There are miraculous things that can happen with film. Perfectly competent directors, writers, and actors can make something that is outrageously better than the sum of their parts. In business that is called synergy. But what happens when the opposite occurs? I think it looks something like The Counselor, a raw, twisted film in need of an editor and a few rewrites. But what do I know? Whatever happened on set and in post-production resulted in a film that simply doesn’t know when to move on and is decidedly crude and cruel. Writer Cormac McCarthy, this being his first produced screenplay—we can debate later about No Country For Old Men—seemingly…
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G-S-T Review…The Fifth Estate
Here’s the big question hanging over the head of The Fifth Estate: do we contextualize it based on content or structure? Bill Condon’s first post-Twilight film bites off more than it can chew, but it’s difficult to say whether that’s because of the subject matter – being the origins and rise of both Wikileaks and its controversial founder, Julian Assange – or because of the production’s unavoidable biopic bent; even at the tender age of only seven (which amounts to light years on the web), Wikileaks can already claim a rich, storied, complex history, so much so that two hours feels scarcely enough to scratch the surface of its conception…
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G-S-T Review…Machete Kills
In the pantheon of Grindhouse revival films, if there ever were such a place, Machete Kills should go down as one of its stupidest but also one of the most fun times you can have in 2013. Now all you Trejo/Rodriguez fans can sheath your machetes, the term stupid is used with immense love and respect for Rodriguez and company…but this film is simply ludicrous. It goes without saying that a film like this makes no effort to be realistic. How can it when it’s a cornucopia of all sorts of genre-themed oddities, including but not limited to ray guns, clones, wacky explosions/violence, Mel Gibson as a Bond-esqe villain and Charlie…
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G-S-T Review…Captain Phillips
Paul Greengrass is known for making some rather hard-hitting films. Regardless of whether those hits land physically (see: his Bourne films) or emotionally (see: United 93) he’s a no nonsense director who tells taut and weighty white-knuckle tales about survival and the potential power of the human spirit. His latest effort Captain Phillips, the adaptation of the autobiographical novel “A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea” written by the actual Captain Richard Phillips is, in short, a tense and involving kidnapping movie. In a way it is very much the maritime counterpart to United 93 which makes Greengrass the right man for the job. We live in a…
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G-S-T Review…All the Boys Love Mandy Lane
Where would Jonathan Levine be today if the Weinsteins had actually released All the Boys Love Mandy Lane in 2007? Few indie, D.I.Y. slashers have a history that’s quite so storied as this one’s; Levine started work on the project in 2003, completed it and sold it to Bob and Harvey in 2006, and then went on to make a name for himself with The Wackness in 2008 while Mandy Lane languished in obscurity. (And that’s just the short version of events.) If you’re wondering why a play on “kids go to isolated wilderness, kids get dead” exploitation wound up sitting on a shelf for nearly seven years, chalk it…
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G-S-T Review…We Are What We Are
Last year, horror fans took part in the genre rumpus of Drew Goddard’s masterful The Cabin in the Woods, a movie that by design reminds us why we love horror in the first place. This year, We Are What We Are teaches a variation on the same lesson: it’s the sort of horror film that rewards the diligence and patience that comes part and parcel with true horror fandom. Dig through the mounds of garbage that comprise an average year’s release slate of cinematic skeletons, spirits, and haunts, and you’ll generally be rewarded with priceless gems for your troubles (though there’s a question as to whether it’s worth suffering through…
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G-S-T Review…A.C.O.D.
In comedy, timing is everything; timing can mean the difference between an audience erupting in belly laughs or awkward chuckles because they’re too polite to stay quiet. So when we sift through the individual pieces that constitute A.C.O.D.‘s whole, the element of timing emerges as chief among them. You need good timing to make bland jokes work, and without a good cast, there’s no good timing. How first time director Stu Zicherman managed to assemble his immensely talented group of actors and actresses- which starts with Adam Scott and ends with Jane Lynch – is a wacky mystery, but bully for him for finding the right people to make his…
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G-S-T TV: Low Winter Sun (S1 Finale, Ep 9/10: Ann Arbor/Surrender)
10 is a nice round number – it seems substantive, concise and to the point, right? How fitting it is that AMC’s Low Winter Sun also has 10 episodes? The answer is not at all. As season 1 comes to a close it was clear, even before its collective midway mark, there was nothing substantive or concise about this mini-series. You can’t say things have been easy for the gritty series. Full of drama that can hardly be described as melodramatic it took a stab at being a hard-edge police show (original we know) but one about conflicted individuals dealing with the consequences of their actions as they furiously and…
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G-S-T Review…Blue Caprice
Technology being what it is today; almost anyone can make a movie and do it rather quickly. However, there is a clear difference between the heavy-handed CGI summer blockbusters and oh say, Blue Caprice. What matters is what you are looking for in a movie. Indy films today are raw and gritty and have a much more realistic feeling to them. While the title of this film doesn’t tell you anything about the movie itself, it also doesn’t tell you it was inspired by true events. True and tragic events that led to the Beltway sniper attacks in 2002. Take the raw desire of an independent film, and the lack…
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G-S-T Review…Gravity
The written word is a poor medium for articulating Gravity‘s many wondrous qualities neatly and efficiently; more than any other film released in 2013, this one – hailing from virtuoso Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron seven years after the monumental Children of Men – may be best described as an experience. That’s a pretty way of saying that Gravity demands to be seen in a properly calibrated theater, which is itself a passive aggressive, mildly pleading clarion call for all bored moviegoers to bum rush their local multiplexes and ruthlessly run box offices out of tickets stubs for the picture. More so than other mainstream contemporary spectacles, the film must be…
