After two rather luke-warm receptions at the box office (well we quite liked The Last Stand) Arnold Schwarzenegger is back for his third full headlining post-Governator outing and man does this high-octane shoot-em-up look to finally deliver the goods. Originally titled “Ten”, David Ayer’s action thriller Sabotage puts an macho spin on Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians as it as follows an elite DEA task force who are taken out, one at a time, after they successfully rip off a drug cartel safe house. Directed by David Ayer (End of Watch) and written by Skip Woods, Schwarzenegger leads this elite task force that goes after the world’s deadliest drug cartels.…
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G-S-T Review…Narco Cultura
Mexico’s longstanding drug war has made for some stellar visual media in the last few years, influencing aspects of shows like Breaking Bad and providing a blueprint for films like 2012’s Savages or, much more recently, The Counselor; sitting pretty from afar, the ultra-violence that punctuates the wheeling and dealings of this outrageously lucrative business makes for a viscerally captivating narrative, allowing us to portray the realities of cartel brutality while skirting around genuinely confronting them. It’s human tragedy made into slick entertainment, not necessarily ignorant of the legitimate suffering they’re cashing in on but almost always woefully reluctant to fully confront it. Shaul Schwarz, however, isn’t satisfied with addressing…
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G-S-T Review…The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
Here we are with the second installment in the trilogy, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. This trilogy (well, three novels stretched out to four films) is the latest in the teen craze following on the heels of Harry Potter and Twilight and now The Hunger Games is taking its turn in the spotlight. Even with all of the success that the first movie saw, the studio was still not happy. New writers and a new director took the helm for this installment, but does that put the odds in the production’s favor and help take the series to the next level? In short, yes, in fact, with three fingers thrust…
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Solomon Survives: The Modernity Of ’12 Years a Slave’
From behind the iron-barred basement windows of a faceless tenement building nestled alongside so many others that look just like it, a man frantically cries out for aid. His words echo fruitlessly, bouncing between alleyways and sidewalks as they’re smothered by the brick facade of the structures surrounding him; his pleas goes unanswered, leaving him utterly trapped, robbed of his freedom and with no means of alerting his family or his friends – hours away in Saratoga – of his plight. But he continues to make appeals to the deserted street, and as he does, the camera pans up, revealing that this heartbreaking display of hopelessness and isolation is unfolding…
