Month: March 2012

If you ever come across anyone squawking about the lack of originality in today’s cinema landscape, immediately sit them down with the Swedish musical comedy, “Sound of Noise.” Although it sweats to fill up 90 minutes of screentime, the picture is an immensely charming and startling effort that manages to contort the art of musical performance into a terrorist agenda. Clever and highlighting a hypnotic arrangement of rhythmic assaults, the feature keeps viewers on their toes, wondering just where directors Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjarne Nilsson are going to take this wild adventure into instrumental invention and aural opposition next. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Producer Todd Phillips has orchestrated monster frat parties (“Old School) and made quite a mess of Las Vegas as well (“The Hangover”). “Project X” looks to generate the definitive teen get-together for the multiplex, turning to three screen stalwarts, chemical excess, nudity, and mass destruction, to take the title as the ultimate adolescent party movie. His intentions are pure, but “Project X” never supplies a reason to care about anything happening onscreen, laboring through conventional acts of misbehavior with a pronounced mean-spiritedness that makes the entire picture unsavory instead of cheerfully celebratory. It’s impossible to get excited for three young men who deserve genuine jail time for their banal adventures in juvenile delinquency. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As much as “Moneyball” wasn’t about baseball, “Goon” isn’t really about the game of hockey. There’s plenty of tense action on the ice to enjoy, but the picture is more fascinated with the elements of violence that permeate the sport, celebrating the bloodletting and glove-tossing escalation, forming a ballet of sorts with all of the punches and airborne teeth. Thankfully, “Goon” is a comedy, and a successfully exaggerated one at that, buffering the hurt with a considerable portion of laughs. Obviously, the feature is a must-see for any puck nut, as the script superbly observes the details of hockey life. Those will little interest in ice-based action may not be carried away by the experience, but the movie is silly enough to stand on its own. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Expanding the work of Dr. Seuss beyond his literary borders is a dangerous proposition, requiring a dense imagination and speed of thought to smoothly develop a small number of pages into a feature film. While 2008’s “Horton Hears a Who” found some success as an animated adaptation, “The Lorax” is a failure, straining to make a moviegoing event out of a modest fable. Brimming with musical numbers, car chases, and shrill celebrity voice work, “The Lorax” is a tuneless, lifeless creation that never seems to seize the environmental message Seuss was hoping to impart. A dire commentary on greed has been contorted into a potential blockbuster, overcrowding the necessary elements of disturbance required to bring whimsical shock value to the younger audience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With 2007’s “Eagle vs. Shark,” writer/director Taika Waititi established himself as a filmmaker with a profound interest in quirk, aided by a richly graphic and sly sense of humor. It was an impressive debut, and his gifts carry into the follow-up feature, “Boy,” released in its native New Zealand in 2010, finally making its way to America over the course of the next month. A charming story of impressionable adolescence, “Boy” dials down the overt insanity that made “Eagle vs. Shark” such a hoot, instead attempting to find a stable place of screen poetry, silly behaviors, and sensitive characters. It’s a lovely picture, solidifying Waititi’s position as one of the more satisfying filmmakers working today. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s been proven on numerous occasions that Madonna cannot act. It was proven in 2008 that Madonna couldn’t direct with the rambling “Filth and Wisdom.” “W.E.” is the pop legend’s attempt to be taken seriously as a film artist, selecting a sweeping love story of impossible refinement and sacrifice to study, with an intoxicating historical context to keep her on task. Alas, the big screen just isn’t the proper outlet for Madonna’s majesty, as “W.E.” is a hopelessly distanced museum piece attempting to pass itself as a heaving emotional event, finding the moviemaker in a wandering mood of exploration with a tale that all but demands the most enveloping moments of screen intimacy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com