Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: The Glass Castle

This is topic The Glass Castle in forum Film Handlers' Movie Reviews at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=4;t=002303

Posted by Frank Cox (Member # 6258) on 09-21-2017, 07:57 PM:

I didn't know what to expect out of this movie and it's actually quite a bit better and more interesting than I thought it would be.

The story follows a family where the father is a drunk who can't stay off of the sauce, the mother is a painter of pictures, and the kids are half-starved and get dragged around the countryside all the time since they don't have any money or home, and they're usually about one step ahead of the cops, bill collectors, or child welfare authorities.

The father is a dreamer with a continuous line of bullshit running non-stop, and he seems like a pretty sharp guy when he's sober; unfortunately that's not too often. The Glass Castle in the title is an actual castle made of glass that he's always planning to build, creating blueprints and designs and soliciting ideas from the rest of the family for. The castle will be built "as soon as we find the perfect location. All of the rest of this is just temporary." I think he really believes that, too.

Any cash that happens to find its way to the family gets spent on booze -- why waste it on food for the kids, right?

The kids pretty much raise each other without much help from the parents, and they can't wait to get old enough to run away and move elsewhere, anywhere else that's away from their parents.

And people really live this way, apparently. *shudder*

It's certainly not a happy story but it's definitely interesting and worth seeing. I don't expect to see much in the way of crowds for it since it's not something that would have a wide appeal. I think. But it will be interesting to see what happens over the course of the next week.