Christopher: Well, hello out there you kind and lovely cinephiles, and welcome to Net Picks, that’s the show the scours the interwebs to bring you honest, humane reviews of the best, brightest, and, yes, even the slightest that good old Hollyweb has to offer. Before I dive into our first show, let me formally introduce myself.
My name is Christopher Prescott Carter. I’ve had the honor of working in the greatest industry in the world as professional actor, producer, director, teaching artist, and writer for the past twenty-six years now, and I’ve had the honor of watching some of the best films ever made for much longer than that. During that time, I’ve worked alongside Broadway stars, talented nobodies, world famous directors, distinguished intellectuals, San Franciscan progressives, and conservative traditionalists, and one thing I’ve learned during my work is that we all love a good film, and an honest discussion. It’s a great thing, isn’t it? Being different. Thank goodness we’re all so very different because, if we weren’t, well, we wouldn’t have very much to talk about. Now would we?
Today’s movie is a delightfully somber film starring Richard Drefyus and Tatiana Maslany titled Cas and Dylan. It is directed by Jason Priestley. As of the recording of this episode on February 27th, 2025, you can find this movie right now on Peacock. The film made its debut in theaters in 2013. It is also available for free, with ads, of course, on YouTube. I only mentioned a couple of this movies stars because the truth is they are the two actors who you are going to see the most of throughout the duration of this picture. There is, as with any movie, an ensemble cast, which features some delightful performances from the likes of Corrine Conley and Eric Petersen, who give a hilarious performance as an elderly couple that is madly in love while slowly going mad, along with some other actors, but their time on screen is short lived.
The real crux of the story lies in the relationship between the title characters. At the movie’s start, Dr. Cas Pepper, played by Drefyus, is informed that he has a terminal illness that, because he is a doctor, he is certain that he will die from. Instead of being confined to wasting away in a hospital, he concocts a plan to head westward from his hometown of Winnepeg to live out his dying days in his cabin by the lake that he once loved to visit with his now deceased wife, who passed ten years prior from a terminal illness. But the doctor’s plan is short lived as he runs into Dylan Morgan, portrayed by Maslany, a self-absorbed, yet sweet and sincere, artsy young dreamer who also happens to be involved in an abusive relationship. It is, in many ways, a tale as old as tales. Cas and Dylan come from two very different backgrounds and meet by chance. But various unforeseen circumstances, including the death of a dog, Dylan’s odd assumption that you can learn about suffering by watching people in a hospital, and a rather tumultuous argument that results in a car accident, bring the two together. It is, admittedly, a bit cliché. However, there is something almost charming about the obviousness of the plot, and much of that charm exudes from Dylan’s almost never-ending optimism. Maslany portrays the young Dylan in a way that almost automatically makes you fall in love with her. Her naivety about life, her unapologetic nature, her matter of fact way of simply knowing that she’s destined for greatness reminds you of yourself at 22, and makes you wonder why you ever let the world stop you from indulging in such pleasant self-delusion, at least from time to time. After all, isn’t self-delusion what keeps us young? Doesn’t losing our optimism send us down the path of no return? What good is a reality that makes you doubt yourself anyway? Those are questions I often found myself asking during the film.
Cas, on the other hand, has decided to end it all.
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