There are buddy movies, and then there are Edgar Wright’s buddy movies. Full stop. Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright are household names. But if they somehow don’t ring any bells, then you best stop reading now, get to know a brilliant little British show called Spaced, and get back to us. We’ll wait. The above mentioned trio of premier elbow ticklers have been making us laugh, heartily and repeatedly, for more than a decade…and it has all been leating up to this. The team that gave us Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz (and Spaced!) reunite to finish off their “Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy”, and they do so…
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G-S-T Review…The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
The next fantasy themed young adult adventure series coming down the pike is based on Cassandra Clare’s best selling series The Mortal Instruments. When New York City teenager Clary Fray (Lily Collins) learns that she descends from a line of warriors who protect our world from demons her world is changed forever. All too soon she gets swept up in a grand quest without even getting a chance to catch her breath as she begins running for her life. Quickly coming to grips with her family’s history, Clary learns she is a “Shadowhunter” – a line of guardians who have the blood of Angels. Their job is to safeguard the mortal…
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G-S-T Review…Kick-Ass 2
On the heels of Matthew Vaughn‘s unexpectedly well-received 2010 film (we thought it was OK) comes Jeff Wadlow’s equally zany but lack-lustre sequel. From the get go, Kick-Ass 2 feels like an imitation as opposed to a follow up and the film’s unevenness only calls more attention to the absence of Vaughn. Now that’s not entirely a bad thing as Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz and their band of colorfully righteous bad-asses do keep things breezy and entertaining. But it feels stiff and phoned in as things don’t click like they should or take the story anywhere worthwhile. You can’t blame Wadlow or the crew too much – this is a property called Kick-Ass after all, it’s not Shakespeare. This sequel doesn’t…
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G-S-T Review…Elysium
A visual feast for the eyes, Elysium manages to keep its head above water despite a sparse story. I think it’s fair to say that writer/director Neill Blomkamp’s first feature, District 9, gave a lot of filmmakers pause. Here was a fresh story by a new filmmaker told brilliantly. This was blockbuster science fiction on a dime’s budget that wowed audiences and critics alike. So I was eagerly awaiting his sophomore effort, Elysium, and went in expecting anything and everything. I had avoided most of the trailers and details about the film. I wanted a fresh experience, just like District 9, and I’m glad I did. Blomkamp wants to break the…
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G-S-T Review…The Wolverine
The latest Wolverine adventure, if nothing else, is a return to form. Instead of holding the clawed mutant back, director James Mangold truly unleashes the beast within. We find Logan beaten and withered from his travels and in hiding from his snarling ways. When he finds something to fight for, though, he truly lets it out unlike we’ve seen before. The other nice thing in this adventure is that a change of setting is fully embraced. Fans of the character from the comics will know Frank Miller’s influential comic storyline of Logan’s travels to Japan. The film plays to a lot of the same beats, though it has some clever…
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G-S-T Review…The Lone Ranger
Poor, poor Gore Verbinski. The man who made waves with Pirates of the Caribbean a decade ago, an unexpected hit in its time, will forever be chasing that lightning in a bottle. Sure the sequel Dead Man’s Chest was a step up but At World’s End was a bloated mess. Sadly The Lone Ranger shares much in common and suffers the same fate as the third Pirates outing that finds the story lumbering under the weight of the plot. It can’t get out of its own way and that keeps what should be a really fun time just out of reach. It’s a fun Western, something for kids and adults,…
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G-S-T Review…The Heat
If you weren’t familiar with Freaks and Geeks or just don’t watch a lot of TV shows, then the name Paul Feig probably didn’t mean anything to you until 2011. That’s when a little film called Bridesmaids took the film world by storm and made a star of a certain Melissa McCarthy in one fell swoop. In his latest film Feig continues to impress and tickle many a funny bone because, in short, The Heat is white-hot with humor, wit and style. It’s also one of the best times you’ll have in the cinema this year…and what a way to officially kick off Summer. Where as Bridesmaids was written by women…
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G-S-T Review…The East
Hot off the success of Sound of My Voice Zal Batmanglij and his partner in crime Brit Marling take their focused engaging narrative/shooting style and apply it to The East, a throwback to the classic 70’s style thrillers. The East follows Sarah (Brit Marling), an operative for an elite private intelligence firm whose first assignment is to infiltrate this eco-terrorism cell known as “The East”. Their plan is to attack guilty parties (companies who are responsible for oil spills, selling untested pharmaceuticals, toxic dumping, etc.) and their latest string of “jams” is to give these high and mighty CEO’s a taste of their bad medicine by bringing these crimes to light. Over the…
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G-S-T Review…The Purge
There are plenty of films out there that envision a utopia, or something realizing a nearly optimal society. In James DeMonaco’s nail-biter the family of a well-to-do security consultant (Ethan Hawke) are terrorized in this highly fictitious home invasion thriller. But this isn’t about some random act of terrifying gratuitous violence like The Strangers (to which The Purge will easily be compared), no it’s part of a much larger world – the above mentioned utopia. In the year 2022 America is as close to perfection as possible, unemployment is at 1% and the USA is a nation reborn, thanks to an annual event called “The Purge”. In a society, or more…
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G-S-T Review…Now You See Me
Louis Leterrier. That name means different things to different people. But when telling a tale that’s a quasi-magical, quasi-heist film, he seems the perfect fit for this type of story. None of his films are known to contain very much substance, yet, on a cursory level, they are comprised of mostly breezy entertainment with a strong, and slightly fun visual sense. Smoke, mirrors, and misdirection are the tools of a magician and Leterrier works in the same medium, one where everything is an illusion; a hollow one with no great revelation behind the curtain, only disappointment. That sounds incredibly harsh as Now You See Me, for most of the duration at least, is…