If there’s one problem with The Way, Way Back, it’s that it takes about twenty minutes to find its groove. In that span of time, we’re kept in the company of unpalatable characters ranging from mostly terrible adults to mostly petulant teens, while our anchor in the setting, the painfully awkward protagonist, Duncan (Liam James), remains staunchly introverted and passive toward the world around him. We should feel sorry for the kid right away, of course, except that he does nothing but mope and squint through the torment of being on summer vacation in Marshfield, MA with his mom, Pam, (Toni Colette) and her obnoxious boyfriend, Trent, (Steve Carell); he’s…
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[IFFBoston Review]…The Spectacular Now
If The Spectacular Now, director James Ponsoldt’s follow-up to his 2012 sophomore effort, Smashed, can be described in a word, it’s “candid”. Of course, there are many other words well-suited for conveying the film’s numerous positive qualities- sweet, funny, insightful, vital, bold, and even original- but contemporary coming-of-age dramedies usually don’t bother with being this frank about their subject matter. Ponsoldt, however, isn’t one to move sideways around his material and instead plows into it head-on, weaving a narrative that flows with ease between moments of tenderness, drunken juvenility, love, heartbreak, and straight-up shock without ever feeling inauthentic or forced. Teenage fare this genuine is a rare thing indeed. How…
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G-S-T Review…Drafthouse Films’ Graceland
Writer/director Ron Morales gives us a new spin on a familiar kidnapping yarn but tells a story that’s so believable and grounded you’d think it was a documentary. A superbly paced and intense flick, this is the kind of film we don’t get to see every day but would wish there were more of. In a world where we have films like Ransom and Taken, people walking out of Gracelandmight likely comment that Morales’ film is taken, er, taking its sweet time because this is a slow film. Yet that’s the point, it’s not about wiretaps, SWAT teams, a Tony Scott style of camera work, or an adrenaline-fueled rescue. Not at all. The focus of Morales’ film…
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G-S-T Review…Pain & Gain
What does Michael Bay unhinged look like on celluloid? That’s not a question most of us really need answered; eighteen years spent making glossy, lunkheaded action films, blockbusters based on toy lines, and useless horror remakes speak volumes on the subject of Bay’s auteurdom. But maybe the Transformers mastermind has been done an injustice. Maybe, beneath the frat boy wit and visual chaos of his cinema, Bay has kept his one Big Idea squirreled away for safekeeping, waiting for the right opportunity to unleash his unspoiled artistic vision on his audiences. Or maybe Pain & Gain is just an erroneous high water mark in bad taste filmmaking. Whatever the case may be,…
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G-S-T Review…The Angel's Share
Lest anyone form an early reaction to The Angel’s Share that unfairly paints the film as a riff on Alexander Payne’s Sideways, there are two characteristics present in the former that distinguish it from the latter: social drama and a heist caper. Put another way, Ken Loach’s twenty fifth picture (and also his latest production with screenwriter Paul Laverty) engages on a macro, political level instead of a micro, personal level while managing to disguise itself as frothy entertainment. For another comparison, let your mind wander back to 1997’s The Full Monty; that may offer a better idea of what The Angel’s Share has to offer in its mixture of legitimate…
