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…