Latest news with #Gazer
Irish Examiner
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Examiner
Film reviews: Fantastic Four's First Steps is goofy, ridiculous and enjoyable
THE Fantastic Four have yet to connect with the moviegoing audience in the same way as their Marvel peers – Spider-Man, Ironman, the Avengers et al – and it's unlikely that Fantastic Four: First Steps (12A) will propel the quartet into the blockbuster franchise bracket. It has its own charm, though: Reed Richards / Mister Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm / the Invisible Woman (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm / the Human Torch (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm / The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) are already established superheroes as the movie opens, beloved as the Earth's protectors and peacemakers. So when the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) arrives from deep space to inform humanity that it's doomed to be consumed by the planet-devouring Galactus (Ralph Ineson), the foursome suit up and blast off into the galactic depths to confront the voracious 'space-god'. So far, so expected, but do keep an eye on that subtitle, because the Invisible Woman, and despite what we assume is all medical advice to the contrary, goes rocketing off into battle with Galactus whilst heavily pregnant. Which, yes, sounds a touch preposterous, but to be fair Fantastic Four: First Steps takes no more liberties with biology and physics than the vast majority of superhero movies. There's a good chemistry between the four leads, with Vanessa Kirby first among equals as she plays a woman with all manner of unusual gifts but whose real super-strength is her maternal instinct, while Julia Garner's Silver Surfer is one of the coolest things to happen to the genre in the past decade. And then there's the production design, which situates the story in a kind of retro-futuristic 1960s and allows this iteration of the Fantastic Four to hark back to simpler times, when uncomplicated superheroes only ever had to deal with binary issues of good and evil. Endearingly goofy and frequently ridiculous, First Steps is the most enjoyable superhero flick of the year so far. GAZER. Gazer ★★★★☆ Cinematic release - review by Declan Burke Gazer (15A) stars Ariella Mastroianni as Frankie, a young mother who struggles to perceive time correctly due to a condition called dyschronometria, and thus focuses more closely than usual on other people and events as she tries to centre herself in the here and now. When she encounters Page (Renee Gagner) at a grief counselling session, Frankie finds herself drawn into the tangled web of Page's life, and quickly finds herself the main suspect when Page's dead body is discovered in the trunk of her car. Written by Mastroianni and Ryan J. Sloan, with Sloan directing, Gazer is an unconventional, slow-burning and highly stylised film noir that feels like it's been freshly plucked from the 1970s. Ariella Mastroianni is brilliantly befuddled as the cognitively impaired patsy stumbling through the mean streets of New Jersey searching for answers — due to Frankie's condition and paranoia, we're no wiser than she as to what is really going on — and there's strong support from Renee Gagner as the hard-as-nails femme fatale. Jonah Wren Phillips in the movie 'Bring Her Back.' Bring Her Back ★★★★☆ Cinematic release - review by Cara O'Doherty Following the success of their 2023 hit Talk to Me, Australian brothers Danny and Michael Philippou return with Bring Her Back (16s), an exploration of grief through a horror lens. When Andy (Billy Barrett) and Piper (Sora Wong) find their father unconscious, Piper desperately tries to save him, but it's too late. The kids are sent to live with much respected carer, Laura (Sally Hawkins), but while Piper gets a warm welcome, Andy faces a cold reception. Confused by the hostile treatment and the presence of a strange non-verbal foster child, Andy begins to sense that something is amiss. His instincts prove accurate as the situation escalates darkly. The film takes some truly gory turns, but the real horror lies in the lengths people will go to deal with grief. The kids are impressive, but it's Hawkins who steals the show, expertly eliciting sympathy from the audience despite her numerous wrongdoings.
