If you stop and think about the impact that Disney has had on all of our lives, it’s simply staggering. It would be almost impossible to find someone you know who has never seen a Disney film or TV show. Disney’s formula for success is often imitated, but there is only one Disney. With The Odd Life of Timothy Green, you have a Mary Poppins tale of sorts. You understand it’s a Disney family film and you suspend disbelief, just long enough to allow yourself to get sucked into the movie. You put the Disney name on a film and it’s almost guaranteed to make a profit. But, does Odd…
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G-S-T Review…The Campaign
For a film enjoying its theatrical run as the 2012 presidential election race draws closer and closer to the finish line, The Campaign feels supremely out of date. It’s worth mentioning right away that regardless, the film is frequently hilarious; from little, quiet, unexpectedly odd moments to much grander and more orchestrated fits of pure lunacy, The Campaign works on a strictly comic level. That’s half the battle, of course, maybe more depending on how you like your comedies, but it’s impossible to shake off the frivolity on full display right next to the movie’s prominent absurdities. How does one make a picture about politics in a politically aware era and at…
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G-S-T Review…The Bourne Legacy
We’re at a point in franchising history where three films will no longer do. Series from Die Hard to Indiana Jones have been expanded beyond their trilogy borders to include a fourth entry; meanwhile, the future third film in the Hunger Games saga is already being split into two parts. Traditionally, conventional wisdom marks the third film in a trilogy as the lesser installment of the series, but as three-parters get expanded to four, so too is that adage stretched out– and if The Bourne Legacy has anything to add to the discussion, then the fourth film is the new third. Call it tepid, call it slack, call it pointless;…
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G-S-T Review…Ruby Sparks
Ruby Sparks is the first screenplay from star Zoe Kazan and the film features the highly anticipated return of the husband/wife filmmaking duo who brought us 2006’s mega hit Little Miss Sunshine. Similar in style to their Oscar-nominated feature, this highly original and delightful concept is a rare thing in Hollywood. It’s a sweet, emotional and enjoyable flick that, free of pretense and a visible Hollywood hand, legitimately pulls the audience in without tropes or trite concepts that would unfairly cause many to blindly and inaccurate lying label this as just another “rom-com”. Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano) found immense literary success at a young age and like any artist who hits it…
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G-S-T Review…Total Recall
In the film world, remakes get a bad rap and it’s mainly because most of them don’t offer anything new. Just the word “remake” can make people irk. Sometimes a remake comes along that can beat the odds, gain a new audience and impress existing fans with the update; sadly, this is not one of them…but it’s not like anyone was holding their breath. Len Wiseman (the Underworld series, Live Free or Die Hard) gives us a new spin on both the 1990 Paul Verhoeven action-classic and the Phillip K. Dick short film which inspired it. But what do we get with this face-lift? Not very much, which is disappointing because Wiseman has assembled some of…
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G-S-T Review…Step Up Revolution
There’s really not much to say about a picture like Step Up Revolution, the fourth of its name. If anything, I admire it for daring to be anything more than a movie about Kids With Dreams striving to realize those dreams, though that’s not saying much. Like the other Step Up films, and last year’s remake of Footloose, Step Up Revolution has one raison d’êtere, and that’s to thrill audiences with great dancing in increasingly elaborate dance numbers. Judged on that criteria alone, the film succeeds as a light, well-intentioned but charmingly dopey crowd-pleaser. Just don’t go in expecting the elements of civil disobedience captured in the marketing to add…
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G-S-T Review…The Watch
A sincere question for my readers: is it worse for a movie to be derivative or lifeless? The Watch, the second feature by The Lonely Island’s Akiva Schaeffer, borrows liberally from science fiction cinema classics like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (take your pick between the ’56 and ’78 versions) as well as contemporary greats like last year’s excellent Attack the Block, but the film’s worst transgression isn’t its unapologetic mimicry. Calling on decades-old genre traditions is one thing; turning out an embarrassingly brainless, thoroughly bland, and criminally unfunny attempt at sci-fi comedy is another entirely. The Watch shows as little interest in its aliens as its punchlines. Not to mention its characters. Like the best…
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G-S-T Review…Take This Waltz
“Life has a gap in it,” says Sarah Silverman, as Gerdaline, a recovering alcoholic. “You don’t go crazy trying to fill it, like some lunatic.” This is the conflict Sarah Polley’s poignant and sobering film, Take This Waltz, wrestles with, as it takes a look at the human fear of the in between places in time. Michelle Williams is pitch-perfect as Margot, a young freelance writer, who the effortlessly seductive Daniel (Luke Kirby) describes as, “restless in a kind of permanent way.” Margot is married to Lou (Seth Rogan), a cookbook author whose specialty is chicken. There is nothing terribly wrong with Margot and Lou’s (Seth Rogan) relationship. In fact,…
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G-S-T Review…The Dark Knight Rises
A third film seems to be the biggest pitfall in nearly every trilogy. Some see it as a challenge, and that’s likely what propelled director Christopher Nolan to return to the helm of the franchise he rebooted in 2005 with Batman Begins and hit out of the park in 2008 with The Dark Knight. Nolan has been trending steadily upward and seemed to be making strides to not only top his second Batman film, but also send him off with the knowledge that he created one of the greatest trilogies of the modern age and avoided the common trappings of the blockbuster films in the post-Avatar 3D era. Perhaps that was simply too much…
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G-S-T Review…Ice Age: Continental Drift
Over the past couple of decades studios besides Disney have started taking an interest in animated films. While Disney undoubtedly paved the way for this medium, thankfully other large studios began generating high quality animated entertainment as well. Pixar forever changed the landscape of animated films and cemented their legacy in the history books. While other studios may never achieve Disney/Pixar success, they are certainly doing their part to entertain us as well. With that being said, 20th Century Fox delivers Ice Age: Continental Drift, which is the fourth feature length film in this series. After a successful string of previous box office hits, some may wonder if this movie…