Blackfish director Gabriela Cowperthwaite throws a lot of information at us in less than an hour and a half, and it’s all crucial to making sense of the narrative she follows in her searing, heartbreaking, somber film. The good news is that she’s an ace filmmaker, and she knows how to convey everything that we need to know effectively, efficiently, and with clarity, but that knowledge must be served with a simple caveat: you can’t unlearn what Blackfish teaches, and that’s both a blessing and a curse. Cowperthwaite’s picture documents inhuman abuses inflicted upon non-human creatures in stunning enough detail to turn even the most dedicated SeaWorld fanatic into an outraged protester. In…
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G-S-T Review…The To Do List
Someone needs to start a Kickstarter campaign to get Aubrey Plaza some acting lessons. That comment sounds infinitely more cruel than intended; Plaza has long been a pivotal, hilarious supporting figure on NBC’s fantastic sitcom Parks and Recreation, and just last year she took a solid starring turn alongside Mark Duplass in Safety Not Guaranteed, but the numerous delights of her work in both underscore the limits of her range as a performer. There’s nothing wrong with having a niche, of course, but her schtick – “deadpan, apathetic, couldn’t-care-less twenty-something” – is not only specific in the extreme but also incapable of sustaining a feature-length picture for its total running…
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G-S-T Review…Pacific Rim
Let’s begin this review on the bluntest note possible: Pacific Rim is the summer’s best blockbuster by several leagues. That may read as grotesquely biased coming from someone who grew up on Ultraman, Ray Harryhausen, and Toho films and discovered mecha anime titles in his college years; it probably doesn’t help my case that Guillermo del Toro happens to be one of my favorite contemporary filmmakers, either. But if my loyalty to del Toro and my passion for the kaiju films he has modeled so much of Pacific Rim after give me a clear dog in the seasonal fight for popcorn supremacy, my sentiment about his latest film remains as…
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G-S-T Review…The Way, Way Back
Oscar-winning screenwriting partners Jim Rash and Nat Faxon (The Descendants) celebrate their directorial debut with The Way, Way Back, a familiar coming of age story that is sweet, funny and poignant. Teenage angst and the “us versus adults” battle shown from the male perspective are popular themes right now, with film like Mud and Kings of Summer releasing earlier this summer, but as a labor of love project for this filmmaking duo, The Way, Way Back has been a long time coming. It’s a film that manages to be a crowd-pleaser without trying too hard. The title refers to the back seat of a vintage station wagon, where 14-year-old Duncan (Liam James)…
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G-S-T Review…The Lone Ranger
Poor, poor Gore Verbinski. The man who made waves with Pirates of the Caribbean a decade ago, an unexpected hit in its time, will forever be chasing that lightning in a bottle. Sure the sequel Dead Man’s Chest was a step up but At World’s End was a bloated mess. Sadly The Lone Ranger shares much in common and suffers the same fate as the third Pirates outing that finds the story lumbering under the weight of the plot. It can’t get out of its own way and that keeps what should be a really fun time just out of reach. It’s a fun Western, something for kids and adults,…
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G-S-T Review…The Heat
If you weren’t familiar with Freaks and Geeks or just don’t watch a lot of TV shows, then the name Paul Feig probably didn’t mean anything to you until 2011. That’s when a little film called Bridesmaids took the film world by storm and made a star of a certain Melissa McCarthy in one fell swoop. In his latest film Feig continues to impress and tickle many a funny bone because, in short, The Heat is white-hot with humor, wit and style. It’s also one of the best times you’ll have in the cinema this year…and what a way to officially kick off Summer. Where as Bridesmaids was written by women…
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G-S-T Review…World War Z
Good news for fans of World War Z, Max Brooks’ brilliantly crafted mock-oral history detailing the events and aftermath of a worldwide zombie holocaust: Brad Pitt and Marc Forster have made their adaptation of the text in name only. World War Z, Pitt’s misguided attempt at building his very own action franchise through his very own production company, borrows little and less from the source, cherry picking only a handful of moments from a very short list of its innumerable perspectives and locations; readers will immediately recognize the material that made the cut, though the film veers such a sharp left from the book that they may also be left…
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G-S-T Review…Monsters University
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…