The term slow-burn doesn’t really apply to Karyn Kusama‘s paranoia thriller, The Invitation. This Drafthouse title is more appropriately like being slow-roasted alive. The film is effective in that it’s never truly transparent in what it’s trying to do. You may think you have it figured out from the get go, but when the story gets crazy, which is an understatement, things take a turn like you wouldn’t believe. As an actor in the film, Logan Marshall-Green (Devil, Prometheus) was almost like the voice of the audience, a sort of surrogate for our experience – what would we do if we saw someone locking the door at a friend’s dinner…
-
-
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…
-
[Fantastic Fest Review]…Confetti of the Mind: The Short Films of Nacho Vigalondo
They say that there’s no experience like the cinema. Further, a film is all the more enjoyable in the company of like-minded film fans who get to share in the adventure together. It’s interesting, however, to sit through a series of short films with no theme among them save for one commonality – they all are wonderful nuggets from the brilliant mind of Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo. To put it simply, the man is crazy – crazy brilliant, crazy inventive, crazy mysterious, and crazy about his craft. Not sure who came up with it, but Nacho is the unofficial mascot of Fantastic Fest and his vision, ingenuity and inventiveness are…
-
G-S-T Review…Drafthouse Films’ 20,000 Days On Earth
“I wake, I write, I eat, I write, I watch TV…this is my 20,000th day on earth“. This is the first line of the extremely entertaining, if entirely laid back and subdued, documentary about one of rock music’s more enigmatic personalities. It’s worth noting the odd yet impacting introduction – a seemingly perfect entrance for Cave – because, like this seasoned musician, this film is anything but conventional. Like Henry Rollins without the anger, like Tom Waits with a slightly cooler groove, and like a beatnik poet who actually made something of his endlessly wild life, Nick Cave is a one of a kind entertainer. A breath of fresh air,…
-
G-S-T Review…Drafthouse Films’ Nothing Bad Can Happen
Faith is a powerful motivator. Provided it is guided and fueled with the right intent and passion it can affect all those around you. But people of faith might be so focused that they are easily manipulated and that, on the surface, is what Katrin Gebbe sets to show us with her debut feature. From the very first frame, even considering the title of the film, it’s an absolute certainty that this affair will end in misery but what makes the events depicted even more gruesome is that they actually happened. Gebbe’s film is based on true events and once you start this ride, well, a quote from Lena Headey in…
-
Interview…Jason Lapeyre & Robert Wilson Talk ‘I Declare War’
Do you remember being twelve? Jason Lapeyre and Robert Wilson do, and they want you to share in their reminiscences with I Declare War (read Marc’s review here and mine here), a cinematic reverie that’s all about the clouds hovering just above the bright spots of childhood. It’s also a film where twelve year olds run around with automatic weapons and rocket launchers, but don’t worry; that’s just their imaginations talking. Sticks and balloons become assault rifles and grenades in their variation of capture the flag, where death can be conquered after counting to ten steamboats (unless you get pasted with one of those grenade first). Turns out that the real harms…
-
G-S-T Review…Drafthouse Films’ I Declare War
Nearly a century ago J.M. Barrie wrote “Nothing that happens after we are twelve matters very much”. Further, Peter Pan was the literary embodiment of the idea that we all want to stay young. And why wouldn’t we? Being a kid allowed us to do things and live lives free of the pressures, strains, and dangers of the real world. All we had to do was be ourselves…yet the ironic thing was that being ourselves had us imagining what it would be like to be doing grown up things. How naive we were. But what Barrie really hit on was that our imaginations could be our greatest strength – a…
-
G-S-T Review…Drafthouse Films’ The Act of Killing
Describing The Act of Killing as a film unlike any made in the medium’s short lifetime almost feels like the definition of hubris, or at least hyperbole. But Joshua Oppenheimer’s wholly unique exploration of the genocidal horrors lurking in Indonesia’s recent history earns every bit of the praise accorded it since making festival rounds this Spring (notably IFFBoston) and beginning its limited theatrical run in July; if critics describe it as a masterpiece, that’s because it is a masterpiece, an exceptional display of daring that will secure Oppenheimer’s name in the annals of cinema. That The Act of Killing also happens to be one of 2013’s most unsettling and insightful releases should…
-
G-S-T Review…Drafthouse Films’ Graceland
Writer/director Ron Morales gives us a new spin on a familiar kidnapping yarn but tells a story that’s so believable and grounded you’d think it was a documentary. A superbly paced and intense flick, this is the kind of film we don’t get to see every day but would wish there were more of. In a world where we have films like Ransom and Taken, people walking out of Gracelandmight likely comment that Morales’ film is taken, er, taking its sweet time because this is a slow film. Yet that’s the point, it’s not about wiretaps, SWAT teams, a Tony Scott style of camera work, or an adrenaline-fueled rescue. Not at all. The focus of Morales’ film…
-
Interview…’Graceland’ Writer/Director Ron Morales
Writer/director Ron Morales’ Graceland is a gripping and all-too-real feeling story of a kidnapping gone wrong. Ron’s work is very limited but his sophomore feature Graceland is so well-crafted and engaging you’d think he’d culled this from a lifetime of working in the film business. Before making his debut film Santa Mesa (with Melissa Leo) Ron had been working in the industry (in the camera/electrical department and as a key grip) for about 13 years and it’s likely he’s picked up a more than a few things watching/working on high profile films like Spider-Man 3, Michael Clayton and The Departed. His passion project Graceland, shot entirely in his home country of the Philippines,…
