The most startling thing about Silver Linings Playbook is its complete embrace of being unhinged. A film that revolves around mental health issues should feel unpredictable, even if people stubbornly want to shoehorn the film into the romantic comedy genre. Let me be clear here, then, that I never felt Silver Linings fell into that genre. In fact, it doesn’t play fair. This isn’t a neat film. When Jennifer Lawrence’s Tiffany is introduced to Bradley Cooper’s Pat, we see his gaze drift to her breasts ever so casually. When he looks up, we see recognition in her eyes. She doesn’t admonish him there, but later we understand this attention isn’t uncommon for her nor unwanted. Which is…
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G-S-T Review…Red Dawn
Here we are again with a cult classic which has been subjected to a remake almost three decades later. If you were a child of the 80’s or at least a fan of 80’s movies, then you have probably seen Red Dawn (1984). That film was rife with actors on their way to stardom. Fast forward to 2012 and here we are with a more modern version of the movie modified to fit the times. Rather than Russia invading the U.S. we have North Korea. There are a myriad of other changes in an effort to modernize the film and cater to the shorter attention span crowd of our society…
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G-S-T Review…The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2
Brace yourselves Twilight fans, it all comes down to this. No more brooding, no more long awkward affectionate stares or lip-biting. This final installment gives fans the climactic showdown between the Cullens and Volturi they’ve been patiently waiting for (well, kind of). Suffice to say nothing in the series has been more thrilling or satisfying than this. This final installment also finds Bella, with baby in tow, joining the Cullen clan in the way she believed herself born to live, as a full on vampire. There’s less focus on Bella’s former life (sorry fans no Anna Kendrick and co here) as the story moved with long strides to meet, head on, the Volturi…
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G-S-T Review…Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln is considered by historians to be one of the best, if not the best, President of the United States of America. It is only fitting that one of the best directors of our time takes the helm on Lincoln. Most audience members that wander into Lincoln will already be aware of the events that transpire throughout the course of the film. We know what the outcome of the movie will be, because it is history. However, the joy is in the journey as you are thrust back into an explosive time rife with turmoil and change. Lincoln is ripped from the pages of history, meticulously reenacted and then…
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G-S-T Review…Skyfall
Even after 4 years, Quantum of Solace still leaves a rather bland taste in mouths of Bond fans (though much of the flat reception the film was met with can be chalked up to the writer’s strike). As such, Bond would have a lot of making up to do in his next outing. But thanks to another solid turn from Daniel Craig, a fantastic cast to play opposite, great story, music and all of this under the artistic eye of Sam Mendes, Skyfall is not only one the franchises’ best installments but easily sits among the likes of the most beloved Connery films. Sounds like lofty praise but really it earns and…
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G-S-T Review…Holy Motors
There’s no easy way to evaluate a film like Holy Motors after a single viewing. That’s why I watched my screener copy twice. Of course, I still feel somewhat behind the eight ball as I try in earnest to write my review, but in my own defense it’s worth noting that I’ve never seen anything like Holy Motors before in my life. (Continuing in that vein: I’d wager that there are more critics who share my position than not.) In fact, the film is so unique, original, and rampantly weird that calling it a new entry in surreal cinema feels like an observation of family resemblance and nothing more. How…
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G-S-T Review…Wreck-It Ralph
Should you manage to see Wreck-It Ralph blind and with no knowledge of its source of origination, you might be inclined to credit the film to Pixar. And while that wouldn’t be an unreasonable guess, you’d be wrong. Ralph has all the bearings of Pixar at its finest, yet Rich Moore’s first feature length effort comes to us from none other than the Mouse House itself. Arriving six months after the release of Brave, Ralph gives weight to the theory that both animation studios are just blurring together more and more in the wake of Pixar’s acquisition by Disney in 2006. If that strikes anyone as a bad sign for creativity, then the news that Wreck-It Ralph happens to…
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G-S-T Review…A Late Quartet
If A Late Quartet, the second feature by Yaron Zilberman and his first film since his 2004 documentary Watermarks, proves anything, it’s that good performances can elevate average movies. To say that Zilberman’s cast saves his picture would be somewhat generous, though. They only distract us from its inadequacies, which are numerous, though perhaps this is a harsher judgment than the film really deserves. A Late Quartet is harmless, airy fluff, small-scale prestige cinema that smartly gathers together a group of very gifted actors in the service of exploring life lessons filtered through the overarching motif of Beethoven’s Opus 131 String Quartet (in C-sharp minor); it’s also painfully undercooked to…
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G-S-T Review…The Sessions
Life deals many of us some pretty crappy hands. The trick to dealing with much of it, as they say, is to have a good attitude. In the case of journalist Mark O’Brien, life handed him a spectacularly bum hand in the form of childhood polio. But you wouldn’t know it to talk to him as his positive outlook far outweighs both the iron lung he sleeps in and the paralyzing affect the disease had on him physically. After an 18 year absence from feature films director Ben Lewin takes the helm for The Sessions; a tender story that retells the time in O’Brien’s life when he researched/wrote one of his most provocative stories. The film doesn’t dance around sensitive…
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G-S-T Review…Cloud Atlas
Following Cloud Atlas, viewers will invariably find themselves armed with a variety of useful adjectives to describe the film in a single word: grand, towering, epic, inspiring, heartbreaking, heartwarming, hodgepodge. But in adapting David Mitchell’s 2004 novel of the same name, siblings Andy and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer have created a singular, unique work that majestically shrugs off attempts at quick, careless classification. Cloud Atlas is a cinematic medley of narratives connected together through time and space, driven by a sense of enterprise and purpose, and defined by its advocacy of basic, simple morality and human compassion; fitting the film into traditional categories would not be unlike forcing a square…