Disney Pixar is the best combination since peanut butter and jelly. Disney revolutionized animated film and continues today as a marketing juggernaut. Pixar came along and took the animation world by storm, making other studios marvel at the stunning quality they delivered on screen. Together they have produced billions in revenue. That being said, Disney Pixar has stumbled a bit with the last couple of films not living up to audience and critic expectations. Regardless of what this review says, families will flock to this film and children will beg their parents to buy Monsters University merchandise. Does Monsters University measure up to Monsters, Inc., or does it fall short? …
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G-S-T Review…Man of Steel
Well, now, here’s a fine how do you do: Zack Snyder made a good movie. Granted, he’s made good movies before, but it’s been so long since he released his hyper-muscular remake of Dawn of the Dead that seeing him output something that’s actually watchable from start to finish comes off as something of a shock. In the intervening years, he’s made films containing individual sequences worthy of the praise they rightfully receive but which lack a top-to-bottom sense of cohesion; Sucker Punch inadvertently celebrates the male gaze it tries to critique, and Watchmen is at its best in its first twenty minutes, after which the story begins and the…
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G-S-T Review…The East
Hot off the success of Sound of My Voice Zal Batmanglij and his partner in crime Brit Marling take their focused engaging narrative/shooting style and apply it to The East, a throwback to the classic 70’s style thrillers. The East follows Sarah (Brit Marling), an operative for an elite private intelligence firm whose first assignment is to infiltrate this eco-terrorism cell known as “The East”. Their plan is to attack guilty parties (companies who are responsible for oil spills, selling untested pharmaceuticals, toxic dumping, etc.) and their latest string of “jams” is to give these high and mighty CEO’s a taste of their bad medicine by bringing these crimes to light. Over the…
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G-S-T Review…The Purge
There are plenty of films out there that envision a utopia, or something realizing a nearly optimal society. In James DeMonaco’s nail-biter the family of a well-to-do security consultant (Ethan Hawke) are terrorized in this highly fictitious home invasion thriller. But this isn’t about some random act of terrifying gratuitous violence like The Strangers (to which The Purge will easily be compared), no it’s part of a much larger world – the above mentioned utopia. In the year 2022 America is as close to perfection as possible, unemployment is at 1% and the USA is a nation reborn, thanks to an annual event called “The Purge”. In a society, or more…
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G-S-T Review…The Prey
The Prey can be best described as puzzling. That’s not to say that the film is complex; it’s actually remarkably simple and woefully boilerplate, so much so that every so often as you watch it, you may feel as though you’ve watched it already. The real mystery here is how the film managed to avoid being released straight on home video despite being just at the level of DTV quality. If The Prey does one thing well, it’s meet the physical demands of its numerous action scenes handsomely- you won’t be completely bored even while you experience deja vu- but it doesn’t have an original or intelligent thought in its…
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G-S-T Review…La Camioneta
Guatemala’s main source of transportation comes from drivers of colorfully painted, refurbished buses known as “camionetas.” These drivers and their decorated buses are responsible for providing the majority of Guatemalans a way to make a living by transporting them to and from work each day. For as long as he can remember, Ermelindo has had a dream of owning one of these buses, and to perform this service that is so essential to the people of Guatemala and their way of life. The documentary feature debut from Mark Kendall (www.markkendall.net), La Camioneta, follows the bus that will eventually serve to fulfill Ermelindo’s long-awaited dream, as it makes it’s way from…
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G-S-T Review…Now You See Me
Louis Leterrier. That name means different things to different people. But when telling a tale that’s a quasi-magical, quasi-heist film, he seems the perfect fit for this type of story. None of his films are known to contain very much substance, yet, on a cursory level, they are comprised of mostly breezy entertainment with a strong, and slightly fun visual sense. Smoke, mirrors, and misdirection are the tools of a magician and Leterrier works in the same medium, one where everything is an illusion; a hollow one with no great revelation behind the curtain, only disappointment. That sounds incredibly harsh as Now You See Me, for most of the duration at least, is…
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G-S-T Review…After Earth
I remember sitting the a crowded ballroom during the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con and listening to the panelists talk at length about the effort they put into the history of After Earth. They even went so far as describing a “bible” they created, so that they could put down any answers to various questions of who did what and why. Some 1,000 years into the future is when After Earth begins, where an elite military force known as the Rangers are the trailblazers after we left Earth. Ravaged, the planet was no longer inhabitable by our self-destructing human race so we fled and found a new planet to live on.…
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G-S-T Review…EPIC
What do you see when you walk through the forest? Most likely a serene cornucopia of flora and fauna. But what makes the leaves rustle and the animals scurry? No it’s not just the wind or your presence that startles the animals. If you look closely there’s a battle raging for the fate of the very same forest you might find yourself passing through and that, in a nutshell, is the very simple premise of Blue Sky Studios’ Epic. It’s an imaginative tale that tries to get adults, and kids, back to the days when wonder, intrigue and the sense of discovery that was found seeking adventure right in our own…
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G-S-T Review…Fast & Furious 6
Ladies and Gentlemen, the huge summer blockbusters are finally upon us. This year we arrive in style with a film franchise that would make most people scratch their heads and wonder. With the third installment the franchise was on shaky ground, only bringing Vin Diesel back for a cameo. But, when Vin Diesel and Paul Walker signed on for the fourth installment, the franchise was back in business. The box office take for the fourth installment was more than double that of the third; the numbers only go up from there. To date the Fast & Furious franchise has raked in $1.6 billion worldwide. That only accounts for box office…