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…Spring Breakers
Spring Breakers‘ audience will be divided into two groups of people: those who get the joke, and those who don’t. Of course, Harmony Korine’s new film operates on such blatant, overt levels of exploitative debauchery that it’s difficult to imagine how anyone could miss the point (subtlety isn’t his forte). If some still see 1999’s Fight Club as an endorsement of its ideas and behaviors rather than a rejection, though, then anything is possible. But Spring Breakers practically invites mainstream viewers to fumble with its meaning while Korine sits on the other side of the camera smirking; he’s almost daring his patrons to take up his film’s central mantra and leave…
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G-S-T Review…Olympus Has Fallen
Time has not been kind to Antoine Fuqua. Over a decade ago, he became an Oscar-caliber filmmaker (for whatever that label is worth) after Training Day vaulted him into mainstream prominence on the back of its gritty violence, no-nonsense artistry, and mesmerizing performances; in between then and now he’s output nothing but a handful of mild hits (Brooklyn’s Finest) and flops both small (Shooter) and large (King Arthur). Is his fall from grace an example of success eating a director alive? Was Training Day just an anomaly in an otherwise middling filmography? Giving credit where it’s due, Fuqua’s descent isn’t really due to lack of trying, but the trajectory of his career…
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G-S-T Review…Ginger & Rosa
Ginger & Rosa, the latest and possibly most accessible picture to come from British filmmaker Sally Potter, represents a coming of age for Elle Fanning as much as it does for the character she plays. Structurally, the film is pretty standard stuff; as the Ginger of the title, Fanning confronts or falls into situations beyond her age bracket and goes through the painful emotional transformation from child to woman in a scant eighty four minutes of narrative. But Potter has never been a standard director, nor should Fanning be seen any longer as a standard actress. Amazingly, Ginger & Rosa proves an astronomical leap forward for the latter and a…
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G-S-T Review…The Call
There’s a serviceable thriller to be found in The Call; in fact, you don’t even have to look very hard to find it. Even better, that thriller happens to be wrapped up in a police procedural yarn that sees the events of a crime unfold from a perspective that we’re not used to. Have you ever called 9-1-1? Have you ever thought for a second about what the person on the other end of the line does day in and day out for a living? Brad Anderson apparently has, and in The Call he anchors his story within that exact point of view. The results aren’t next-level or anything, but his approach makes…
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G-S-T Review…The Incredible Burt Wonderstone
Is there anything more depressing than the sight of a star being devoured by their own persona? The Incredible Burt Wonderstone spends an hour and forty minutes shamelessly cannibalizing Steve Carell’s Michael Scott shtick, even though it’s been two years since he left The Office; apparently, nobody bothered informing director Don Scardino that the puffed-up incompetent buffoon act grew stale before 2011. The real disgrace here is that Carell really does know how to perform, even if movies like Date Night and Dinner For Schmucks give the opposite impression by building themselves around his most overwrought and inorganic routine- just like Burt Wonderstone does for a hundred shapeless, aimless minutes. Here, Carell plays the titular…
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G-S-T Review…Dead Man Down
Typically, a chorus of disapproval accompanies the arrival of celebrated foreign filmmakers in Hollywood. The studio system, so goes the familiar song and dance, will suck the life right out of their work and excise everything special about them in favor of formula and higher box office returns. There are, of course, exceptions. Alfred Hitchcock and Paul Verhoeven, for instance, produced some of their best films their respective Tinseltown tenures, but they could well be examples that prove the rule; far more often we see directors visiting from overseas, like Susanne Bier and Fernando Meirelles, get chewed up and spat out on the sidewalk, their style rendered unrecognizable courtesy of…
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G-S-T Review…Greedy Lying Bastards
Get ready to get angry. Of course, if you pay attention to the social and political dialogue surrounding climate change, you probably already are, and that spells trouble for Craig Rosebraugh’s outrage-doc, Greedy Lying Bastards. Provocative and inciting, the film very much preaches to the choir; if you believe, as you should, that global warming is happening right now, then Greedy Lying Bastards won’t do much more than serve as an ideological affirmation. On the other hand, Rosebraugh probably won’t change the minds of anyone who falls on the same side of the fence as career climate change deniers, at least not while he’s so busy being sarcastic and self-righteous.…
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G-S-T Review…Jack The Giant Slayer
There’s so much that’s so wrong with Jack the Giant Slayer that it’s difficult to know where to begin. Once upon a time, Bryan Singer actually made a pair of good movies in the 90s before churning out mediocre superhero movies and historical thrillers in the aughts. Somewhere in that timeline he also fell in with Peter Jackson, but you don’t need to pay attention to history to figure that one out; you just need to watch Jack the Giant Slayer, although I wouldn’t recommend it. Maybe the worst crime here, or at least the hardest to fathom, is that somebody in a boardroom actually thought that the concept of a fantasy reinterpretation…
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G-S-T Review…The Sweeney
Gritty cop yarns aren’t what they used to be, literally. Nearly forty years ago, the notion of depicting law enforcers as imperfect was almost unthinkable, but fast forward to now and that’s suddenly become the standard. That’s the expectation. Police procedural stories no longer demand that their central characters be squeaky clean and pure to a fault; today, we want our television and movie cops to have pathos, to be flawed, and sometimes– maybe oftentimes– do whatever they have to in their pursuit of a crook. Maybe that’s a reflection of modern society, or maybe audiences just grew bored with archetypal goody two-shoes hero cops. Either way, ours is a…
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G-S-T Review…Snitch
The nicest thing that can be said about Snitch, the film that commences Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s movie year, is that it’s no The Tooth Fairy. If we search for a silver lining, too, we can also rationalize that it can only be uphill from here. (And then we can cross our fingers.) Several years ago I might have opined that nobody really knew how best to utilize Johnson’s myriad talents, from his sense of humor to his obvious physicality, but even then I would have been lying; if you need to see the People’s Champion at his best, just watch The Other Guys or The Rundown and marvel at…
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CBS Films Gets "Inside Llewyn Davis"
CBS Films recently put out a press release proudly announcing their acquisition of Inside Llewyn Davis, the latest film from the much-lauded Coen brothers. The news may be better for CBS Films than for the Coens’ admirers and patrons; movie division of CBS Corporation hasn’t exactly been successful, showing more failures (The Mechanic, Beastly, Extraordinary Measures) than genuine winners. However, the company’s fortunes have begun to turn around in the last year or so thanks to The Woman in Black and Seven Psychopaths, both of which enjoyed better critical receptions and either broke even (as in the case of the latter) or turned into not-insignificant hits (as in the case…