One of the darlings of Fantastic Fest, and others like it, this sci-fi buddy comedy – about four morons being Earth’s only hope against pending galactic doom (would you expect any less from a genre film?) – is everything you could want in a midnight movie. As such, it joins a long line of preposterous romps, namely Idiocracy, Hobo With A Shotgun, Machete Kills, and Turbo Kid, and all the zaniness they can deliver. Lazer Team is a modern yarn, but the premise has a decidedly throwback vibe which will make any fan of the ’80s happy – especially the absurdly over-the-top elements. It’s highly irreverent, and tries to channel a Nation Lampoon level of humor, but sadly, the results…
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G-S-T Review…The Revenant
In what might be the best film of the year (not the most popular – that’s a toss up between Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Mad Max: Fury Road, and, for us, The Martian), Alejandro González Iñárritu one-ups his stellar Birdman with an equally compelling narrative which is, shockingly, a true one to boot. The Revenant has echoes of what other filmmakers might have done with their own surreal Western (Kubrick, Malick, and Refn to name but a few) and yet Iñárritu makes this his own, replete with stand-out visuals that say more than the characters ever could. The dialogue is kept brief, and the scenery/imagery tells us all we need to know. After…
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G-S-T Review…Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Star Wars: The Force Awakens continues to take the world by storm, but that shouldn’t be news to anyone. It is Star Wars after all, but with J.J. Abrams at the helm, things looked really good from the get-go. The film isn’t perfect (pacing is sluggish at times, and villains, at this point, are under-cooked), but it is highly enjoyable, and that’s all thanks to solid writing, and the collage of themes and characters both old and new. Abrams, after proving his mettle revitalizing the Star Trek franchise, brings us a story that expands on everything that has come before and, more importantly, hits the right chord with fans. Episode VII,…
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G-S-T Review…Brooklyn
With Brooklyn, John Crowley (from the novel by Colm Tóibín) tells the story of an ambitious Irish immigrant, Eilis (played by Saoirse Ronan), who makes her way to New York in the 1950s. After arriving, her life changes completely, but the longing for her homeland never subsides, and the tale of determination so far from home touches on the immigrant in all of us. But Crowley’s film is a bit of an oddity, a bittersweet emotional tale, and because of it, the film is an unexpected triumph. The film has the charm and humor of a Woody Allen movie with the heart and honesty of a Raymond De Felitta story, and that…
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G-S-T Review…The Martian
What can you say about Ridley Scott‘s work that hasn’t already solidified him as one of the more amazing and versatile filmmakers of our time? Well here’s some more praise – The Martian is easily one of the best movies you’ll see this year, and certainly one of the best of the last five. Scott’s adaptation (of the book of the same name) showcases a multitude of competent decisions and finesse that make The Martian a win in all categories as well as an entirely fun-filled cinematic experience. On the surface level, the film might appear to be a drama, but with healthy injections of Matt Damon charm, this one-man show looks like a variety act…
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G-S-T Review…Drafthouse Films’ The Keeping Room
Simply stated in the title cards of Daniel Barber‘s bleak and understated narrative, “War is cruelty“. And at the start of his film, Barber spends little time getting to the needless and hateful violence of people all but removed from morals, and the gravity of their actions. Hardships and loneliness for women abound, and The Keeping Room is but a small sampling of how vulnerable wives, daughters, and the like can be with a war on. Yet these women are hard and driven when their lives are at stake. There will always be pain and misery on the battlefield, but the same hardships can spill over and affect those left to…
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Off the Shelf…Ernesto Díaz Espinoza’s ‘Redeemer’
Genre filmmaking staple, and Fantastic Fest regular, Ernesto Díaz Espinoza has been working with Marco Zaror for years. With each succeeding film, the two have been crafting yarns meant to be a little more serious than their B-Movie homages and send-ups from the glory days of VHS. Even if, like us, you’re a fan of Espinoza (check out our review of Bring Me the Head of Machine Gun Woman here), the Dark Sky trailers that precede this, his fifth feature, don’t give a lot of confidence. Yet one need not worry, this is not the pinnacle of Espinoza’s career. It’s an opportunity to let Marko Zaror be a badass, again. These days,…
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G-S-T Review…Digging For Fire
Joe Swanberg makes films a little off the beaten path and that’s his charm. His latest effort, Digging For Fire, is a weird trip down the rabbit hole for Jake Johnson and Rosemary DeWitt, as they portay the seemingly normal, seemingly pedestrian married couple who unknowingly spend a few days way outside of their element. Together they are mostly fine, and deal with issues we all face. Apart, however, these banal individuals are faced with a number of what if? moments that has them looking, digging rather, for something they think is missing in their lives. You never know what you’re going to get with an independent film as ambitious…
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G-S-T Review…Ant-Man
If you think that comic book movies have reached their potential, and have gotten far too gritty and realistic, Ant-Man is the perfect palate cleanser. What is amazing about the film is that, barring the drama from Edgar Wright’s withdrawal, it works at all. A highly unlikely hero, and a diamond in the rough, Paul Rudd brings charm, delight, and that working class hero appeal to the role of Scott Lang (even though he is a burglar in the film). Ant-Man works on multiple levels and mainly, much like the success of famous horror movies, the familial element is what keeps this from being just a mindless, confusing and overblown action piece…
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G-S-T Review…Spy
In the world of comedy, there is funny, and there is Paul Feig. The man just knows how to make people laugh, and so much so that it hurts. He’s already got a lovely working relationship with Melissa McCarthy and he himself is a writing/directing dynamo, but it is very unclear where Feig’s brilliance ends and McCarthy’s begins. Perhaps it’s not worth wasting too many brain cells as their latest collaboration is ten kinds of funny, and that’s all that matters. Spy films and their ilk have seen countless, and we mean countless, spoofs, homages, or blatant copycats. Spy is bits of all three and yet still manages to put focus on what is…
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G-S-T Review…Mad Max: Fury Road
Ah, to ride through the gates of Valhalla, shiny and chrome. Tis the dream of any action junkie, right? That wouldn’t be a bad way to go. If you haven’t seen Mad Max: Fury Road yet, you have probably been just too busy or, like me, tied up with a new baby. But we’ll let you in on a little secret…it’s spectacular! It’s also everything every critic, everywhere, has said about it. Now the film is really something special, but even more remarkable is that at 70 years of age, George Miller is still making some of the best entertainment out there. He not only raised the action bar, he broke it,…
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G-S-T Review…Pitch Perfect 2
In the spectacular finale of 2012’s Pitch Perfect, the girls, the “Barden Bellas”, sing a mash up of several songs. Yet one in particular actually transcends the film and appropriately describes what’s being set up in the sequel. Thinking of those Jessie J lyrics in the context of Pitch Perfect 2, “everybody look to their left, everybody look to the right“, this sequel is about the girls finding strength by looking to the Bella standing beside them. This sequel is indeed that sappy, but it’s not the whole story either. Elizabeth Banks takes the helm, and makes sure there’s plenty of irreverent glee in this follow-up effort. It’s absurd, self-aware, and insensitive,…
