To Rome With Love is a light, heartwarming film made for dreamers and lovers that moves between several story lines with witty dialogue and lots of laughs. The film reintroduces us to many of the devices seen in the most traditional of Woody Allen films, including an appearance by Allen himself. The film is constructed of four diverging stories about love, fame and longing. In the first sequence the audience is introduced to Italian newlyweds who’ve come to Rome to meet with the husband’s high-society family. Next we encounter an average, middle-class Roman (Roberto Benigni) and his wife and family whose lives are turned upside down by the media. In another story, Jesse Eisenberg plays a young architect…
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G-S-T Review…Savages
In one of the most memorable and quotable lines from South Park, Mr. Mackey tells the class that “drugs are bad, mkay“. But that’s an understatement because in the drug world, whether you’re the dealer or the user, illegal dealings always seem to end in tears. In Savages, Oliver Stone brings to the table one highly combustible cast to deliver his adaptation of Don Winslow’s novel of the same name. A story that’s as complicated as the actual war on drugs it’s a sordid tale, one more colorful and breezier than Steven Soderbergh’s similarly themed film Traffic, but delivered with Stone’s unflinching style that’s become his trademark. Marijuana growers Ben (Aaron Johnson) and Chon…
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G-S-T Review…The Amazing Spider-Man
In an ever improving and expanding world of comic book super hero films, Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer) give us a new Spider-Man, one that is in many cases, an improvement over what Sony was so desperate to reboot. There’s lots of changes but where to begin? Well everything we’ve previously seen or knew, as to be expected in a “reboot”, has been scrapped. But while this is an almost unnecessary “here’s how we got here” story, meaning that there are marginally few people who don’t know how Peter Parker became Spider-Man, it’s good to see the new blood earn the suit…and earn it he did. A decade ago, we got the the best screen version of…
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G-S-T Review…People Like Us
People Like Us is a very compelling story of two strangers drawn together by a mutual secret. While both of these strangers are on the brink of an emotional meltdown it seems finding one another might be the key to finding themselves. The film takes us through an emotional journey of loss, deep-rooted pain and then a powerful sense of redemption. People Like Us is a dramedy which leans a little more toward drama than comedy. It’s hard not feel a deep emotional connection to the characters in this film. Sam (Chris Pine – Star Trek, Unstoppable) is a salesman on the proverbial ropes who begrudgingly returns to Los Angeles when…
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G-S-T Review…Ted
Ted, the first feature length enterprise by Family Guy brainchild Seth MacFarlane, very blatantly wears its creator’s proclivities on its sleeve. That alone should provide anybody with all the information needed to decide if the film is worth their time or not. Do you enjoy having relentless pop culture references and recreations fed to you intravenously and without context? Are you a fan of clumsy, insecure, and hopelessly lame attempts at shock humor and over-played novelty gags? Do you mind that the Connecticut-born MacFarlane apparently can’t produce locational New England accents that differ from one another whatsoever? Then you’re in luck; Ted may be your Citizen Kane. For everybody else,…
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G-S-T Review…Seeking A Friend for the End of the World
End of the world stories, like Penny (Keira Knightley) said in her monologue about vinyl records, aren’t for everyone. Barring the humor and near outlandish situations, disheartening stories like this always end in tears. But even though the audience and the characters know their unavoidable fate, does it have to be the case? In this dramedy from Lorene Scafaria we see how hopeless characters attempt to control the downward spiral, look on the brighter side of life and find a final purpose for their lives. From the opening scene to the final moments we watch two people try to make the most of their time in ways that are awkward, absurd, comical and…
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G-S-T Review…Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
There shouldn’t be any surprises within ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER. The film is either won or lost largely based on its name. So as an audience member, you can quickly judge whether you will balk at the idea of a young Abraham Lincoln fighting vampires with a silver-edged axe. The real grey area is how much of that time spent will live up to what you have in mind. Director Timur Bekmambetov is known for striking visuals and pushing the limits of what you can comprehend. He certainly does both in this film, with quick cuts around blurred action sequences and a set piece that follows Abraham and his vampire…
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G-S-T Review…Brave
Stories of fantasy and high adventure are certain to contain genre stand-bys like magic, kingdoms a far, fair maidens and the like. Yet in Pixar’s latest (and first true period-piece) this “maiden” is not a damsel in distress by any means. Brave‘s Princess Merida actually has more in common with any number of Hayao Miyazaki’s female protagonists than it does the colorful princesses whose posters grace little girls’ walls. It channels some of the more stand-up kind of womanly characters we’ve seen in the last few decades…even if in this case she is defiant to a fault. With a line like “I am Merida, and I’ll be shooting for my own hand”…
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G-S-T Review…Rock of Ages
Full disclosure: I’ve never seen Rock of Ages live on stage. I have no idea if its sprawling, loosely connected storylines intersect in a more satisfying way when played out before a live, active, participating audience. I don’t know if the theater, rather than the multiplex, represents a more comfortable and better-suited environment in which the particulars of musicals can thrive. So, in short, I don’t really know where primary authorship of Rock of Ages‘ film adaptation lies– it’s with either Chris D’Arienzo or Adam Shankman– but I do know a train wreck when I see one because, as that locomotive cliche dictates, I’m unable to look away. That mesmerizing quality represents…
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G-S-T Review…Prometheus
Prometheus, industrious and monstrously ambitious, deserves to be seen divorced from hype and hubris. Admittedly, that’s scarcely a small feat. Few films released in 2012 carry with them the massive weight of expectations which Prometheus bears on its shoulders. That’s just how things go for any production intent on serving as the precursor to cinematic iconography; in the case of Prometheus, that’s Alien, Ridley Scott’s 1979 science fiction/horror masterpiece. How does even a master like Scott top one of his best works more than thirty years after the fact? Put simply, he doesn’t have to, pedigree or not. His film only need exist on its individual merits, and happily Prometheus, a beautiful and thoughtful and flawed creation story, very…