Connecting with The Attack presents a challenge: do we dare compare the handful of terrorist attacks on American soil to the pervasive, daily threat of death that’s part of living in the Middle East? Following the horrific suicide bombing that drives his film’s momentum, Ziad Doueiri, formerly one of Quentin Tarantino’s camera assistant and director of the 1998 Cannes winner West Beirut, we may tentatively respond in the negative. If the violent explosion – which Doueiri chooses not to show – echoes with personal familiarity, its context remains wholly foreign to us no matter how much we see reflections of our own homes and lives in the streets of Tel…
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G-S-T TV: ‘Orange Is the New Black’ Is Your New Obsession
(We’re trying something new here at Go, See, Talk!: we’re talking about TV now. GST will remain a primarily movie-oriented outlet, but we’re expanding our brand and slowly starting coverage on the television shows that we’re interested in the most.) I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have a tiny bias in favor of Orange Is the New Black‘s continued success as the seventh Netflix original series; I love Weeds, half of it anyways, and I have a completely random personal connection to Jenji Kohan’s latest endeavor to boot*. But when have I ever allowed my biases to keep me from singing the praises of the movies and television…
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G-S-T Review…Drafthouse Films’ The Act of Killing
Describing The Act of Killing as a film unlike any made in the medium’s short lifetime almost feels like the definition of hubris, or at least hyperbole. But Joshua Oppenheimer’s wholly unique exploration of the genocidal horrors lurking in Indonesia’s recent history earns every bit of the praise accorded it since making festival rounds this Spring (notably IFFBoston) and beginning its limited theatrical run in July; if critics describe it as a masterpiece, that’s because it is a masterpiece, an exceptional display of daring that will secure Oppenheimer’s name in the annals of cinema. That The Act of Killing also happens to be one of 2013’s most unsettling and insightful releases should…
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G-S-T Review…Crystal Fairy
If you hate being the one guy at a party who doesn’t dig recreational drug use, you’re probably going to have a rough time with Crystal Fairy. Oscillating between road trip shenanigans and drug-induced catharsis, Chilean filmmaker Sebastian Silva has the makings of a good film lying right out in the open, but the film’s better elements -an absolutely fearless performance by former child actress Gabby Hoffman chief among them – never gel cohesively with the areas where Crystal Fairy ends up failing. For a story that hinges entirely on a journey of personal realization and cactus-derived hallucinogens, the film exhibits a shocking lack of profundity and doesn’t end up…
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Off the Shelf…’Showdown In Little Tokyo’ (Not-So-Secret Santa Edition)
(Note: this Off the Shelf entry is a little bit extra special. That’s because it’s a part of the Cinematic Katzenjammer’s Not-So-Secret Santa Swap blogathon. For my swap, I have the dubious honor of tearing up the Dolph Lundren/Brandon Lee buddy cop film, Showdown in Little Tokyo, which I can’t describe succinctly here except to say that I hated it in the best way possible. Thanks to maestro Nick Powell for setting this whole thing up.) This probably outs me as an apostate of 80’s and 90’s schlock, but I’ve never been a Dolph Lundgren fan. Color me a member of the zeitgeist; he really is the poor man’s Arnold in every…
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G-S-T Review…Fruitvale Station
How can anyone review, much less watch, Fruitvale Station without bringing up the 18th Florida circuit court’s verdict in the George Zimmerman trial? The film, which comes courtesy of newcomer Ryan Coogler and marks one of 2013’s most noteworthy debuts, doesn’t reignite national discourse on social justice, race, and the second amendment in the US so much as it reinforces it; to call Fruitvale Station “timely” would be an understatement, though that’s not at all to imply shrewd, heartless planning on Coogler’s or the studio’s behalf. Chalk the picture’s release up to a happy (or unhappy, depending on how you look at it) coincidence, and then gird yourself for a…
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G-S-T Review…Blackfish
Blackfish director Gabriela Cowperthwaite throws a lot of information at us in less than an hour and a half, and it’s all crucial to making sense of the narrative she follows in her searing, heartbreaking, somber film. The good news is that she’s an ace filmmaker, and she knows how to convey everything that we need to know effectively, efficiently, and with clarity, but that knowledge must be served with a simple caveat: you can’t unlearn what Blackfish teaches, and that’s both a blessing and a curse. Cowperthwaite’s picture documents inhuman abuses inflicted upon non-human creatures in stunning enough detail to turn even the most dedicated SeaWorld fanatic into an outraged protester. In…
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G-S-T Review…The To Do List
Someone needs to start a Kickstarter campaign to get Aubrey Plaza some acting lessons. That comment sounds infinitely more cruel than intended; Plaza has long been a pivotal, hilarious supporting figure on NBC’s fantastic sitcom Parks and Recreation, and just last year she took a solid starring turn alongside Mark Duplass in Safety Not Guaranteed, but the numerous delights of her work in both underscore the limits of her range as a performer. There’s nothing wrong with having a niche, of course, but her schtick – “deadpan, apathetic, couldn’t-care-less twenty-something” – is not only specific in the extreme but also incapable of sustaining a feature-length picture for its total running…
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The Criterion Files: Godzilla
Godzilla Directed by: Ishiro Honda Written by: Ishiro Honda, Takeo Murata Starring: Akira Takarada, Momoko Kochi, Akihiko Hirata, Takashi Shimura Cinematography by: Masao Tamai Music by: Akira Ifukube Release: November 3, 1954 I remember strongly disliking Ishiro Honda’s Godzilla the first time I watched it. Grant that at the time I was both young and unwittingly self-indoctrinated to believe the king of all monsters to be a big, cuddly good guy rather than a metaphor for atomic horror; going from Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster, Godzilla vs. Hedorah, Son of Godzilla, and The Terror of Mechagodzilla to the film that started it all was something of a shock to my eight-year-old…
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G-S-T Review…Pacific Rim
Let’s begin this review on the bluntest note possible: Pacific Rim is the summer’s best blockbuster by several leagues. That may read as grotesquely biased coming from someone who grew up on Ultraman, Ray Harryhausen, and Toho films and discovered mecha anime titles in his college years; it probably doesn’t help my case that Guillermo del Toro happens to be one of my favorite contemporary filmmakers, either. But if my loyalty to del Toro and my passion for the kaiju films he has modeled so much of Pacific Rim after give me a clear dog in the seasonal fight for popcorn supremacy, my sentiment about his latest film remains as…
