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…
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G-S-T Review…After Earth
I remember sitting the a crowded ballroom during the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con and listening to the panelists talk at length about the effort they put into the history of After Earth. They even went so far as describing a “bible” they created, so that they could put down any answers to various questions of who did what and why. Some 1,000 years into the future is when After Earth begins, where an elite military force known as the Rangers are the trailblazers after we left Earth. Ravaged, the planet was no longer inhabitable by our self-destructing human race so we fled and found a new planet to live on.…
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G-S-T Review…EPIC
What do you see when you walk through the forest? Most likely a serene cornucopia of flora and fauna. But what makes the leaves rustle and the animals scurry? No it’s not just the wind or your presence that startles the animals. If you look closely there’s a battle raging for the fate of the very same forest you might find yourself passing through and that, in a nutshell, is the very simple premise of Blue Sky Studios’ Epic. It’s an imaginative tale that tries to get adults, and kids, back to the days when wonder, intrigue and the sense of discovery that was found seeking adventure right in our own…
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G-S-T Review…Iron Man 3
While we film fans, die hard comic aficionados and non, can thank Jon Favreau (and Robert Downey Jr.) for bringing Iron Man to life in an entirely fulfilling and believable way. That said, there were more than a few problems with its formulaic sequel. So, sometimes, it’s necessary to bring some fresh legs into the game to help the series go out with a win. For those of you not sure who Shane Black is, check out Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, The Monster Squad, The Last Boy Scout and of course Lethal Weapon…we’ll wait. There’s a common set of themes running though all his movies and without sounding like it’s…