Movie Review: Gravity (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Alfonso Cuarón—the director who so flamboyantly enhanced the dystopic Children of Men with a number of extended single-take shots nearly impossible to deconstruct—opens his newest film Gravity with its own dizzying, extended take which I clocked at 20 minutes long. It brilliantly introduces laidback veteran astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) and his high-strung novice subordinate, Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) on a routine spacewalk. The shot establishes the majesty of their work environment in space and slowly ratchets up the unsettling feeling that in this unnatural environment the dangers are far from predictable. Emmanuel Lubezki's constantly pirouetting camera contributes to the stomach-churning feeling of disquiet that gradually increases as the shot goes on way past what most audiences are subliminally accustomed to. So when an unforeseen collision demolishes the space shuttle the two astronauts are tethered to, the shock and terror is more than palpable. In 3D on an IMAX screen, it is unforgivingly all-encompassing.

Movie Review: Pain & Gain (2013)

by Tony Dayoub

It's been over a week since I saw Pain & Gain. I'm only now getting around to writing about it because it has taken me this long to sort out my feelings about it. I say this like if it's some sort of deep, philosophical exegesis on the commodification of the human body by the exercise industry when it's really just a fluffy Michael Bay crime flick. Perhaps that is what has made it more difficult to read this film.

TV Review: Game Change

by Tony Dayoub

Premiering this Saturday, Game Change is an HBO adaptation of the bestselling book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin covering the 2008 U.S. election race. Rather than try to tackle the entire tome, which looked at the presidential race from nearly every angle on both sides of the aisle, the film wisely narrows its focus to one of politics' most interesting chapters (the book's last 113 pages, essentially): the rise of Sarah Palin from Alaskan governor to—as CNN commentator Jack Cafferty put it—Republican leader "one 72-year-old's heartbeat away from being President of the United States." Writer Danny Strong and director Jay Roach take much the same approach they did with HBO's Recount, the story behind the even more controversial election of 2000. Mixing found footage gathered from cable news with CGI-enhanced images blending real-life figures like Joe Biden and actors like Julianne Moore and Ed Harris, the filmmakers dramatize the events that unfolded behind-the-scenes of John McCain's campaign.

Apollo 40th Anniversary Movie Tribute: The Right Stuff (1983)

There is no movie that pushes my patriotic buttons as deftly as Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff. Based on the book by Tom Wolfe, the film compares pioneering test pilot Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) to the seven Mercury program astronauts on the subject of what it truly takes to be a hero. As in Wolfe's book, a considerable amount of time is spent on the nonsensical experiments conducted on a group of pilots before being pared down to the famous seven candidates: Alan Shepard (Scott Glenn), John Glenn (Ed Harris), Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid), Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom (Fred Ward), Donald K. "Deke" Slayton (Scott Paulin), Scott Carpenter (Charles Frank), and Wally Schirra (Lance Henriksen). The implication is that a certain amount of randomness came into play in the selection of these American idols, in contrast to Yeager's self-inspired pursuit of danger in the service of knowledge.