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Cassandra's Dream
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Manufacturer: Weinstein Company
Starring: John Benfield, Dan Carter, Jim Carter, Colin Farrell, Tom Fisher
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Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Binding: DVD
Brand: WELLSPRING/GENIUS
EAN: 0796019810647
Format: Closed-captioned
Label: Weinstein Company
Manufacturer: Weinstein Company
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Weinstein Company
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2008-05-27
Running Time: 109
Studio: Weinstein Company
Theatrical Release Date: 2007
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Editorial Reviews:
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Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell star as working class brothers whose dreams of better lives leads to desperation, greed and deadly betrayal. When gambling debt and an expensive courtship place them in a financial bind, a rich uncle (Tom Wilkinson, Michael Clayton) offers them an out in exchange for committing murder. Featuring gripping performances from an all-star cast; "this family tragedy puts us near the edge of our seats and pulls us right along on its downward spiral" (William Arnold, Seattle Post Intelligencer). Woody Allen returns in razor-sharp form with this "intense, intelligently-written and directed," (Jeffrey Lyons, Reel Talk) thriller that challenges how far a man should go in the name of family.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: A Spine-tingling Fable. . .
Comment: Woody Allen's "Cassandra's Dream" is a tightly-wound fable about the morality and consequences of overweening ambition. Ewan McGregor and Colin Farrell star as two working-class brothers who start out with outsized dreams but end up with a wealth of troubles wrought by obsessive social climbing. Ian (McGregor) passes himself off as a high-rolling property investor/developer, largely to impress his paramour, an alluring actress with a wondering eye (Hayley Atwell), while Terry (Farrell) sinks into the mire of compulsive gambling. In their desperation to finance their respective endeavors, the brothers turn to a wealthy uncle (Tom Wilkinson), who in turn extracts a deadly Faustian bargain from his nephews. Like 2006's "Match Point," "Cassandra's Dream" is yet another in a string of movies that are propelled by Woody Allen's lifelong fascination with class, morality (especially as it is defined or interpreted by the socially prominent) and the resulting friction. As with "Match Point," "Cassandra's Dream" has a spine-tingling, thriller-like urgency that quickens and intensifies as the story moves along. And Colin Farrell gives what may be one of his finer performances as the boozing, pill-popping and guilt-ridden prole unwittingly roped into an unspeakable vendetta.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece! Neo-Nazi's need not read! Review is protected under the Constitution!
Comment: Most people aren't qualified to give an opinion as to whether or not Soap is a cleaning product. Roger Ebert is a proud anti-semite. Hollywood and their Rags hate Woody Allen as they make no money from his films. I have known Mr. Allen for over 35 years. He is the ONLY Bona Fide Genius making films today.
Cassandra's Dream is a Masterwork. It's cast is 2nd rate with exception to Ewan. If you are simply angry that this film is not Annie Hal, you have been out of touch for almost 2 decades. This is a wonderful Morality Play and it is executed as perfectly as Allen could make it (due to lack of acting talent). His finest films - Shadow's and Fog, Crimes and Misdemeanors and Deconstructing Harry received no praise. Neither did this beauty. Woody does not care!Buy it and enjoy the last truly Brilliant American film maker (Best since another JEW, Chaplin).
Customer Rating:
Summary: Choices
Comment: "Cassandra's Dreams" is an interesting Woody Allen film. It has a lot of the elements of "Match Point" but it does not quite rise to that level. The essential reason for that is that the audience is asked to buy into two successive choices that our lead character has to make. The writer/director has certainly done a good job of making his case for those two choices. However, many might buy into the first one but the second one may have been a choice too far. As a result it will, for many, end up as a film that does not fully relate to the viewer.
The acting is very good, the directing is excellent and the movie approaches the level of a thriller. After the movie was over, I was left quite impressed with the irony of the ending. As I thought about it the next day, I realized the depth of the irony that I hadn't comprehended the night before. This might be just the movie for a person who has fretted long and hard over a bad choice they made in their past. Perhaps things could have turned out worse? "Cassandra's Dream" really is an excellent film except for the reason I stated. It may not be "Match Point" but it's certainly better than "Scoop".
Customer Rating:
Summary: Still Looking For Woody
Comment: Okay, so Woody goes overseas (to London)in his role as director this time, gets two nice young working class brothers to commit to helping out dear old rich Uncle (he is family, after all) get rid of (for good, get it) a pesky member of his organization. The trials and tribulations (to speak nothing of the dialogue) are a little bit much as the two members of the gang who couldn't shoot straight are too far from Jersey to make this work, especially when one brother gets a little too remorseful for uncle and brother . What this film reminds me most of, in one sense, is that Woody is still conceptually conflicted about how Martin Landau got away with murder in Crimes and Misdemeanors and he wants to right the situation here. Given the material here the two brothers do okay but this is certainly not in the same league as C&M, which is arguably one of Woody's best works.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An "Interesting" Woody Allen
Comment: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: From the Secret Files of Harry Pennypacker
Shadow Watcher
Nobody Drowns in Mineral Lake
I love the films written and directed by Woody Allen. Comedy or drama, even when he's not on top of his game, his pictures are, at the very least, "interesting".
Admittedly, CASSANDRA'S DREAM (2007) is not one of his best, primarily because it's a bit too long and the story's focus wanders off into unnecessary tangents. On the other hand, the performances are uniformly gripping and Allen's simplicity in staging his scenes is always refreshing.
CASSANDRA'S DREAM, filmed in England, is a drama about murder that re-visits moralistic issues Allen first dealt with in one of his best pictures, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS (1989), except that in this new film, the outcome is different.
Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor are cast as working-class brothers, each with big dreams and even bigger money problems. Gambler Colin owes a bundle to vicious loan sharks and Ewan, in love with an overly ambitious actress, wants to buy into a California hotel chain with money he doesn't have.
Their only hope is their rich uncle, Tom Wilkinson, who agrees to help them if they do him a favor. He wants them to murder a colleague whose testimony can put him into prison for shady business dealings.
Wilkinson rationalizes that they are "family" and if he can't count on family to help him out of a tight spot, then he can't count on anything.
I'm not sure if it was Allen's intent or not, but the scene in which Wilkinson asks his nephews to commit murder, and their unbelieving reactions to his proposition, almost plays like "black comedy" in this otherwise, very serious and generally intelligently-written film.
After the initial shock wears off, Colin and Ewan ponder their options and, at least in McGregor's case, develop a rationalization that killing this person would be no different that killing your enemy in a war.
Now, all they have to deal with is their consciences.
© Michael B. Druxman, author of ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
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