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 | 44 Comments »For questions: hcasner@aol.com
First, a word from our sponsors: I wanted to say thank you to everyone who contributed to our Indiegogo campaign for 15 Conversations in 10 Minutes. We did very well due to you folks. For those who weren’t able to give, keep us in your thoughts. And if you are able to contribute in the future, contact me and I’ll tell you how. I will even honor the perks on the original campaign.
I am now offering a new consultation 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? FosCheck 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
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.
A BRIDGE NOT FAR ENOUGH: Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Oscar Season and Bridge of Spies
Posted: October 22, 2015 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Alan Alda, Amy Ryan, Bridge of Spies, Ethan Coen, Gary Powers, James B. Donovan, Janusz Kaminski, Jesse Plemmons, Joel Coen, Mark Rylance, Matt Charman, Norman Rockwell, Sebastian Koch, Steven Spielberg, Tom hanks | 4 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
It is now autumn in America. This means that leaves are changing their colors and becoming richer and deeper in tone; that we are transitioning in time between the salad days of yore and winter’s cold meat of the future until we again reach spring when life sprouts once more anew; and that the youth of yesteryear is giving way to middle aged thoughtfulness.
Yes, it’s a metaphor for the state of movies in the U.S. We have now departed the blockbuster summer where the most desirable demographic took center stage, to the more melancholic and self-contemplative movies that appeal more to the mature in us.
Now, there is one thing that should first be stated here, shouted from the rooftop in clarion clarity. This does not mean that the movies will be getting any better. No matter what people will claim, subject matter and weightiness is in no way a guarantee of quality.
In fact, I predict that you won’t be finding many American Hollywood films that will surpass Spies and The Martian.
But change is still upon us.
Movie Review of SAVING MR. BANKS by Howard Casner
Posted: December 24, 2013 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: B.J. Novak, Collin Farrell, Emma Thompson, Jason Schwartzman, John Lee Hancock, Kathy Baker, Kelly Marcel, Mary Poppins, P.L. Travers, Sue Smith, Tom hanks, Walt Disney | 8,793 Comments »When Emma Thompson first appears on screen as children’s author and Mary Poppins’ creator P.L. Travers (sorry, that’s Mrs. Travers to me) in Saving Mr. Banks, she’s pinched face, irritable, unpleasant and deeply unhappy, possessing the personality of the second nanny in the horror film The Omen.
I know she’s an unlikable human being, so unlikable she probably makes dogs run for their lives just by glaring at them. But from the first moment I saw her, I loved her and was on her side. I mean, she has one of the best “save the cat” moments in recent films. When she can’t get her suitcase into the overhead rack and a mother with a baby comes to her rescue and offers to move her own bag to give her room, Travers responds by asking whether the child is going to be a nuisance since it’s an eleven hour flight. Now, if you can’t adore someone like that, then you just don’t have a heart.
I suppose part of her immediate appeal to me could be because I’m a screenwriter as well, and so I could easily identify with her fears of what a producer might do to her beloved creation Mary Poppins. And she has good reason for these fears, with the constant complaints from authors whose novels and plays Hollywood has, well, what’s a good PG-13 word for it—misinterpreted, distorted, altered, disfigured, twisted, warped, raped, sodomized up the anus cavity with a heated iron rod like Edward II…but I digress.
But it’s not just that. There’s more to it than just that. When she arrives in Los Angeles and steps off that plane, she’s confronted by a constant barrage of “it’s a small, small world” happy people with toothsome smiles out of The Sound of Music and a city so brightly lit with mind-numbing sunshine, that all I wanted to do was slap those merciless grins off of everybody’s faces and ask God to do to the city what Mark Robson did to it in Earthquake.
