Month: April 2015

With costume dramas, there’s a formula that always tempts filmmakers. Working within tea-and-dismissal confines, the lure is often societal rejection and domestic coldness, which delivers all the known beats of discouragement and ostracism fans of the genre have grown to love. Every once in a while, a movie will come along and find true heat under layers of clothing, and Emma Thompson was one of the few to trust 3D emotion in her screenplay for 1995’s “Sense and Sensibility.” “Effie Gray” returns Thompson to the overcast world of isolating English domesticity, and while the plot all but demands a bubbling sense of life, the feature is cold to the touch. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There’s little reason to doubt to energy of “Electric Slide.” It’s set in Los Angeles during the pop culture-shifting year of 1983, and features a cast of blank people in colorful outfits. The plot concerns a stylish bank robber using flirtation to disorient his targets. And yet, “Electric Slide” is a painfully dull effort from director Tristan Patterson, last seen with the skateboarding documentary “Dragonslayer.” The ingredients are there for a lively ride with sinful encounters, playing up the oddity of the true-life case. Unfortunately, Patterson gets caught up in the surface details, pumping the picture full of color and music as what little here passes for drama shrivels up in the first ten minutes of the movie. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com