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Gazer review: An impressive, lo-fi and disarmingly intense debut
GAZER Director : Ryan J. Sloan Cert : 15A Genre : Mystery Starring : Ariella Mastroianni, Marcia Debonis, Renee Gagner, Jack Alberts, Tommy Kang Running Time : 2 hrs 14 mins Ryan J Sloan's Gazer springs from the grungy fringes of American indie cinema with the urgent pulse of a noir and the stylings of Barbara Loden's Wanda . Lo-fi, disarmingly intense, and shot on textured 16mm by cinematographer Matheus Bastos, this impressive debut feature casts a twitchy, retro shadow over the less salubrious parts of New Jersey. Frankie (a mesmerising Ariella Mastroianni, who co-wrote the script with producer, editor and director Sloane) plays a single mother trying to wrestle back control of her fractured family and equally fragmented psyche. Frankie suffers from dyschronometria, a rare condition that distorts her perception of time. To cope, she records second-by-second audio prompts reminding her what she's doing and where she is. These serve as both narrative scaffolding and existential red flags, tethering us to her unravelling mind and blackouts. The financially struggling heroine takes a one-time job offered by a stranger named Claire (Renee Gagner). The task: retrieve a car, allegedly belonging to Claire, and leave it out in the wasteland. Inevitably, the vehicle turns up with a corpse in the boot, and Frankie's fingerprints on the wheel. READ MORE Mastroianni's haunted performance plays out against dim interiors, grimy streets, anonymous motels and buzzing petrol stations, with the air of a sinner wandering through purgatory. Mobile phones, we are told, are bad for her, an absence that keeps her rooted in a decaying, tactile world. The score by Steve Matthew Carter, all despondent horns and unsettling reverb, adds to the distress. It's impossible not to think of Christopher Nolan's early work and the classic paranoia of Brian DePalma's Blow Out and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation . But Gazer swerves from retro pastiche into Cronenbergian body horror, as the already unreliable narrator becomes increasingly unmoored.
Los Angeles Times
12-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
A lonely woman sees something she can't unsee in ‘Gazer,' an industrious thriller
A small, hunched New Jersey woman named Frankie with intense eyes and a severe pixie cut is the central protagonist of the low-budget mystery 'Gazer,' from first-time feature director Ryan J. Sloan. You'd be forgiven for thinking, given her her drawn, caved-in appearance, hoodie-shrouded and forever preoccupied with self-recorded cassette tapes, that she'd typically be a bit-player oddity in somebody else's paranoid thriller. But this lonely voyeur with a debilitating neurological disorder — played with haunted energy by star and co-writer Ariella Mastroianni — is a big reason this odd duck of a nerve-jangler compels the way it does. When its cinematic influences aren't so obvious and its story particulars aren't distractingly fuzzy, this earnestly moody film serves notice that indie urban noir can still be a potent calling card for up-and-coming talents. The movie's DIY-to-OMG backstory alone is invigorating: A movie-mad New Jersey electrician, director Sloan and his cinephile collaborator Mastroianni crammed in filming on weekends over two years, then shockingly landed 'Gazer' in the Directors' Fortnight at last year's Cannes Film Festival, an unheard-of triumph for so unpedigreed an entry. Perhaps the French gatekeepers had in mind their own storied history of obsessives-turned-filmmakers like François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard and took a shine to the deeply ingrained movie-ness of it all. For one thing, from the tight opening shot on Mastroianni's eyes, 'Gazer' offers that reliable construct of a witnessed crime. Frankie, her voice in her ears telling her to notice everything around her as a way of not zoning out, is supposed to be concentrating on her job pumping gas. But she's focused instead on the apartment block across the street and what she believes to be an act of violence silhouetted in a window. A disheveled woman then emerges from the side of the building, meets Frankie's stare and moves off into the night. Later, at a grief support-group meeting, that same woman, Paige (Renee Gagner), introduces herself, expresses fear of an abusive brother and asks if Frankie can help her, for which she'll pay. Frankie needs the money: She's a young widow eking out a meager existence without custody of her young daughter and with an erratic condition that causes her to lose blocks of time. Sleep isn't much help thanks to enigmatic body-horror nightmares evoking the circumstances surrounding her husband's death. But more immediately, nothing about that mysterious stranger turns out to be what it seems, and suddenly Frankie's life is in danger. In other words, hello, Hitchcock, De Palma, Nolan, Cronenberg, Lynch and Lodge Kerrigan ('Keane') for good measure. And yet none of that is really a minus, since Sloan, working in evocatively dingy concert with cinematographer Matheus Bastos across a concrete-jungle playground of warehouses, motels and side streets, still achieves his own aura of roiling unease with every blind corner. Sloan's rough-and-tumble peekaboo game is exemplary for a first-timer. I wish the same could be said about his overlong dream-logic interludes, which tantalize as peeks into Frankie's psyche but eventually feel like style filler. That also goes for his vague treatment of Frankie's real-life condition, called dyschronometria. Losing time sounds like it should slot neatly into a ticking-clock suspense film, but it never achieves liftoff the way 'Memento' turned an amnesiac's daily struggle into catnip. Better and truer than that character gimmick, though, is the well-realized, lived-in pall of Frankie's sad existence, which imbues her problem-solving survival with a genuinely fresh, in-the-bones urgency. As damaged heroes go, Mastroianni easily keeps our attention and triggers our sympathies for someone who resists the abyss, as near to it as she is. 'Gazer' suggests something of a bright future for the plucky, confident genre enthusiasts who've willed it into existence.
