TV series The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire to his name.  Winter has created fascinating and fully realized characters, a narrative that is turn the page captivating, and dialog filled with wit and energy.

 

It is Winter (unless someone else came in and rewrote the screenplay behind his back, which does happen, I guess, but I’ve no reason to believe it here) who has come up with such priceless scenes as the hero Jordan Belfort’s first day selling penny-ante stocks where he mesmerizes his hapless fellow workers; the scene where his future second in command Donnie Azoff will quit his job if Jordan can show him a $72,000 pay stub; a talk about marrying first cousins; a riotously funny incident where a quaalude kicks in at just the wrong time; a scene where…

 

Actually, I could go on and on, I loved the writing so much.  But the scene that really stands out as a remarkable piece of authorship is the pas de deux between Jordan and his father where the father (played effectively in a change of pace role by former meathead turned director Rob Reiner) comes into Jordan’s office furious over some expense reports and then stays for a private conversation concerning what Jordan likes in prostitutes.  It’s the sort of scene where a screenwriter could die happy knowing that he has written it.

 

Again, for the first two thirds of the movie, the film is captivating and frequently surprised me.  Winter and Scorsese would often structure a scene the same way: it would start out hysterically funny (as in the marching band scene) and then suddenly turn ugly and revolting, often ending up looking like a homage to Hieronymous Bosch.  It’s obvious that Scorsese is fascinated by these Alpha-male wannabees.  It’s equally obvious that he is also disgusted by them as well.

 

However, it must be said, though, that it’s also equally obvious that it’s not always easy to tell when Scorsese’s fascinated by them and when he’s disgusted by them, something that will lead to problems in the last act.

 

And like so many end of year films, the movie is cleverly cast.  I mean, who would have thought that of all the people who came out of the Seth Rogan/Judd Apatow School of Performing Arts that it would be little Jonah Hill of Superbad that would end up showing the most interesting and exciting acting chops?

 

With Hill’s performance in Moneyball and this one as Donnie, he’s demonstrated that there is much more to his ability than adolescent frat movies (and I have nothing against adolescent frat movies, some of my best friends are adolescent frat movies).  He’s a whirling dervish of a character actor going powder filled nose to powder filled nose with Leonardo DiCaprio as Jordan.  And they make some of the most beautiful timing together of the year.

 

DiCaprio, for his part, gives an equally strong performance in the title role.  He may not be quite as convincing when he tries to play poor working class, everyday, normal Jordan, but once the cocaine hits the nose, there is nothing stopping him from commanding the screen.

 

And both are supported by excellent performances from a cast including Kyle Chandler, Matthew McConaughey, Joanna Lumley, Jon Favreau, Christine Ebersole, and Fran Lebowitz (basically playing the same character she played regularly on Law & Order).

 

But then it happens.  We reach that final third.  And then things stop working as well as they were earlier.  And I think there are a couple of reasons for this.  First, Jordan not in command of his empire of the sun, but stuck ala Charlie Sheen at his mansion, complete with a tracking bracelet, just isn’t very interesting; he’s back to being the Jordan in the opening scenes, and there’s just not a lot for DiCaprio to work with here to keep the energy up.

 

However, more important, I think Winter and Scorsese make a very serious misstep here.  Everybody involved in the making of the movie keeps claiming that, even though at times Winter and Scorsese seem to be celebrating what the characters are doing, they aren’t really condoning how these characters act and what these characters have done.  And I believe it.

 

But where Winter and Scorsese go wrong is that they ultimately make the story about what Jordan does to Jordan, what he does to himself.  But that’s not really what Jordan’s story is about.  The story is about what Jordan has done to the American economy and the myriads of people whose lives he destroyed.  But that aspect of the story doesn’t interest Winter and Scorsese for some mind boggling reason.  In fact, all of that is chopped liver as far as they are concerned.

 

All the two really care about is Jordan.   But Jordan, though fascinating, isn’t really a character worth caring about in the end.  It’s his victims who are worth caring about.  It’s sort of like doing a movie about, I don’t know, the notorious Civil War prison Andersonville and having the important aspect of the story be about Henry Wirz and what he did to himself, while completely ignoring the 13,000 POW’s who died there.

