Someone needs to start a Kickstarter campaign to get Aubrey Plaza some acting lessons. That comment sounds infinitely more cruel than intended; Plaza has long been a pivotal, hilarious supporting figure on NBC’s fantastic sitcom Parks and Recreation, and just last year she took a solid starring turn alongside Mark Duplass in Safety Not Guaranteed, but the numerous delights of her work in both underscore the limits of her range as a performer. There’s nothing wrong with having a niche, of course, but her schtick – “deadpan, apathetic, couldn’t-care-less twenty-something” – is not only specific in the extreme but also incapable of sustaining a feature-length picture for its total running…
-
-
G-S-T Review…The Way, Way Back
Oscar-winning screenwriting partners Jim Rash and Nat Faxon (The Descendants) celebrate their directorial debut with The Way, Way Back, a familiar coming of age story that is sweet, funny and poignant. Teenage angst and the “us versus adults” battle shown from the male perspective are popular themes right now, with film like Mud and Kings of Summer releasing earlier this summer, but as a labor of love project for this filmmaking duo, The Way, Way Back has been a long time coming. It’s a film that manages to be a crowd-pleaser without trying too hard. The title refers to the back seat of a vintage station wagon, where 14-year-old Duncan (Liam James)…
-
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…
-
2012 Fantastic Fest Recap (Or How I Learned To Manage My Time At Such An Overwhelmingly Awesome Film Fest)
This year was Go,See,Talk’s first time attending Fantastic Fest and I have to say it was everything they said it would be. Since I was only there for 4 days, I missed out on some later week fun like the secret screening of Cloud Atlas (with a supposedly awesome Q&A with the Wachowskis…UGGGG), but there was still lots to see and do and I got a lot of reviews/coverage under my belt. For such a great festival with a huge draw it’s amazing to see how quaint and laid back everything and everyone is. You can easily bump elbows in such small proximity with both filmmakers and actors but also the film…
