Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast New Releases for 5/17/13   Star Trek Into Darkness  (PG-13) Starring: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Benedict Cumberbatch, John Cho, Alice Eve Directed By: J.J. Abrams Opening with Kirk and Bones being chased by spear throwing natives while Spock is trapped inside an eruptive volcano on a planet labelled as forbidden by the United Federation of Planets, the crew of the Enterprise literally gets sent back to school. Not for long however. As soon as a… Read More »

Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast New Releases for 5/10/13 The Great Gatsby is only okay, Peoples is funny The Great Gatsby (PG-13) Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher Directed By: Baz Luhrmann The 1920‘s zeitgeist F. Scott Fitzgerald portrays in his classic novel The Great Gatsby has been carefully choreographed by 21st Century Australian director  Baz Luhrmann with a hip-hop soundtrack. There’s lots of glitz and glamor in the first half, and DiCaprio and Maguire take turns stealing scenes,… Read More »

Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast New Releases for 5/03/13 The Angels Share is whiskey sharp, Iron Man 3 wins box office Iron Man 3 (PG-13) Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Don Cheadle, Guy Pearce, Ben Kingsley, Scarlett Johansson, Colbie Smulders, Paul Bettany, Sam Elliott Directed By: Shane Black Imagine if an Old West gunslinger could stop the fight a a second past high noon, and ask his assistant to bring him a cannon. That’s the sensibility of Iron Man 3, supposedly last of… Read More »

Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast New Releases for 4/26/13 Renoir (R) Starring: Michael Bouquet, Christa Theret, Vincent Rottiers, Thomas Doret Directed By: Gilles Bordos “Flesh is all that matters” a 71-year-old August Renoir says several times in this film, and that pretty much sums up the celebrated French artist’s life. His current inspiration is a beauty named Andree who doesn’t mind posing nude for a painter so crippled by arthritis that the brushes need to be tied to his hand. But things become complicated… Read More »

Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast New Releases for 4/19/13 Filly Brown (R) Starring: Gina Rodriguez, Lou Diamond Phillips, Jennie Rivera, Edward James Olmos Directed By: Youssef Delara, Michael D. Olmos This story of a talented Latina who aspires to lifting herself out of her hard-scrabble life through her musical ability has been portrayed before with different ethnicities and musical styles. Propelled by fine acting, great singing, and a realistic ambiance, the formula still works. The “tattoos as a way to make money, demand respect… Read More »

There are probably a couple of younger generations unaware of the significance of a baseball jersey with the number “42” on its back, but director Brian Helgland’s film should help close that cultural void. For that was the number a New York Dodgers rookie named Jackie Robinson began wearing a couple years after WWII. The first African-American in major league baseball quickly proved his worth. His 12 home runs that first season helped the Dodgers win the National League pennant, and the Rookie of the Year award for Robinson. The film depicts racism and it’s atavistic anger front and center—the individuals, teams, cities, and entire states which refused to allow a “colored man” to play with or against them was legion, and several of the roles, most notably Chadwick Boseman as Robinson, Harrison Ford as Dodgers manager Branch Rickey, and Lucas Black as the team’s shortstop Pee Wee Reese, are truly memorable. … Read More »

Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast New Releases for 4/05/13 Jurassic Park 3D (PG-13) Starring: Sam Neil, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Samuel L. Jackson Directed By:  Steven Spielberg The 20-year-old movie about reverse engineering dinosaur DNA and cloning the creatures to live free on a Pacific island, has been re-engineered to be a 3D extravaganza. No matter that the “kids in peril” (Ariana Richards, Joseph Mazzello) on the screen are now old enough to have kids that same age, or that the… Read More »

Cinema Toast Honors the Great and Gracious Teacher, Roger Ebert By Gil Mansergh Those of you familiar with my film columns in-print, on-air, and on-line may not know that the “tell it like it is” style I use comes directly from advice I received from Roger Ebert. I had already been writing my Screenings column for several years when I was introduced to Roger at a book festival in Los Angeles. I explained I was a fellow film columnist and had read… Read More »

Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast New Releases for 3/29/13 On the Road is beautiful, The Host is too plastic On the Road (PG) Starring: Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Tom Sturridge, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen, Alice Bragga Directed By:  Walter Salles The Brazilian director who did the Che Guevara road-movie The Motorcycle Diaries, manages to bring Jack Kerouac’s “unfilmable” novel to the screen by avoiding reverential excess. Instead, he explores the geography of time, and place, and thought by taking us on… Read More »

Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast New Releases for 3/22/13 Stoker (R) Starring: Dermot Mulroney, Nicole Kidman, Lucas Till, Mia Wasikowska Directed By:  Chan-wook Park Cult Korean director Chan-wook Park shows American audiences why he is so popular as he combines a melodramatic tale of deaths, inherited money and a long-lost, lustful uncle with unsettling (and delightful) feeling of dread that comes to a clever and unexpected conclusion. It starts with a funeral, moves forward with a “lets-meet-the-relatives” exposition reminiscent of those old Perry… Read More »