So when she constantly throws her Noel Coward-like snarky comments at one and all; or school teacherly corrects the screen and song writers of the movie to be when they make the somewhat dubious claim that Dick Van Dyke is one of the greats; or she gets so frustrated she throws the screenplay that has so disgusted her out the window, I was yelling “you go, girl” (well, no, I didn’t yell it, I was in a movie theater, after all, but you know what I mean).
And then it happens, the exact same thing that happens to Travers in the movie. The charm of Disneyland and Los Angeles just wears you down and you have no choice but to succumb to it all. It’s inevitable. And there’s no shame in it because it happens to god bless us one and all who transpose themselves to this bright and shining city on the sea.
And so, like everyone who has come before her, by the end of the film, Travers has embraced the sordid cheeriness of the City of Angels and gives up fighting for control of her story, letting “Walt, you have to call me Walt. Mr. Disney is my father” turn her no-nonsense, all business nanny into a singing, dancing, twinkling (“and the magic word is”) Julie Andrews.
Saving Mr. Banks is the Hitchcock of 2013. Based as was Hitchcock on a true Hollywood story of the making of a classic movie, it also leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to the facts. But also like Hitchcock, it’s one of the most purely enjoyable films of the year. The screenplay by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith is witty and bright and full of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (OMG, believe it or not, that did not come up wrong on spell check; spell check actually has that made up word in it) energy and John Lee Hancock’s direction is taut with expert timing.
It’s not perfect by any means. The psychology is simplistic and obvious, and there are scenes that aren’t as convincing as they might be, as when Don DaGradi, Mary Poppins’ screenwriter, gets Travers to tap her toes and dance with him (calling Joseph Campbell, calling Joseph Campbell, I think a couple of steps in the hero’s journey got left out here). And some of the visuals are painfully on the nose (as the change in Travers’ fashion from sensible, brown tweed to free flowing blue and white cotton after she signs over her creation’s life to Disney’s implacable will).
But gosh darn it all to heck, it just doesn’t matter. You can point out the problems and bewail and bemoan it all, but that won’t stop the whole thing from winning you over and thoroughly delighting you. Even when it doesn’t work, oh, my, does it work.
The cast is one of the finer ones of the year. Both Emma Thompson, as Travers, and Tom Hanks, as Disney, seem to have had something of a Renaissance here. Neither has really been doing anything of real note lately. Thompson had been hiding out in small supporting roles in such movies as Brideshead Revisited, Pirate Radio and seasonal revivals of Love Actually. But now she’s back in a lead and she’s brought all her glory with her.
And Hanks, who had been making some of the most painfully uninteresting movies of late that a major actor could make (Cloud Atlas, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and Larry Crowne), gives the second of two remarkable performances this year, first in Captain Phillips, and now in Saving Mr. Banks, where he brings a mythic Walt Disney down to earth (and does one of these impersonations where whenever I think of the original, now all I’ll see is Hanks).
Maybe both just needed to go through a period of adjustment as they grew older and had to reinvent themselves in order to reinvigorate their careers (most actors do).
But the movie also has some of the most imaginative casting in supporting roles as well, from Wes Anderson refugee Jason Schwartzman as one half of the Sherman brothers song writing team (B.J. Novak is also solid as the other half); Kathy Baker, who really has nothing to do as Disney’s secretary, but she makes the most of it anyway (she has a terrific bit at the end where she’s laughing as Disney comes into the office because she knows something he doesn’t); and perhaps most wonderful of all, Collin Farrell, who gives a magical and haunting performance as Travers’ dipsomaniac father in the moving and heartfelt flashback episodes.
So in the end, is Saving Mr. Banks a good movie? Sure it is. Even very good, I’ll venture to say. Is it more than that? God, no. But like Los Angeles and Disneyland, it’s easier not to fight it and just enjoy the hell out of it. It’s the only way you’ll get out alive. Take it from Mrs. Travers.
