Donovan’s Echo
Kudos to the team of Jim Cliffe, Melodie Kreiger and the cast who brought to Kelowna the premiere of the movie Donovan’s Echo, starring Danny Glover.
Glover, who plays Donovan Matheson in the film, has been in movies for a while as an actor and producer, starring in films such as the Lethal Weapon franchise and recently, Dreamgirls.
In this film, Donovan returns to his hometown after an absence of 30 years. His life went off the rails when his cold fusion theory was debunked and a family tragedy forced him to take a look at this life. Coming home to act on his premonitions hoping to right some wrongs and to change the course of the lives of another family gives us a good story, acted well.
While this film was low budget—no car chases, no special effects and shooting was done in 20 days of shooting five pages of script per day (the norm in the big budget flics is one page per day)—it’s still a movie worth watching. It’s a bit slow at the outset, but moves well.
This first feature film by Jim Cliffe is only in town for a week but go to its Facebook page and let’s try to get this Canadian picture some air time.
Gone
The second show I went to this weekend was Gone.
What, really, can I say about this thriller, except that the good news is that this show will be ‘gone’ in a couple of weeks, with any luck and the big thrill was that it was less than two hours in length.
There is absolutely no character development in this show. We know that the main character, Jill Conrad (Amanda Seyfried), was a kidnap victim and now lives with her sister in Portland, Oregon. Through flashbacks, we see glimpses of her imprisonment although no one believes that the kidnapping actually happened.
So when her sister Molly (Emily Wickersham) disappears, she is adamant that her kidnapper has returned and has her sister. Not a lot of people believe that either
Somehow this hapless victim gets hold of a gun and goes after the kidnapper. I figured out who it was 10 minutes into the show, and so will you.
This low budget film (yeah, it did have one car chase) was one of those shows you hope will get better as it goes along and you stay, hoping that something will redeem it so that it’s not a big waste of time.
Well, sorry, but it is a big waste of time and it doesn’t get better.
Again, here’s a few things to consider if you think your life is in danger:
• Don’t get on the phone with a smooth talking stranger
• Don’t drive into a dense forest at night
• After being kidnapped once, don’t take a job at an all-night diner and park your car blocks away
• Cell phones don’t work in the dark on a lonely road as you’re driving to your doom.
This is no thriller—the definition of thriller being suspense, tension and excitement as the main elements of the film. Nope, not even a glimmer of suspense, tension or excitement except that I was pretty excited when it was over
Only one reel.
Special thanks to the guy who gave me the correct spelling of Sir Laurence Olivier, and to Christine who is a fan of this column—great to meet you.