NYFF52 Opening Night Review: Gone Girl (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


[A disclaimer: Though I saw Gone Girl at an Atlanta press screening, I'm posting it alongside the rest of my coverage of the New York Film Festival since it is tonight's opening night gala selection. It opens in theaters across the country Friday, October 3rd.]

Among director David Fincher's movies, Gone Girl might end up ranking as well executed a puzzle film as The Game. It sounds like a simple statement, but there's a lot to unpack in it. Like The Game, Gone Girl is excellent, trashy fun; no more, no less. It's hard to see how Gone Girl, based on Gillian Flynn's bestseller, will have much of a chance for any major awards outside of the technical categories with one glaring exception, Rosamund Pike, whose part here is star-making. More on that later. As in Fight Club, Gone Girl is so dependent on its plot intricacies that one can't write much about it without giving something away. So trust me. This review will tread carefully. Finally, even for those who have read the novel, Fincher constructs Gone Girl in such a way that, like Zodiac, and again Fight Club and The Game, multiple viewings shall yield more and more rewards for the viewer.

Blu-ray Reviews: Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014), The Innocents (1961), Macbeth (1971) and Star Trek: The Compendium (2009/2013)

by Tony Dayoub

Fall box office offerings are starting to heat up as we head into awards season. That means Blu-ray reviews will be more infrequent, so forgive the odd selection I've cobbled together for this one (and enjoy each Blu-ray's respective screen grabs).

Movie Review: The Equalizer (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


I never watched the original Edward Woodward TV series Antoine Fuqua's The Equalizer is based on. As a critic colleague reminded me, "Well, it was for the blue-hairs." And so it probably was, despite having a high quotient of violence and a killer main theme by the Police drummer Stewart Copeland. The new remake isn't much different, except maybe for abandoning Copeland's classic pulsating bit of electronica. Fuqua reunites with his Training Day star Denzel Washington and further strips down a premise that's already pretty spare to begin with. What's left is so thin and empty, a cloud of vapor would feel more substantial in comparison.

Movie Review: A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


The last time we saw private eye Matthew Scudder, he had a sunnier disposition and resembled Jeff Bridges. This was in his first film appearance, 1986's nasty 8 Million Ways to Die (Hal Ashby's muddled final movie, written by Oliver Stone and a pseudonymous Robert Towne). Nearly 30 years on, Liam Neeson plays the detective in the unbelievably grimmer A Walk Among the Tombstones. It's a serviceable throwback to cult detective thrillers from the 70s like The Long Goodbye or Night Moves, movies with a flawed antihero at the center of a mystery that's really just an excuse to meet a cast of quirky supporting characters. So who better to direct it than Scott Frank, screenwriter for a number crime films based on literary potboilers and chock full of such eccentrics: Get Shorty, Heaven's Prisoners, Out of Sight, and the never-aired pilot for Hoke.

Movie Review: Love Is Strange (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


Sweet, sincere and romantic, if ever there were an LGBT-themed film with crossover potential Love Is Strange would be a prime candidate. Sure, there has been Brokeback Mountain, Milk, The Kids Are Alright and any number of other ones that have struck a chord with audiences, particularly in the arthouse circuit. But there is something sweeping about Ira Sachs' Love Is Strange, something to which everyone in a deep, committed relationship can relate to without the movie betraying its own identity to pander to a straight audience. While "betray" may be too strong a word to use regarding the previously mentioned movies they did play to the stands, so to speak—Brokeback by emphasizing homosexual alienation; Milk by emphasizing its countercultural aspect; Kids by making the story a triangle featuring a straight male figure as a possible point of identification.

Movie Review: The Drop (2014)

by Tony Dayoub


Michaël R. Roskam's The Drop doesn't exactly venture into new territory. Its story places two small-scale hustlers, Bob Saginowski (Tom Hardy) and his cousin, known to all as Cousin Marv (James Gandolfini), at the center of a treacherous and complicated scheme right out of Noir 101. Now owned by Chechen mobsters, the eponymous Cousin Marv's Bar is robbed by two dim assailants on the night it happens to be the assigned drop bar receiving all of the Chechens' protection money collected at other bars. This instantly puts Bob and Cousin Marv in hot water with the bar's deadly owners who suspect an inside job. Though the robbers were masked, Bob notices a curious detail: one of the thieves was wearing a stopped watch. Mentioning it to lead investigator Detective Torres (John Ortiz) inexplicably raises Cousin Marv's ire and sets him against his soft-spoken relative.

TV Review: Sons of Anarchy: Season Seven

by Tony Dayoub

If the first few episodes of Sons of Anarchy's final season are any indication, then the series is going down in the same manner it started: as a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, with the eponymous motorcycle club's royal family and their dysfunctional dynamics at the heart of what ails its crown prince. Jax (Charlie Hunnam) is as dark and vengeful this season as he was bright and optimistic just before his wife Tara's shocking demise. SAMCRO is licking their wounds while preparing to once again make their ascendance in their town of Charming. And Jax's mother, Gemma (Katey Sagal), is alternately remorseful and gratified that sacrificing Tara allowed her to preserve the strength of her two fractured families: Jax and his young sons and the motorcycle club.

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Movie Review: Code Black (2014)

by Tony Dayoub

Early in the documentary Code Black there is this graphic and harrowing shot above. More than a dozen emergency medics and nurses work on a shooting victim as the director, narrator and the film's principal subject, Ryan McGarry explains, "If you're an outsider, this looks like total chaos. But I see unity in that chaos. There's a team here coming together to save someone's life." It's a flabbergasting statement to say the least. But as Code Black unfolds we learn that this is no ordinary emergency room. It's C-Booth, a cramped, very public space in LA County Hospital that has the dual distinction of being the nation's very first emergency room and its busiest. McGarry started documenting his time there as a first-year resident, way before he ever decided to turn the footage into a film. What he turned in, though, is polished bordering on slick, a sharp contrast to the frequently catastrophic roughness the doctors at C-Booth encounter daily.