Tag Archives: #theguest

Four Years of DSB

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dsb 4 bday irony

. . .being a Brit.

Roughly four years ago today I gave birth to DSB. In case you were wondering, yes, it was an immaculate conception. There was no one else who helped make it happen.

I don’t mean to toot my own horn here, but I’m proud of what this has become. I think I might have said this before, but I was surprised I ever returned to this page after I took a year-long hiatus from mid-2011 until March of 2012. I remember having just . . . such an embarrassingly emotional reaction to Todd Phillips’ bacchanalia Project X that I felt the need to go and write my thoughts down. That was a review that makes my recent Jurassic World rant tame by comparison. I’m going to try in the future to not let those emotions get the better of me. I’m sure I have annoyed a few readers in the process of doing that, and I kind of regret it. Sometimes I have this feeling that I do more harm than good by coming on so strongly. That’s why the blog has lost its original slogan: ‘Rants and Raves.’ I want to take the focus off of the negatives and focus more on the positives!

Regardless, I’ve appreciated having this space to vent. I thank WordPress for being such a tool . . . a good one, that is. 😉 You can bet I’ll be signing up for another year with you. Since consistently posting from around early 2013 and onwards, this has become quite the addiction. I love the feeling of getting to write something and then have like-minded people ‘Like’ and leave feedback on my stuff. It’s truly great and that energy is what is helping propel me into the future.

Speaking of which, my next moves are going to be a tad scarier and undoubtedly more expensive. The goal is to relocate to Salt Lake City. Not only is that town a killer place to be for those attracted to the outdoors (as I am) — as well as Mormon fundamentalism (as I am not) — but every January there’s a little film festival that takes place known to some as Sundance. I have loved covering mainstream releases — and there are a lot to be found here — but I would really like to start digging into the world of independent cinema more often. I’d love to have exposure to things that could prove to be harder to access outside of the film festival circuit. So, I’m setting that as a goal for me to achieve within the next two years. I think that’s reasonable. Right . . . ?

Alright I was promising myself I wouldn’t ramble on with this post and here I am doing just that. I shall use the rest of this space to list a few little tidbits and factoids in celebration of the blog’s fourth birthday/anniversary. And is it just me, or does time really fly when you’re having fun blogging. . . ?

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DSB’s original banner image

Four of my Favorite Films I Saw in 2011

  1. Drive – Ryan Gosling, meet Nicolas Winding Refn
  2. Win-Win – first of all, how many people saw this? And second, Paul Giamatti – awesome.
  3. Cedar Rapids – another under-seen and under-appreciated film, this time starring Ed Helms.
  4. Crazy, Stupid, Love – a crazy, not stupid and lovely date film

Four of my Favorite Films I Saw in 2012

  1. The Dark Knight Rises – a near-perfect end to a near-perfect trilogy. Tom Hardy gave me chills
  2. Marvel’s The Avengers – . . .do I really need to qualify this?
  3. Moonrise Kingdom – Wes Anderson’s made a lot of good ones, but this one’s hard to beat
  4. Skyfall – Sam Mendes’ apology for Marc Forster’s indiscretion with the convoluted Quantum of Solace

Four of my Favorite Films I Saw in 2013

  1. The Way, Way Back – so awkward it becomes adorable. I. Love. This. Movie.
  2. Rush – Ron Howard concocts a classic racing film, least in my eyes. And that casting — wow!
  3. Safety Not Guaranteed – an excellent and beyond-quirky little gem starring one of my biggest celebrity crushes, Aubrey Plaza
  4. The Place Beyond the Pines – too quickly forgotten, this sprawling epic proved an acting showcase

Four of my Favorite Films I Saw in 2014

  1. Her – Spike Jonze’ deeply personal and witty commentary on our relationship with technology is one of the most impressive films I’ve ever seen
  2. The Skeleton Twins – pairing Bill Hader with Kristen Wiig in this deeply touching and moving dramedy worked like a charm on me
  3. Godzilla – a refreshingly restrained monster movie in an age where we seem to demand we get all the good stuff up-front without question
  4. Winnebago Man – this docu is amazingly insightful and hilarious. Underrated is how I’d describe it.

Four of my Favorite Films I’ve Seen so far in 2015 

  1. Love & Mercy – achingly nostalgic and filled with spectacular performances, the biopic of Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys is a definite winner
  2. What We Do in the Shadows – painfully funny stuff brought to you by one-half of the musicomedy duo Flight of the Conchords
  3. Almost Famous – a classic from the turn of the millennium which I have no excuse for putting off for so long. This is a fantastic film from Cameron Crowe
  4. The Guest – suspenseful, artistic and bloody in equal measure, this is a crazy awesome film that snuck under a lot of people’s radars

Four Films I’m Most Anticipating in 2015

  1. Spectre – I’m excited to see where Sam Mendes can take the gritty James Bond next. Trailers so far hint at the darkest chapter yet.
  2. In the Heart of the Sea – set to the tune of the epic tale of Moby Dick, this film will reunite director Ron Howard with star Chris Hemsworth
  3. The Revenant – with a mind-glowingly awesome cast under the direction of last year’s Oscar Best Picture, I’m really curious to see what this will be like
  4. The Green Inferno – I wouldn’t call myself the biggest Eli Roth fan, but no joke . . . his latest film looks bloody and bloody brilliant. Sign me up.

