It feels like the book has already been closed on Terrence Malick’s forthcoming release, To the Wonder— the film received nothing but contempt in varying forms and degrees at both the Venice and Toronto International Film Festivals. At the same time it’s hard not to watch this clip and be awed. Beautiful, stunning cinematography is Malick’s calling card, of course, so there’s little surprise to how utterly captivating the trailer is, but expectation doesn’t make what we see here any less lovely and magnetic. Of course, if Malick’s style of untethered, free form filmmaking isn’t your cup of tea, you’ve likely already got your mind more or less made about To…
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G-S-T Review…Argo
Mark Twain once opined that truth is stranger than fiction, and if we accept his sentiment then Argo could be considered one of the most bizarre slices of reality ever portrayed on film. Did you ever hear the one about how the CIA enlisted the likes of John Chambers and Jack Kirby to whisk stranded Americans out of hostile territory at the height of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis? On paper, Argo‘s plot reads like something cooked up by the Coen brothers and Armando Iannuci, an episodic farce about the irreverent ludicrousness of government and the ignorant cruelty of humanity on an international stage; of course, the helmsman here is none…
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“The CineMagic 8-Ball” – In Theaters 10/12/12
When so many movies are released each weekend and trailers often seem better than the movie itself, what should one do? In this precarious situation, we consult the The CineMagic 8-Ball (TM) to help us see through the nebulous marketing haze. Doing so just might save us all a disheartening trip to the cinema and spare us unnecessarily springing for $7 popcorn. See what the 8-Ball says about this week’s releases… ——————————————————————————————————————————————- HERE COMES THE BOOM Former collegiate wrestler Scott Voss is a 42-year-old apathetic biology teacher in a failing high school. When cutbacks threaten to cancel the music program and lay off its teacher, Scott begins to raise money…
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Sweet Trailer…'Argo'
Ben Affleck impressed a lot of people with Gone Baby Gone and The Town, but while we were only half impressed with his Boston rendition of HEAT, he still has some undeniable talent. His next project is an ambitious story which details the declassified events about a hostage crisis that took place in Iran on November 4th, 1979. 6 of 52 American hostages managed to escape the siege when militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran. Taking refuge in the home of the Canadian ambassador, the film shows the efforts that CIA “exfiltration” specialist Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) came up with to get them safely out of the country. Have a look for yourselves……
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G-S-T Review…The Town
A let down to say the least, The Town was full of stereotypes, an unlikely and forced-fed love story and finally a pretty slow “I don’t care how we get there just get there” pace. I may be selling this short and not recognizing the film’s so-called brilliance, but this just wasn’t a story worth telling. Maybe it was me but the trailer gave the feeling that this would be a high-octane bank robbing film (don’t trailers always do that?). But seriously, for a film about bank robbers who were the very best, there was surprisingly little robbery and even less proof that these guys were pros. PLOT: If you start…
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Sweet Trailer…'The Company Men'
Here’s a movie I’ve been looking forward to for a while now. Previously we posted the teaser (well teaser as in it was sapmle footage used to find a distributor) but even then it looked pretty awesome. So now that the official trailer is here (and the Weinstein Company has picked it up) this will be released in select theaters this Fall. Have a watch; slight heart-warming hokiness and bad accents abound but it looks good to me! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPohmhNFwi4 The Company Men is a John Wells film about ‘corporate downsizing’ where Chris Cooper, Tommy Lee Jones and Ben Affleck play 3 such downsized employees. Affleck’s character looses his job and gets…