It’s fitting that Cloud Atlas, an inherently brave commercial and artistic venture, places heavy thematic emphasis on instances of human bravery in its sprawl of interwoven plot lines. Andy and Lana Wachowski haven’t built their career together by making cinema that follows traditional notions of filmmaking, after all– going back to 1999, The Matrix completely rewrote the rules of action films in terms of how they’re crafted both visually and thematically, while 2008’s Speed Racer very much defied standards of editing and storytelling in trippy, audacious ways. Taking all of that into account, Cloud Atlas might almost feel like an expected work from the Wachowskis– like the other movies of their oeuvre, it bucks convention, specifically…
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G-S-T Review…Holy Motors
There’s no easy way to evaluate a film like Holy Motors after a single viewing. That’s why I watched my screener copy twice. Of course, I still feel somewhat behind the eight ball as I try in earnest to write my review, but in my own defense it’s worth noting that I’ve never seen anything like Holy Motors before in my life. (Continuing in that vein: I’d wager that there are more critics who share my position than not.) In fact, the film is so unique, original, and rampantly weird that calling it a new entry in surreal cinema feels like an observation of family resemblance and nothing more. How…
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G-S-T Review…A Late Quartet
If A Late Quartet, the second feature by Yaron Zilberman and his first film since his 2004 documentary Watermarks, proves anything, it’s that good performances can elevate average movies. To say that Zilberman’s cast saves his picture would be somewhat generous, though. They only distract us from its inadequacies, which are numerous, though perhaps this is a harsher judgment than the film really deserves. A Late Quartet is harmless, airy fluff, small-scale prestige cinema that smartly gathers together a group of very gifted actors in the service of exploring life lessons filtered through the overarching motif of Beethoven’s Opus 131 String Quartet (in C-sharp minor); it’s also painfully undercooked to…
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G-S-T Review…Cloud Atlas
Following Cloud Atlas, viewers will invariably find themselves armed with a variety of useful adjectives to describe the film in a single word: grand, towering, epic, inspiring, heartbreaking, heartwarming, hodgepodge. But in adapting David Mitchell’s 2004 novel of the same name, siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer have created a singular, unique work that majestically shrugs off attempts at quick, careless classification. Cloud Atlas is a cinematic medley of narratives connected together through time and space, driven by a sense of enterprise and purpose, and defined by its advocacy of basic, simple morality and human compassion; fitting the film into traditional categories would not be unlike forcing a square…
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G-S-T Review…Pusher
After seeing Pusher, the British remake of G-S-T favorite Nicholas Winding Refn’s 1996 debut feature of the same name, I’m still struggling with questions about the cinematic space it ultimately occupies. None of them, mind you, are germane to discussions of the film’s quality which is respectable, so in the end I’m probably just navel gazing. But the concept of remaking a movie remains contentious even though filmmakers have been remaking movies for decades, so Pusher will inevitably be subjected to value tests based on its recycled nature, which leads me to the good news: Luis Prieto has made a strong, vibrant crime film. The bad news, though, is that…
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Off the Netflix Queue…’The Aggression Scale’
Describing Steven C. Miller’s The Aggression Scale as a violent Home Alone riff feels almost too retro-hip for my liking, but it’s almost impossible not to. The similarities between the two films are clear; pit seemingly defenseless children against brutish home invaders, watch the former embarrass and defeat the latter. But Kevin McAllister didn’t know how to work a pump-action shotgun, and possessed a much cuter propensity for violence. Owen (Ryan Hartwig), his analogue here, favors all manner of sharp objects and potent cocktails of ammonia and bleach. (They both admire the efficacy of a nail through the foot.) The clearer difference, though, lies in pathos– Kevin’s just a self-indulgent…
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G-S-T Review…Looper
At a glance, Looper almost feels like an outlier in Rian Johnson’s minute body of work. Unlike Johnson’s flawless debut, Brick, or his disappointing sophomore effort, The Brothers Bloom, Looper operates within a grand, wide-spanning scope that reaches across time; the central story here is intimate, just as in his other films, but it’s set against a backdrop of classical science fiction world-building and the machinations of time travel. We’re not in high school, Montenegro, or Prague anymore, but rather a dystopic vision of the future which we experience at two very different points in history, both populated with hover bikes, mafia button men, rampant poverty, and telekinetic mutations. Robbed…
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G-S-T Double Take Review…End of Watch
What’s better than one GST staff writer’s perspective on a film? How about two? For this round of Double-Take reviews, Bill and Andrew crack their knuckles and dig into David Ayer’s latest street cop drama, End of Watch: By Andrew Crump: If insanity can truly be defined as doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results, then Einstein would’ve immediately pegged David Ayer as a bona fide lunatic. Since his runaway success with Training Day in 2001, Ayer has done nothing but write and, more recently, direct crime films set in Los Angeles at large or South Central in the specific, crafting narratives that are embedded either…
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Ohhh, Look…Extended First Look At Les Misérables
I know many of us were prepared to accept that Lincoln would dominate come awards time, but we made an oversight: we didn’t let Tom Hooper speak his piece. And now he has. Today, Universal Pictures has released a four minute clip of behind the scenes footage from Hooper’s upcoming adaptation of legendary musical Les Misérables (via Regal Cinemas’ Youtube channel). Put simply, the production looks and sounds spectacular, but watch the clip below yourself and see what you think: The foremost element of the clip is the heavy focus on the live singing, which makes sense. Eschewing prerecorded tracks in favor of letting the cast belt out their own…
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Sweet 2nd Trailer…'The Hobbit'
We’re wading further and further into Tolkien week, and as each day goes by, that venerable rogue Peter Jackson continues releasing new media for the upcoming first entry in his latest Middle Earth venture, The Hobbit. A day ago, we were treated to a bevvy of hi-res images from the film; today, we have a new trailer on which to feast our eyes. While the clip released earlier this year played a bit broadly, this latest bit of footage focuses much more on establishing tone, and it should be to no one’s surprise that Jackson appears to have nailed it. The Hobbit represents the lighter side of Tolkien’s fantasy; humorous…
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Sweet Trailer…'Lincoln'
I’m asking, in earnest, for someone to explain to me the “trailer for a trailer” phenomenon that’s gaining more and more popularity as days go by. What’s the point? What’s the purpose? Is the intended effect one that truly lives up to the word “tease”? Do studios think that teasing upcoming trailers will ensure that those clips receive more hits than they would otherwise? There are few things that bug me to the point of needing to simply kvetch about them openly when it comes to film, and this trend happens to be one of them. But that’s maybe besides the point. DreamWorks teased out footage from the full trailer…
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G-S-T Double Take Review…The Words
Editor’s note: The Double Take series has been on hold for a while now, but today marks the return of this two-sided format of perspectives. Here, Bill Graham and Andrew Crump both offer their two cents on the freshly released literary drama, The Words. By Bill Graham: The lesson in The Words isn’t that first-time writer/directors can get in over their heads but that a solid editor might make the difference between a film that gets sidetracked in its own convolution and something worthwhile. The bulk of the narrative plays out with struggling writer Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper) trying to make ends meet with his wife Dora (Zoë Saldana) rooting him…