 

And after all, isn’t Jordan’s drug taking and sexcapades really the least of his sins?  I mean, if that’s the worst that Winter and Scorses can bring themselves to accuse Jordan of, there’s something really screwy with the morality here and it’s not all on the screen.

 

So the writer and director had a chance to rise above what their movie ultimately was, but they bunted instead.  And thus the mighty movie stumbles and to a certain degree fails as it approaches the finish line.  For Winter and Scorsese, it’s enough for them to just show that Jordan ended up in a country club prison playing tennis and after being released, becoming a second rate huckster on second rate TV shows in Australia, drumming up business on how to become a salesman.

 

With the result that rather than a movie that shows us what a monster Jordan became, we have a movie that, to quote a friend of mind, says little more than “sex is good, until it isn’t; drugs are good, until they aren’t; greed is good, until it isn’t”.

 

And in the end, Winter and Scorsese get conned by Jordan Belfort as much as the American public did.

 

And it’s a shame.


Movie Reviews of THE SPECTACULAR NOW and ELYSIUM by Howard Casner

This year has been something of a horse race for coming of age films.  I don’t think I’ve ever really kept count, but I don’t remember seeing as many in one year as I have this one.  It’s not a particularly close horse race as horse races go.  The lead, when it comes to quality, is obviously, as far as I’m concerned, a dead heat between Something in the Air and The Bling Ring.  Behind those two, and lagging far behind it should be noted, are The Way, Way Back and Mud.  And behind that, in a distant, distant, distant last place, is The Kings of Summer.  However, a movie has now come along that may just about dislodge The Kings of Summer from its singular location.

 

After seeing The Spectacular Now, I turned to my friend and told him, I swear I’ve seen this film before; it was part of a TV series called The Afterschool Special; starred a couple of familiar TV kids of the day; and was about teenage alcoholics (there were actually a couple of shows like this: a made for TV movie, The Boy Who Drank Too Much with Scott Baio and Lance Kerwin and that Afterschool Special one, The Late Great Me! Story of a Teenage Alcoholic).  No, The Spectacular Now is not a remake; but overall, I really couldn’t see all that much of a difference between The Spectacular Now and an episode of a series that was often made fun of in its day for it’s obviousness and PSA feel (it was only a few steps up from those films shown in school in the 1950’s on the dangers of premarital sex).

 

I really don’t understand the big hoopla over this film.  It gets the job done, but I’m not convinced it does much else.  But for some reason everyone, including film critics who should know better, is calling it original and non-formulaic—perhaps the two very words that could never be honestly used in describing this picture (directed adequately by James Ponsoldt, with a screenplay by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber—a far cry from their exciting work of (500) Days of Summer).  It’s one of those movies in which every plot turn is telegraphed minutes, if not hours, before it happens; in which everything pretty much happens the way it always does, and always has, in movies like this; and just about worst of all, it’s one of those movies where, if you haven’t gotten the message that has been so obviously preached for the majority of the film, the central character actually tells you what it is in the final scene (really?  I mean, really?—Jesus, it’s like the ending of The Breakfast Club, except at least that movie had a bit more interesting of a message to its message).

 

The story revolves around high school senior Sutter (played by Miles Teller, who is perfectly fine and does his Shia Lebouf best when it comes to his lines, though I’m not sure I ever fully bought him in the role).  Sutter has the smarmy personality of a used car salesman, and the drinking problem to go with it.  He’s one of these characters who is described in a way that is never dramatized: he claims to be one of the most popular kids at school and that no party is successful without him—of course, we have to take his word for it since he never does anything to prove it.  At one point at prom (which feels very underpopulated), he yells out that he loves these guys—why he does, I have no idea (in his defense, this is also the point where he has the best line in the movie: “we’ll never be this young again”).   His most moving and honest scene (and the one, perhaps, least encumbered by formula and predictability) is a moment he has with his boss, played by Breaking Bad’s Bob Odenkirk, in which he is very honest about himself and describes himself in a way that, for the first time in the film, is actually supported by events in the story.

