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,…
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G-S-T Review…The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
Good news for fans of Peter Jackson’s visual tour guide through Middle-earth: the dividing line that split critics over last year’s first entry in the lord of the ring’s adaptation of The Hobbit (subtitled An Unexpected Journey) has shrunk in the second episode, The Desolation of Smaug. That’s to say that a year after the starting point for the new franchise met with mixed reception, Jackson seems to have gotten back on his feet somewhat, proving that all of the groundwork laid in An Unexpected Journey was indeed worth his audience’s while; the new film plays like a roller coaster, punctuated by dips, twists, loop-the-loops, and every other sort of…
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G-S-T Review…The Punk Singer
Sini Anderson’s The Punk Singer is a double-sided coin, with one face that’s somber and another that’s uplifting. Watching the film’s subject, feminist activist and musician Kathleen Hanna, as she takes center stage in archive footage, it’s impossible not to feel inspired by her energy and indomitability; for most of the film, Hanna gives the impression of being an unstoppable force, though anyone familiar with her life and times already knows this to be untrue without having to watch the entire picture. And so The Punk Singer exists as a work that’s simultaneously joyful and tragic, though that contradiction only makes Anderson’s film feel even more transparent and honest. For…
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G-S-T Review…Out of the Furnace
You can take the Oscar bait out of the gritty revenge thriller, but you can’t take the gritty revenge thriller out of the Oscar bait. So goes Out of the Furnace, Scott Cooper’s latest film since 2009’s deplorably hackneyed Crazy Heart; in just under two hours of running time, Cooper never makes the effort to determine whether he’s making a sweeping, important piece of arthouse cinema, or a good old fashioned genre picture. Truthfully, that’s by design – he’s very clearly bent on mashing these two pursuits together from the very start, hoping that by adding two and two he’ll come out the other side with a handsome bit of…
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G-S-T Review…The Great Beauty
Maybe the most impressive feat Paulo Sorrentino pulls off with The Great Beauty is one of restraint; in two hours and twenty minutes, not a single reference is made to the man whose actions most strongly inform the backdrop of the Italian filmmaker’s latest picture. That would be Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s erstwhile prime minister and unapologetic career scoundrel, whose bunga bunga stink wafts through every orgiastic party Sorrentino stages throughout his exquisitely crafted film. But that just speaks to the lasting impact Berlusconi’s negligence and corruption have had on Italian society since his resignation in 2011; no one need mention his name to invoke his presence. He’s a specter looming…
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G-S-T Review…Black Nativity
There’s nothing worse than reviewing a mediocre film made up of a trio of elements I actually like. In that respect, Black Nativity is a compressed version of my personal hell; it’s helmed by Kasi Lemmons, the gifted director behind such treasures as Talk to Me and Eve’s Bayou, it boasts a phenomenal cast that begins with Forest Whitaker (nearly ubiquitous in 2013) and ends with Angela Bassett, and it calls on the works of the great Langston Hughes to serve as its foundation. But none of that winds up mattering much, because ultimately Black Nativity winds up doing little more than just existing; it’s there, but it’s not especially good. If you’re a glass half-full type, that suggests the…
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G-S-T Review…Frozen
Walt Disney revolutionized animation and brought it to the forefront of entertainment. Decades later the company has acquired some of the largest franchises in history like Marvel (most characters), Lucas Arts, even The Muppets in attempts to continue telling great stories. But while they have been focused on repackaging and pushing the continuing legacies of their newest acquisitions they still remember their roots and know how to tell a quality yarn even treading thin ice with their computer animated feature Tangled. Well the gamble paid off and really surprised people. Disney’s CG animators/storytellers used that momentum and took things even further with the mammothly successful Wreck-It Ralph. Seems that the future lies in…
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G-S-T Review…Alexander Payne's Nebraska
Nebraska could well just be subtitled as The Importance of Being Monotint. In a year where everyone and their cool grandma has gone back to black and white, Alexander Payne uses the absence of chroma better than most, or at least in a way that’s more viscerally effective. In two hours, Payne cobbles together a shockingly accurate portrait of the US’s flyover states, at least as envisioned by those of us living on the East and West coasts; they’re desolate, barren, cultural wastelands, places that time has forgotten, populated by people modernity has passed by. Seems like the perfect starting point for an acerbically funny critique of the world Payne himself…