Movie Review of CLOUD ATLAS by Howard Casner
Posted: November 13, 2012 | Author: Donald | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Andy Wachowski, Ben Whishaw, Cloud Atlas, Doona Bae, Hallie Berry, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Lana Wachowski, Susan Sarandon, Tom hanks, Tom Twyker | 1 Comment »Cloud Atlas the movie stars Frank Griebe and John Toll as the Cinematographers; Huge Bateup and Uli Hanisch as the Production Designers; Rebecca Alleway and Peter Walpole as the Set Designers; Kym Barett and Pierre-Yves Gayraud as the Costume Designers; and a cast of thousands when it comes to Makeup and Art Direction. There are also some actors involved, but they’re all pretty much chopped liver by the time the credits roll.
The movie, for those not on twitter and facebook, contains six story lines set in six different periods of time, including the future as well as the future future. The basic themes seem to be that we’re all connected; everything that happens is cause and effect; and that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Kansas can cause a tsunami in Japan. Except it’s not really.
In fact, as the movie jumps from time period to time period and story to story (as a friend of a friend said, it’s the perfect movie for those with ADD), no one character or event in one time period has any affect on any character or event in another time period. Or if they did, the writers (those V for Vendetta/Matrix welding Wachowski siblings, Lana and Andy, as well as Tom, Run Lola Run, Twyker, all of whom also directed) did a very good job of keeping it to themselves. True, there are overlaps. A book from one period, letters from another, a piece of middle brow music that people go gaga over for some unclear reason, all end up in another era. But that’s not a connection. That’s a coincidence. And of the extremely forced variety. Coincidence and connection are not the same thing, no matter how much new age mumbo jumbo you want to throw at it. Or if it is, the filmmakers have a totally different understanding of butterflies and tsunamis that I do (which is more than quite possible).
In the end, there’s only one reason to have made this movie and that is the opportunity to do a tour de force thingy by creating six difference films in six different styles (Bladerunner, Brideshead Revisited/Merchant-Ivory, a 1970’s crime drama cum social ills action movie, etc.), all using the same set of actors. And if the filmmakers had pulled that off, what an amazing film it would have been.
But alas, the only section that really hits its mark is the Bladerunner type story about replicants in a futuristic New Seoul. This story has the best acting (Jim Sturgess and Doona Bae in the leads); it hits its emotional mark of doomed lovers on the run (a 22nd Century take on They Live By Night); and the visual aspects of this section meld well and don’t overpower the human (well, replicant, but let’s not be petty) element. For the other sections, the filmmakers can’t seem to get the styles or rhythms quite right with the story set further in the future almost impossible to follow.
And then there’s the acting. The biggest names are Tom Hanks, Susan Sarandon and Hallie Berry. Sarandon isn’t given much to do. Hallie Berry comes across well enough, especially in the 1970’s action film; all in all, her roles don’t require a great range (and there seem to be little difference in her ambitious investigative reporter and futuristic alien). But (to paraphrase Pauline Kael in talking about Norma Shearer) oh, that Hanks. Perhaps because he is so recognizable no matter what thickness of make up and prosthetics are slathered on, he felt the need to overplay every role to really remind people that he really isn’t who you think he is—but the further he tried to get away from himself, the closer he got.
The best performers come from the younger generation, like Sturgess and Bae as well as Ben Whishaw, the perpetually pouting English actor with the big hair. They seem a bit more comfortable playing their wide range of roles (though the make up for Bae lets her down in the anti-slavery tract section). And Hugo Weaving is a hoot in his Nurse Diesel/Ratchett turn, this time named Nurse Noakes.
In the end, Cloud Atlas is ambitious and often overpowering to look at. But in execution, to be cruel and ruthlessly honest, it comes across more as the perfect choice for bad movie night where everyone can yell out comments as the scenes go by. One suggestion: in the 1970’s film, when Hanks, coiffed in the typical top and sideburns of the day, and Berry go outside and Berry asks if it’s okay to smoke and Hanks says, I’m cool—yell out, not with that hairstyle, you’re not.