There’s a lot to like about the first trailer for Ender’s Game, Gavin Hood’s adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s beloved, iconic, and utterly important science fiction novel; it’s big, it’s grand, and it looks to appropriately capture the gravity of the narrative’s scope. Maybe the most awe-inspiring note here isn’t in the footage itself, but from the story surrounding the project. It’s hard to believe that after years of being told that Card’s book- which focuses on gifted children being trained by the military to combat an alien menace- is unfilmable, audiences of both fans and the uninitiated alike are finally going to get to see his vision on the big…
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Smoke, Mirrors, and the Mandarin In Iron Man 3
(Note: If you have not yet seen Iron Man 3, you probably should avoid reading this. Spoilers, big ones, lie just a few paragraphs down. On top of that, there’s some sensitive subject matter discussed here that’s tied to the film but stems from the upsetting topic of terrorism, which I imagine might make for difficult reading for some. Be advised.) Alongside discussions of its quality, its place in comic book cinema, and how it relates back to its source material, there’s going to be- or there ought to be- a healthy conversation about where Shane Black’s Iron Man 3 fits in our post-9/11 cultural dialogue. There’s something inherently daring about…
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[IFFBoston Review]…Some Girl(s)
If you’re only cursorily familiar with the work of Neil LaBute, you may find Some Girl(s) a bit surprising. Of course, he can only claim credit for Some Girl(s) on the page; here it’s Daisy Von Scherler Mayer, not LaBute, serving as the production’s architect, working off of his screenplay and adapting his stage play for the camera. But Some Girl(s) thoroughly feels like a LaBute film, and cuts through middling fare like Lakeview Terrace and Nurse Betty, not to mention utter fiascoes like The Wicker Man, taking us all the way back to 1997’s In the Company of Men, 1998’s Your Friends & Neighbors, and 2003’s The Shape of…
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[IFFBoston Review]…Willow Creek
Shakes the Clown, Sleeping Dogs Lie, World’s Greatest Dad, God Bless America…Willow Creek. One of these things is not like the other, but that’s what makes Bobcat Goldthwait an exciting filmmaker: he’s capable of stepping out of his comfort zone (which, ironically enough, encompasses uncomfortable pursuits and ideas) and trying his hand at something that’s totally atypical of his filmography. Why make a found footage picture about two people searching for the truth about Bigfoot? Why not? If the results of Bobcat’s foray into the gimmicky horror sub-genre don’t mesh with his other work, they still make for a great midnight movie and represent an interesting evolution in his directorial career. Of course,…
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[IFFBoston Review]…Much Ado About Nothing
There are two distinct halves to Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing: one is a modern rendition of what’s arguably Shakespeare’s wittiest comedy, and the other is, well, a Joss Whedon film. Diehard fans of the Avengers director and all-around geek god will naturally flock to it, and for them, the joy of the project may well come down to the endless delight they experience at every single appearance made by members of Whedon’s regular stable of performers- Clark Gregg, Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Nathan Fillion, Fran Kranz, Sean Maher, and others still. It’s fanboy nirvana- Fred and Wesley verbally spar while Mal Reynolds and Agent Coulson yuck it up…
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[IFFBoston Review]…V/H/S/2
Last year’s horror anthology V/H/S (our review from IFFBoston ’12) may only be half a good movie, but it wound up being an exciting experiment even though it didn’t live up to its full promise. Two hours of horror embodied in a succubus, a slasher, demonic possession, aliens, and killer lesbians sounds like a great concept for a midnight movie on paper, and it remains such even in practice; the problem with V/H/S was the utter lack of craft or thought put into several of its segments, which yielded an uneven movie that worked in fits and spurts but with no real consistency beyond how ugly the entire picture looked.…
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[IFFBoston Review]…The Way, Way Back
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…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…
