There’s little use in trying to disguise my frustration with Tom Hooper’s sluggish interpretation of Les Misérables, though in the interest of full disclosure I should acknowledge immediately that I have never seen the musical on which it is based. (And it’s been years since I read Victor Hugo’s original novel.) Put another way, I have no personal ideal of what Les Mis should be, so as far as it concerned me, Hooper– who successfully directed a strong cast of performers to Oscar gold two years ago with The King’s Speech— had the floor here. A shame, then, that he squanders the opportunity by muting his strengths as a filmmaker…
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Sweet (No, Make That Gorgeous) Trailer…'To the Wonder'
It feels like the book has already been closed on Terrence Malick’s forthcoming release, To the Wonder— the film received nothing but contempt in varying forms and degrees at both the Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals. At the same time it’s hard not to watch this clip and be awed. Beautiful, stunning cinematography is Malick’s calling card, of course, so there’s little surprise to how utterly captivating the trailer is, but expectation doesn’t make what we see here any less lovely and magnetic. Of course, if Malick’s style of untethered, free form filmmaking isn’t your cup of tea, you’ve likely already got your mind more or less made about To…
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G-S-T Quick 5 – Favorite Vigilante Films
vig·i·lan·te: any person who takes the law into his or her own hands, as by avenging a crime. A mainstay in the film world for decades, vigilantes come in all shapes in sizes and work their special brand of street justice for a variety of reasons. In some cases they operate just outside the law and work in secret. But then again there are those who work with the law and are not so secret about their bone-crunching ways. I guess you can say that vigilantes are like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get…except the outcome which finds baddies getting what they deserve. Now there are…