 

It’s not that the movie is without some moving scenes.  As clichéd as it is, Sutter has a scene with his father whom he hasn’t seen since he was a child that is quite memorable.  It’s not just that his father turns out to be someone other than what he seems at first (who didn’t see that coming).  Sutter’s father (played spot on by Kyle Chandler) is more than you’re run of the mill alcoholic; he is one mean drunk and the scene has some unexpected menace that the rest of the movie could have used.

 

Perhaps the biggest crime of the film, though, bigger than the triteness of the formula and simplistic story telling, is the use of Jennifer Jason Leigh as Sutter’s mother.  Leigh is someone who had potential to become one of our greatest actresses with incredible performances in such movies as Last Exit to Brooklyn, Miami Blues, Rush and Georgia, but has now been reduced to playing parts easily beneath her, throwaway roles in movies she is too good for.   That is perhaps the only thing in this movie I didn’t see coming.

 

 

Writer/director Niell Blonkamp is brilliant when it comes to metaphors.  The movie that made his name, District 9, is a comment on race relations and immigration revolving around aliens from another planet making their way to earth and ghettoized in South Africa.  Elysium, his new sci-fi story, is a metaphor on the haves and have nots, the 1 percenters having fled a decaying earth to a state of the art space station, leaving the earth to the 99 percenters.  Unfortunately, this is about where any interest in this movie stops.

 

The metaphor is original and exciting, but the set up, the concept, the back story, never seems well thought out and doesn’t feel remotely convincing.  After leaving the theater, all I and my friends did was pick apart how unbelievable it all was (it’s a world in which the population has not just sub-par, but almost no medical care; lives on a planet that is losing its resources; an earth where the pollution is deadly, and yet the place is overpopulated—a neat trick if there ever was one, and just one of the many parts of the film that never made sense).

 

But the fact that after the movie was over all we could talk about was the errors in the premise suggests a much deeper problem here.  We were talking about the errors because none of us cared about the characters or what was happening to them.  Everyone in the movie seemed bland and one dimensional, spouting dialog that had no bite to it.  And the over crushing direction with the emphasis on disco-like pounding action, over crushed any possibility of an emotional connection to what was happening on screen.   And it all ends with a scene so ludicrous, I and my friends were desperately trying to be polite and not burst out laughing.

 

There are plenty of interesting names in the cast.  Matt Damon plays the lead with an absurdly ripped body that feels out of place in a world where people can’t get the right kind of nutrition.  His chief opponent is played amusingly by Sharlot Copley (who has the lead in District 9); but what’s amusing about it all is not his performance, but that he’s taken the Anthony Michael Hall approach to his career and built up his body so he doesn’t have to play the bullied pipsqueak anymore.   And it’s always nice to see Alice Braga and Diego Luna.  But perhaps the biggest irony of the movie is that the best and worst performance of the movie is given by the same person, Jodie Foster, as the head of security on Elysium.  Bless her heart, she gives it her all and works her ass off, including giving her character an odd, clipped accent; but almost nothing about her performance works.  At the same time, she’s compulsively watchable, so what are you going to do?

 

But speaking of Jody Foster, though the film preaches understanding and sympathy and how we should treat each other with respect and as equals and all the other ten points of the Sermon on the Mount law, I did find it odd that in the movie women were given only two choices: the female trying to do the job of a male and by doing so, becomes a bitch of a Lady Macbeth because, well, that’s what happens to women who try to do a man’s job; and the female who is an adjunct to the male and is defined by her relationship to him—in this film, she’s not even allowed to be a doctor, no that’s a man’s job, she has to be the nurse in the equation.

 

That’s not even bringing up the other issue in that we have a world where the vast majority of people on Elysium are white and the more than the vast majority of people on earth tend to be minorities, mainly Hispanic.  But who is the savior of the world?  The whitest of the white, Matt Damon.

 

In the end, I am quite worried that with this second movie, Blonkamp may be on his way to becoming the next M. Night Shyamalan, someone with only one good picture in him.  What is worse, Blonkamp may turn into one of those filmmakers who is a great visual stylist and thinks that that also automatically makes him a good writer or that he doesn’t need a good screenplay as long as he is at the helm.  Even District 9 suggested that this might be the way of the world for Blonkamp; it was a great idea with a strong first half, but the second half become much more formulaic and lost much of the originality and vibrancy of what came before.