From Jaume Balagueró, director of [REC] and [REC] 2, comes one of the best and most suspenseful films I’ve seen in at least a decade. It’s a taut, complex and magnificently dark thriller that doesn’t let up until the credits roll. Sleep Tight (or Mientras Duermes) follows a tortured soul named Caesar (Luis Tosar) who by some weird personal quirk is unable to be happy. Nothing will brighten his sour mood…except seeing others more upset, displeased or depressed than him. Yet before you think this sounds like some hokey story or an odd iteration of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, this really is something special. The visuals are wonderfully intricate for such simple surroundings and the…
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Guillermo del Toro is Way Too Busy to Direct 'Star Wars VII'
Who will direct Star Wars Episode VII? Despite having Michael Arndt on-board for writing duties, Disney still hasn’t picked a director for their continuation of George Lucas’ alternately beloved and maligned space opera franchise. That said, we can now add one more name to the list of people who won’t be at the helm of the sci-fi blockbuster: Guillermo del Toro. The news comes courtesy of The Playlist, who had the chance to speak with the celebrated genre prince and got a couple of juicy nuggets of info out of him in the process. Normally, I wouldn’t consider this sort of thing news; why bother reporting on one of the…
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Time to Meet the Devil: 'Only God Forgives' Teaser Clip
I’m going to hazard a guess here and assume that this clip stands a good chance of getting yanked, so if you want to see twenty seconds of footage from Only God Forgives, Nicolas Winding Refn’s upcoming re-teaming with Ryan “Hey Girl” Gosling, you’d better click the Youtube window below quick-smart. The film has distribution courtesy of Radius-TWC, but it doesn’t have a solid release date as of yet; I’d expect that to change either just before or just after Cannes, when the movie will likely screen in full for the first time. First impressions: unsurprisingly, this looks like a spiritual cousin to Drive between the promise of graphic, brutal…
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G-S-T Review…Zero Dark Thirty
Editor’s Note: The following review was originally written back in December by our guest contributing editor, Mark Walters of BigFanBoy.com and is topped off with some final thoughts from our own Grady May. As 2012 drew to a close, there were several films trickling out in the final months which studios hope will be fresh in everyone’s minds come Oscar voting time. One of the more talked-about contenders is director Kathryn Bigelow’s factually based Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt and eventual discovery of Osama Bin Laden. Bigelow already took home Oscar gold for her work on another military film, The Hurt Locker, and has re-teamed with screenwriter Mark Boal on…
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G-S-T Review…Promised Land
Subtlety, when making a strong point, is never easy. In Promised Land, the heavy-handed apparition rears its ugly hand at the end and wrecks most of what proceeded. Despite this, the film works as a tool to make you question things openly and refrain from becoming emotionally attached to the people making the arguments for or against. Matt Damon’s character Steve is a confusing character first and foremost because he is real. He’s a man we aren’t often used to. He will go off on verbal tangents after working up to something, but if he is faced with someone that has the upper hand in information or personality, he becomes flustered. At one point, Steve gets…
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G-S-T Review…The Impossible
There’s a line spoken to a young boy in the middle of Juan Antonio Bayona’s film The Impossible that brings a lot of gravity to the events he and his family are currently experiencing. It really captures the theme of the story and comes in a scene where one of Ewan McGregor’s sons talks to a woman as they discuss the stars in the nighttime sky. He’s fond of star gazing (as evidenced by the gift of a new telescope he received for Christmas at the beginning of the film) and in their conversation the woman tells him that some of the stars he’s looking at have been dead for a long…
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G-S-T Year In Review – Jessica's 2012 Wrap Up
Being the Indie lover that I am, I’ve decided to stick to independent titles only for my 2012 Wrap Up. After a fairly disappointing 2011, this year brought us so many amazing films it is difficult to chose only ten to discuss here, and with the limitations of the categories below, I am leaving out so many wonderful films, both studio and independent based, that I probably walked out of thinking it was the best film I’d seen to date. That’s what made picking a favorite film for 2012 so difficult. It seemed that the more I saw, the more favorites I had to add to the list. To name…
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Sweet (Teaser) Trailer…'Foosball'
From Toys to Bugs (or Antz), and from Gnomes to Smurfs and other assorted tiny creatures, computer animated films never fail to bring diminutive worlds to life on the big screen. From director Juan Jose Campanella comes this light-hearted and fun looking adventure into the world of foosball. That’s right, it’s not just for basement recreation or college bars anymore. The 3D animated film is about a young boy named Amadeo who, with the help of the foosball players, shrugs off his shyness and goes mano a mano against the infamous foosballer, the Champ. Enjoy! It’s just a teaser trailer so granted there’s not much to it. Still, with a little luck it looks like…
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Jo-Go In the Running to Guard the Galaxy
Marvel pulled off the finale to their impressive superhero balancing act this year with The Avengers, a trick they look to duplicate with a sequel in 2015. In between now and then, though, the studio– now positioned as one of the film world’s most important blockbusting authorities, at least as far as I’m concerned– looks to unveil a variation on that delicate but bombastic act with Guardians of the Galaxy, which at present boasts a release date of August 1st, 2014. Naturally, that means we know one thing for sure: that there’s very little information for us to go on beyond its title and its projected opening day. True, we…
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Pixar Reveals Concept Art For 3 Years of Releases (Plus: 'Monsters University' Promo)
Nothing says “Happy New Year” like a slew of preview material for Pixar’s release slate leading into 2016! Coming Soon had the good fortune to receive a fold-out card from the animation studio this past Monday, which contained concept art from each of their four pending endeavors– Monsters University, which hits theaters this June, The Good Dinosaur, and their two untitled projects– one that takes place inside the human mind and one which occurs on Día de los Muertos. To no one’s surprise, Pixar sprung a Monsters University promo clip on us yesterday as well, and while it’s pretty short it also completely nails the intended tone. If you’re a…