IDENTITY CRISES: Movie Reviews of The Danish Girl and Creed by Howard Casner
Posted: December 14, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Aaron Covington, Alicia Vikander, Ben Whishaw, Creed, David Ebershoff, Eddie Redmayne, Lucinda Coxon, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael B. Jordan, Phylicia Rashad, Ritchie Coster, Ryan Coogler, Sebastian Koch, Sylvester Stallone, Tessa Thomas, The Danish Girl, Tom Hooper, Tony Bellew | 875 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.
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Warning: SPOILERS
The Danish Girl, a movie about the first recorded sex change operation, is a drama made with such good taste, Merchant/Ivory would probably have been proud to claim it as one of their own.
Now why anyone would make a movie about the first recorded sex change operation in such good taste that Merchant/Ivory would have been proud to claim it as one of their own, is certainly beyond me.
Actually, why anyone would make a movie about anything with such good taste that Merchant/Ivory would have been proud to claim it as one of their own, is even more also certainly beyond me.
That is, except for Todd Haynes, who is possibly the only filmmaker who can take good taste and raise it up to art.
But here we have screenwriter Lucinda Coxon (from a novel by David Ebershoff) and director Tom Hooper (The King’s Speech, Les Miserables) who don’t do much that is particularly exciting with the subject matter except to make sure it’s dressed up as beautifully as a picture by John Singer Sargent, with gorgeous costumes, marvelous sets and beautiful cinematography. Read the rest of this entry »
A ROOM WITH A VIEW TO KILL: Movie review of The Loft by Howard Casner
Posted: February 11, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Bart De Pauw, Eric Stonestreet, Erik Van Looy, James Marsden, Karl Urban, Matthias Schoenaerts, The Loft, Wentworth Miller, Wesley Strick | 1,023 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
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Warning: SPOILERS
The Loft, a new neo-noir thriller based on a Belgium film of the same name, is about five married friends who go in together and purchase a condo (hence the title) where they can take their mistresses in secret. Things go a tad awry when one of them shows up one morning and finds a dead woman in the bed. Since the five are the only ones that have keys, then one of them must have done the deed.
But who?
This is actually quite an intriguing concept and the main reason to see the movie. No matter however else I may have felt about it, I did find myself sticking around just to find out who dunnit.
Of course, the ne-noir aspects of the movie are like the articles in a Playboy Magazine. They’re the reason why you say you read it, when in all honesty you are engaged in activities that stick the pages together.
Here, one may be going for the thrills and chills, but I suspect deep down in the audience’s heart (of which the vast majority I suspect are mainly men, many married), they are really there to see some hot man on woman action of husbands cheating on their wives.
However, I should warn you that if you are, you might find the movie a bit of a bait and switch. Read the rest of this entry »
THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY or THE QUIET MAN and THE WILD ONE: Movie reviews of The Drop and Starred Up by Howard Casner
Posted: September 23, 2014 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Ben Mendolsohn, David Mackenzie, Dennis Lehane, Jack O’Connell, James Gandolfini, Jonathan Asser, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michaȅl R. Roskam, Noomi Rapace, Starred Up, The Drop, Tom Hardy | 3,539 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
The film noir genre is a particularly American institution, one that took hold of the local populace during World War II and stayed strong until the 1960’s.
It had a great influence on movie making all over the world. Perhaps there was just something so satisfying to other countries about the U.S.’s finally washing its dirty laundry in public and exploring the amoral, immoral and sociopathic underpinnings of its society, bringing itself down off the pedestal it had so self-righteously put itself up on.
(An interesting irony here is that the movie world of the 1930’s, during the height of the depression, was one of optimism and a focus on people having frothy fun, while after taking down Hitler, and America entering one of its most prosperous periods in history, the movies are far more cynical and willing to explore the more unsavory underbelly of our world.)
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