Let Me Out (now on video)

Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.

I shouldn't perhaps mention this, but I have my Christmas gifts already picked out for local filmmaker Robert Banks, who is currently in post-production with a full-scale 35mm celluloid feature drama he is shooting with his students at the New Bridge arts school in downtown Cleveland. I'm giving Robert a few of my spare DVDs and Blu-rays (it's not as though I have anything else, really), one of which is sure to hit home for him right now. Like I said, nobody tell Robert. Yeah, sure, as if anybody is reading this right now.

One of the cinematic assortments in my theoretical holiday gift basket is the 2013 South Korean import LET ME OUT, which was - dig this, Robert - created by filmmakers/instructors Jae Soh and Chang Lae Kim at the Seoul Institute for the Arts, using their own students. So...your idea wasn't all that original. But at least watch what these guys did for compare-contrast and cautionary tales out of film-class life.

Secret Sunshine (April 22nd and April 23rd at the Cleveland Museum of Art)

[SECRET SUNSHINE screens Friday April 22nd at 6:30 p.m. and Saturday April 23rd at 1:30 p.m. at the Cleveland Museum of Art]

Review by Charles Cassady Jr.

*NOTE - this review contains spoilers. Read at your own risk.*

Given that Hollywood routinely scouts out Asian stuff these days for instant Americanized remakes, I wonder what the young studio intern who had to preview SECRET SUNSHINE put in the official report. "Umm, Cate Blanchett could be in it…Umm, it was weird there weren’t any ghosts this time…Umm, it kinda made my head hurt with thinking and stuff…Umm, got any meth?" The unadorned, plainly dealt narrative that still grabs you by the throat is a spiritual drama – or tragedy - sometimes reminiscent of modern Iranian cinema, despite the shift in geography and culture to South Korea.