This year is rife with movies portraying the demise of Earth’s ecosystem and our departure from the planet. The news of NASA’s discovery of three inhabitable planets within one light year away will undoubtedly make these movies a lot more intriguing for some. The first movie in this year’s series of Earth’s demise films is Oblivion. We should probably expect a lot more movies with the same underlying theme in the not so distant future. With that being said, let’s talk about Oblivion. Is the movie as exciting as the trailer or does it come up short? Keeping reading to find out. The year is 2077 and Earth has been…
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G-S-T Review…'42'
If Jackie Robinson’s fate had seen him turn out an unsung hero, 42 might be more worthy of protest. Taken at face value, it’s strictly inoffensive; it’s the tale of how Jackie Robinson broke the glass ceiling in baseball, diluted into a series of uplifting bullet points before coming to an abrupt and all-too-convenient close (because nobody wants to end a feel-good movie with reality). There’s a blueprint to this sort of cinema, and Brian Helgeland follows it doggedly in his third- technically fourth, if you count Payback*- directorial outing, hitting beat after crowd-pleasing, expected beat. Maybe that’s not a crime worthy of filmmaker jail, but it’s certainly not a guaranteed path…
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G-S-T Review…To The Wonder
To the Wonder‘s very existence serves as a topic of conversation unto itself, never mind the wholly singular experience of watching Terrence Malick’s cinema. Since when does this man have the gumption needed to make and release two films in as many years? A cursory glance over his working history should prepare even a novice viewer to wait for at least twice that amount of time in between Malick projects, and yet here we are with 2011’s The Tree of Life barely in our collective rear view and To the Wonder looming right in front of us (and two more films, which Malick apparently shot back-to-back, lurking in the shadows for potential…
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G-S-T Review…The Place Beyond the Pines
Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines is a viscerally pensive film and an enthralling multi-generational drama. As equally well-crafted as his highly received Blue Valentine, Pines is a complex and engrossing film that takes a look at legacies and what we leave behind for our kids. Further it shows us that those legacies, whether we want them or not, can sometimes make life choices for us without our say in the matter. It’s an ever-escalating, multilayered, emotionally bold familial drama that has all the makings of an instant classic. Cianfrance’s sophomore effort tells a sobering story about love and family and further one that despite the best of intentions may all end in a dismal trail of…
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G-S-T Review…Evil Dead
There’s a caveat that needs to be applied to any review of Fede Alvarez’s remake of Evil Dead, Sam Raimi’s unassailable 1981 horror staple: the new version isn’t as good as the old. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be, because nobody should reasonably expect genre remakes to live up to or exceed the masterpieces that spawn them. The better news is that Alvarez actually has a great movie on his hands- perhaps one that’s not capable of creating the same lasting, resonating impact within its categorical boundaries as Raimi’s original movie did, but certainly one that brings the blood-soaked goods with the sort of unhinged, fearless…
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G-S-T Review…Gimme the Loot
Who knew a street-centered narrative could be so sweetly buoyant as Adam Leon’s Gimme the Loot? Modern storytelling tends to look only at one side of a life lived in the hood, wading through the mud to capture and romanticize the difficulties inherent to an existence where simply getting by day to day proves to be a Herculean feat. Gimme the Loot almost feels like a response to those cliches, except that Leon actively chooses not to follow the polar opposite tract by indulging in straight-up fantasy about the world his protagonists, Malcolm (Ty Hickson) and Sofia (Tashiana Washington), inhabit; he instead aims for balance, harmony between exuberance and struggle…
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G-S-T Review…Beyond the Hills
What’s most impressive about Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu’s morally complex drama, Beyond the Hills, may well be his insistence upon remaining firmly in the grey rather than taking sides. Another filmmaker might have examined this tale, based on a real-life exorcism, and turned it into an anti-religious parable in which science- and only science- possesses the sense and rationality necessary to make sense of and survive in the modern world. That’s hardly the point Mungiu’s making, of course, but some might draw that precise conclusion regardless of his efforts to make nearly every character in his film culpable in its central tragedy. Just like in life, though, there are no easy…
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G-S-T Review…Drafthouse Films’ WRONG
It doesn’t matter what side of the bed you wake up on when the alarm clock gets you up at 7:60 every morning. In Quentin Dupieux’s Wrong, everything in the main character Dolph Springer’s world is just that, and further a bizzare journey into the absurd. At nearly every corner of this dreamlike film there is a story line and likable characters somewhat reminiscent of the very off-kilter nature of Wristcutters: A Love Story and Dog Tooth topped off with Terry Gilliam’s surreal shooting style and sense of humor. Wrong is more than a bit askew but also funny, easily more accessible than Dupieux’s Rubber and is best described as being an odd delight. There’s an aloofness and complacency to the absurdity that…
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G-S-T Review…G.I. JOE: Retaliation
We at GoSeeTalk are but some of the few out there who really enjoyed Stephen Sommers’ G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra (read our review from way back); even if it was a mess it was still a lot of fun. In this highly anticipated follow up Jon M. Chu, known for his strong visual style and over-the-top action, ups the ante and makes G.I. JOE: Retaliation bigger and a little more believable than its comic origins. The sequel (penned by Zombieland writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick) embraces the JOE namesake yet only finds a few characters/plotlines returning from Sommers’ popcorn fueled romp. Retaliation embodies some of the more cartoon elements but goes about telling its story…
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G-S-T Review…The Host
Stephenie Meyer’s post-Twilight film The Host is a highly ambitious sci-fi yarn. It’s the tale of an alien invasion, a benign one at that, and as much as there is the potential to be a great story about rebellion and survival it’s really about life in the aftermath of said invasion. In short, they’ve won so what story is there to tell? It has a complex set-up/backstory, one with fantastically grand world-building yet we only see a very small portion of it. So how can that be engaging? Enter Andrew Niccol, director of equally simple sci-fi films like Gattaca and In Time. Here he lends his visually simple but elegant creative muscle to Meyer’s story and…
