Tag / ansel elgort

by Jaime Rebanal

‘West Side Story’ Review: The Perfect Reintroduction of a Classic Musical

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Over his decades long career, Steven Spielberg has made his very first musical. Nonetheless, Spielberg has also established that he had always wanted to try his hands at bringing a musical to the big screen with a second cinematic adaptation of West Side Story, following the 1961 film. It’d be easy enough to express skepticism to the need for a new West Side Story film, but Spielberg establishes that the material is a perfect match for him. Spielberg doesn’t work with creating a pastiche of the 1961 film as much as he does create a new screen life for one of Broadway’s most beloved musicals. In doing so, Spielberg has made what may be his best film in at least fifteen years.

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by Jaime Rebanal

‘The Goldfinch’ TIFF Review: A Gorgeous, Incomplete, Almost Incomprehensible Disaster of Sorts

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Donna Tartt won the Pulitzer Prize for her 2013 novel, but the idea of adapting such a dense novel for the screen already seemed like a daunting task in and of itself. There’s a lot to admire about the effort that director John Crowley had tried to put into adapting The Goldfinch into a film but it’s also rather apparent how much of this does at all translate well onto the big screen. There’s a great story that could easily have been told from reading Donna Tartt’s novel, but even with John Crowley’s literate directorial approach, there’s so little sense to be found out of what he could churn out from bringing The Goldfinch to the screen. At its long running time, it still feels really slight yet even then you feel like you’re being overloaded with information that won’t ever be leading yourself anywhere. The more it goes on, the more it only becomes confusing, and any trace of meaning that it’s reaching for only results in more jumping around in terms of its structure, adding up to nowhere.

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by Jaime Rebanal

2017: A Year in Review

Another year is complete, but not without having talked about the wonderful experiences we’ve had at the cinemas. Together with the not-so-wonderful films. But alas, this has been an extraordinary year for films for the highlights still managed to stick their landing inside of our minds – and the inevitable “what about such and such?” will come but I will remind you that it would have been outright impossible for me to have been able to catch virtually every movie that had come out the previous year to make sure I wouldn’t forget other highlights that may not have made it.
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by Jaime Rebanal

Baby Driver – Review

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Of the more accessible filmmakers consistently working in the comedy genre, Edgar Wright is quite possibly the most exciting. But like Wes Anderson his own films establish their own quirks in such a manner it’s easy to embrace the universe in which they take place whether it be the Cornetto trilogy or Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. His latest film, Baby Driver, proves itself to be no different – riding in on Wright’s own love of pop culture but he always had an innovative use of music through every one of his films and right there is where the glory lies. Perhaps the most obvious thing that can be said is that the music is indeed very good, but moving away from the comedy genre with Baby Driver has only continued to prove why Edgar Wright was ever as exciting as he is, but in here there’s a greater comfort he found within himself that perhaps his own comedies haven’t fully embraced. But even if Baby Driver weren’t his best film, it has all the qualities to make it one of the most exciting wide releases of the decade.

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