What are four of your most anticipated this year? What are four of your favorites so far? 

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Four new things about the blog

  1. Expanded menus – I finally figured out how to customize menus in the editing page and now you can access all that DSB has to offer through a variety of drop down menus located above the banner. That only took me four years to figure out lol
  2. The introduction of character studies in the form of 2014’s The Franco Files and 2015’s John C. Reilly Factor. If you’re a fan of these folks, check these pages out!
  3. The DSB Spotlight – this new ‘feature’ represents the first paid contribution to this site and it makes me very proud to be able to feature a fellow movie fan’s writing on here. This is validation that others beyond the blogging community have been reading and accessing what I have to say about movies and it is humbling to say the least. You can check out this article here.
  4. With the help of esteemed blogger and friend Mark Fletcher of the fantastic Three Rows Back, I co-hosted my very first blogathon — The Decades Blogathon — which turned out to be a great experience and led to even more exposure to both film titles and film fans/bloggers alike. This was a great experience, and hopefully not the last for me.

Thank you as always for reading my stuff. It’s an honor and a privilege to still be doing this. Onwards!

The Guest

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the-guest-movie-poster
Release: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 (limited)

[Redbox]

Written by:  Simon Barrett 

Directed by: Adam Wingard

British actor Dan Stevens elevates Adam Wingard’s thought-provoking and emotional mystery thriller to bloody awesome levels.

Though The Guest isn’t exactly a title free from spoiler potential, you’d be hard-pressed to make accurate guesses as to what ultimately becomes of a family willing to let a stranger into their house when he claims to be a close friend of their son Caleb who was recently killed in the war in Afghanistan. Even if you are particularly adept at mentally tracing the rough outline of a conclusion still unwitnessed, good luck coloring it in as well as Wingard’s continued collaboration with screenwriter Simon Barrett does.

The Guest, simplistic in its structure but anything but in terms of how it bathes its own guests in psychological discomfort, is definitely better because of Stevens. Though, Barrett’s script admittedly takes us to some interesting places. I have a bone to pick with those last two words, though. Those interesting places are still spaces we’ve seen many an actor in years past inhabit but for a brief flash only to then fade again. Whatever happens to the generic — are their creations rendered redundant in the face of superior genre films? Does A no longer count if B comes along and does it better? More relevant to what we’re talking about here, should we be concerned The Guest roots itself in questionable — albeit in the context of this story, understandable — human behavior?

Wingard, young and eager to prove his burgeoning talent, takes some risks in depicting degrees of emotional and psychological vulnerability. His project begins on shaky legs. The opening scenes are rushed and feel (taste?) slightly undercooked. But his destination demands greater attention. No matter your thoughts on what transpires over 70-ish minutes, the final 20 or so will command exactly that. Perhaps its Sheila Kelley and Leland Orser as the rather wooden parental figures that allow skepticism to arise sooner than it should (i.e. right out of the starting gate).

Or maybe doubt is sprung from some sort of scale we internally create in realizing how everything just pales in comparison to Downton Abbey‘s dapper Matthew Crawley. Dan Stevens as the enigmatic stranger beholden to the unseen soldier, save for a photograph set atop the stone mantel above the Peterson’s fireplace, is in good company when considering the likes of Ryan Gosling’s strong but silent type in Drive; Jake Gyllenhaal’s talkier but arguably more deranged journalist Lou Bloom; Robert DeNiro’s delirious cabbie Travis Bickle. But when the truth is finally revealed, it’s clear no one can really put David Collins into a corner. As a character, he may be cool but the thespian possesses so much power in his voice alone — never mind those washboard abs, heyyy-ohh!!! — he threatens to overtake the screen.

It’s the kind of breakout performance that will be his own challenge to outrun; Gosling only now seems a little more sociable since his days with Refn. May only God forgive Stevens for taking a second shot at becoming the unsettling, yet disconcertingly charming type.

Similarly disconcerting is The Guest‘s tendency to leave one questioning a few details along the way. Plot developments seem to turn conveniently but aren’t so obvious as to be off-putting. There is a notable divide in performance quality between the titular character and the several other main characters, but nothing comes across as too cheesy. Most importantly, such gut-wrenching adherence to real emotion and real settings, banal as a few of the latter are, overwhelms and leaves little to question in terms of the director’s intent. Wingard intended to provoke a startling mixture of empathy, dread and revulsion. We empathize with the Peterson’s plight, while dreading what their decisions may cost them.

Wingard’s generation of suspense is exquisite and if You’re Next was entertaining in that regard, his most recent effort certainly ups the ante.

the-guest

4-0Recommendation: I haven’t even mentioned the Drive-esque soundtrack. So, there’s this to consider beyond The Guest‘s incredible lead performance, it’s mood and psychologically revealing depiction of a typical American family being stuck between a rock and a hard place. (I’m sorry for being so vague in this review; if I give away more info about it the shock of the experience will be greatly reduced.) If you want to know more about this film, be my guest and rent this as soon as possible. I refuse to say more.

Rated: R

Running Time: 99 mins.

Quoted: “You did the right thing. I don’t blame you.”

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Photo credits: http://www.tonyyindesign.com; http://www.imdb.com