How does a child endure the trauma of a volatile custody battle? What Maisie Knew, loosely based on Henry James’ 1897 novel of the same name, answers that question by putting central emphasis on the titular character, a precocious young girl caught between her two warring parents in the final days of their poisonous marriage. Sometimes, Maisie (Onata Aprile), is nothing more than a bargaining chip alternately used by her father, art dealer Beale (Steve Coogan, affecting his finely-tuned persona of self-absorption), and her mother, has-been rocker Susanna (Julianne Moore), in their legal and social skirmishes; at others, she’s a silent witness to the selfishness of grown-ups and, to a…
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G-S-T Review…Stories We Tell
Seven years after Sara Polley’s directorial debut, Away From Her, and only two in the wake of her follow-up, 2011’s Take This Waltz, the actress-filmmaker’s latest offering feels like something of a capstone at this juncture of her career. Limited as her body of work may be, Stories We Tell explains, or rather clarifies, her efforts as a narrator; it’s the film that elucidates her pursuits as an artist and even allows us to view them anew through a fresh lens. If her forays behind the camera raised any questions about the thematic drives and interests of her cinema, then Stories We Tell, both gracefully and bravely introspective at the…
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On Second Thought, Bill’s Take: G-S-T Review…Star Trek Into Darkness
There’s a vitality to director J.J. Abram’s latest foray into the Star Trek universe. While he may not be going where no man—or this series in particular—has gone before, it appears his goal is to give the series forward momentum that can be sustained even if he doesn’t return to the helm. Certainly, Abrams leaves the franchise in a much better place than where he found it. What you look for in a Trek film largely depends on what generation you belong to and outside of that, what series you most align yourself with. There’s a rich history through the various decades that Trek lived through on the boob tube.…
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G-S-T Review…Star Trek Into Darkness
There are two layers to Star Trek Into Darkness. One exists at the surface level and involves everything that we see, hear, and experience while watching it in a theater, and the other involves the efforts that occurred below the line, prior to the film’s arrival at the multiplex. Just like its 2009 predecessor, the former layer proves to be the sequel’s saving grace and the latter holds it back from being truly great; the marriage between star-making, charismatic, invested performances and ham-handed, hackish screenwriting ultimately yields the same results J.J. Abrams got with his last venture into Gene Roddenberry’s beloved sci-fi iconography, a movie that works in the moment as blockbusting…
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G-S-T Review…The Great Gatsby
High school students of today can breathe a sigh of relief: rather than bother reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s iconic literary portrait of the Roaring Twenties, The Great Gatsby, they can simply head to the multiplex to have all of its themes and meanings pounded into their skulls for two hours courtesy of Baz Luhrmann. On the surface, which happens to be the only layer his adaptation concerns itself with, Luhrmann has taken everything about Fitzgerald’s novel and distilled it down to its most fundamental truths, and transposed those truths onto film in the most recklessly over-the-top ways possible. Here, disdain for excess is conveyed with the utmost of excesses and…
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G-S-T Review…Aftershock
Good news for Americans traveling abroad: you no longer have anything to fear from suspicious, secretly vicious locals. Now you just have to watch out for cataclysmic natural disasters and falling debris, which conveniently bring out the bloodthirsty maniac and paranoid xenophobe in everybody. Basically, if traveling to another country seemed dangerous before, it’s even moreso now, but that’s only because Aftershock has no idea what kind of movie it wants to be, or even how to be it. Is it about Americans being menaced in a foreign land, or is it about how much mankind lives at the whim of shifting tectonic plates? Either way, it’s not particularly good, so it…
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G-S-T Review…Iron Man 3
While we film fans, die hard comic aficionados and non, can thank Jon Favreau (and Robert Downey Jr.) for bringing Iron Man to life in an entirely fulfilling and believable way. That said, there were more than a few problems with its formulaic sequel. So, sometimes, it’s necessary to bring some fresh legs into the game to help the series go out with a win. For those of you not sure who Shane Black is, check out Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Monster Squad, The Last Boy Scout and of course Lethal Weapon…we’ll wait. There’s a common set of themes running though all his movies and without sounding like it’s…
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G-S-T Review…Drafthouse Films’ Graceland
Writer/director Ron Morales gives us a new spin on a familiar kidnapping yarn but tells a story that’s so believable and grounded you’d think it was a documentary. A superbly paced and intense flick, this is the kind of film we don’t get to see every day but would wish there were more of. In a world where we have films like Ransom and Taken, people walking out of Gracelandmight likely comment that Morales’ film is taken, er, taking its sweet time because this is a slow film. Yet that’s the point, it’s not about wiretaps, SWAT teams, a Tony Scott style of camera work, or an adrenaline-fueled rescue. Not at all. The focus of Morales’ film…
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G-S-T Review…Pain & Gain
What does Michael Bay unhinged look like on celluloid? That’s not a question most of us really need answered; eighteen years spent making glossy, lunkheaded action films, blockbusters based on toy lines, and useless horror remakes speak volumes on the subject of Bay’s auteurdom. But maybe the Transformers mastermind has been done an injustice. Maybe, beneath the frat boy wit and visual chaos of his cinema, Bay has kept his one Big Idea squirreled away for safekeeping, waiting for the right opportunity to unleash his unspoiled artistic vision on his audiences. Or maybe Pain & Gain is just an erroneous high water mark in bad taste filmmaking. Whatever the case may be,…
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G-S-T Review…The Angel's Share
Lest anyone form an early reaction to The Angel’s Share that unfairly paints the film as a riff on Alexander Payne’s Sideways, there are two characteristics present in the former that distinguish it from the latter: social drama and a heist caper. Put another way, Ken Loach’s twenty fifth picture (and also his latest production with screenwriter Paul Laverty) engages on a macro, political level instead of a micro, personal level while managing to disguise itself as frothy entertainment. For another comparison, let your mind wander back to 1997’s The Full Monty; that may offer a better idea of what The Angel’s Share has to offer in its mixture of legitimate…