Adaptations are always tricky animals because of the questions they raise: What are the rules? Who do you try to please? Is it possible to capture the magic and allure going from source material to another medium? Is there a sure-fire formula to successfully win fans and those new to the material? Many times filmmakers try to answer these questions and when it works, it works well. Other times however it’s an awful, awful mess. Well thankfully Rob Minkoff and DreamWorks, no stranger to adaptations or different mediums, know how to answer such questions. They have achieved the former and as such have another hit on their respective hands. But…
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G-S-T Review…The Attorney
If seeing history filtered through a melodramatic lens of dishonesty is your idea of a good time, then you may want to consider buying a ticket to The Attorney; you won’t learn very much about the events it depicts, but at least you’ll be entertained by the film’s almost completely decontextualized content. Or maybe you won’t. Anybody who has a weakness for moral courtroom dramas should find themselves thoroughly engaged by first-time South Korean director Yang Woo-seok, who appears to be merrily cherry picking his way toward crafting a thesis on the abuses of government corruption and the moral imperative of lawyers in a society tainted by it. Everyone else,…
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G-S-T Review…At Middleton
College films come in all makes and models; some are crafted for teens preparing to head off on their first jaunt into higher learning, some exist to indulge in the stereotypes and tropes of the college experience, and others still try to bridge that gap between highbrow and lowbrow by meshing frat comedy with coming of age narrative. At Middleton does none of these things. Unlike Animal House, Old School, Van Wilder, and the countless other films that mimic them (and which they mimic themselves), Adam Rodgers’ story isn’t about kids going to college as much as it is about their parents taking them there. Which is to say that At Middleton is about the…
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G-S-T Review…Gimme Shelter
Think of Ron Krauss’ Gimme Shelter as the next phase in Vanessa Hudgen’s plan to recalibrate her career; it’s the continued tale of how she’s graduated from high school musicals and shed her Disney skin in an attempt to become a bona fide Actress. Truthfully, Hudgens doesn’t really need to tinker with her image much further following her stint in last year’s lurid Spring Breakers, Harmony Korine’s transgressive cultural commentary on disaffected youth, but she nonetheless appears to have arrived at a point in her life where she’s no longer content appearing in disposable teenage romances and terrible Twilight clones. It’s time for her to get real. Therein lies the…
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G-S-T Review…Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
As an exercise in brand resuscitation, Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit could be worse; the film does what films of its sort must, building its titular protagonist from the ground up and establishing a potential new franchise for the character going forward. Should the stars align (literally), we could see a Jack Ryan continuance in just a couple of years’ time, assuming Chris Pine can wriggle free from Star Trek‘s grasp and Kevin Costner isn’t busy playing the wise mentor figure to another young buck trying to figure out how to be a hero. This is malleable filmmaking. It necessitates very little by way of continuity. Of course, that particular element…
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G-S-T Review…Lone Survivor
Director Peter Berg sure does fancy his modern day war themed films. And why wouldn’t he? Barring Battleship, he has a knack for these heart-felt but hard-hitting and gritty stories. His true talent seems to be in these dense fish-out-of-water narratives focusing on a few key players set in a world they struggle to comprehend. With many parallels to his 2007 film The Kingdom, Lone Survivor, whether or not it was a true story (which it is), is a passion project for Berg and can almost be viewed as a companion piece. Lone Survivor, adapted from a novel of the same name (keeping the name of the book is a…
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G-S-T Review…The Wolf of Wall Street
After sitting through three hours of unrelenting, unrepentant debauchery, your first query regarding The Wolf of Wall Street might be one of genesis. How in the blue hell did this thing get made? Yes, yes, there’s a realistic and tangible answer to that burning question, and it’s only five words long: Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese. (Credit should go to Red Granite Pictures, too.) But none of that makes for satisfactory explanation as to how a mainstream Hollywood movie could be this explicit, this over the line, and this unapologetic all at the same time; most shamefully of all, it’s also a total blast, though you’ll probably want to take a…
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G-S-T Review…Her
Stop me if you’ve heard the one about Leonard Hofstadter falling in love with Siri; sometimes, reaching for low-hanging fruit proves too much of a temptation, though by now that joke has already passed its expiration date. In fact, you may be more familiar with Her, the latest film from Spike Jonze, through overuse of the aforementioned wisecrack than actual studio promotion. But punchlines about pop culture and technology don’t do full justice to Jonze’s picture, a wholly unique work that’s peppered with humor but is more meaningfully shaped through its examination of human relationships in a culture grown overly reliant on precious gadgetry. That’s the most surface level of…
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G-S-T Review…Saving Mr. Banks
A spoonful of sugar, as they say, helps the medicine go down. In the case of Saving Mr. Banks, John Lee Hancock needn’t any help coaxing people to eat up his charming quasi-biopic. But still, that idea of needing something to sort of grease the rails to get a job done really captures the spirit and the idea of the entire film itself and does make the film so much more palatable. On the surface it’s fun to see the crotchety British writer thumb her nose at Disney’s candy-coated empire, but there’s so much more to it than that. Now Saving Mr. Banks, despite the appeal and allure of one Walt…
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G-S-T Review…Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
For the bulk of Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues‘ running time, Adam McKay will offer little argument to convince you of the film’s necessity. Of all the many, many sequels on 2013’s release slate, this one may be the most needless; 2004’s Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy remains a classic of slapstick inanity, an ode to the gut-busting power of random punchlines supported by nothing short of pure, unadulterated absurdity. It’s also remarkably self-contained, leaving room to go forward but little reason for anyone to do so, unless of course the question of money is brought up, in which case fie upon artistic integrity. Everybody needs a payday, after all, McKay,…
