Author: BO

2018’s “Halloween” was intended to be the resurrection fans were waiting for, bringing Jamie Lee Curtis back to (once again) battle Michael Myers, providing a do-over of sorts as co-writer Danny McBride and co-writer/director David Gordon Green created a new path to franchise finality, promising a cleaner journey to an ultimate resolution for Laurie Strode and her boogeyman. The first feature delivered an uneven but undeniably effective set-up for a final battle, but 2021’s “Halloween Kills” (also hit with creative issues) disrupted the mission, with Green trying to inflate a simple idea of catharsis into a trilogy. Instead of satisfaction, “Kills” didn’t add up to much, and now the screenwriters try something different to close out Green’s trilogy, removing Michael Myers from much of “Halloween Ends,” electing to give loyal fans more of a thematic, character-based conclusion than a visceral one. It’s a bold choice, especially with all the expectations in play, but “Ends” intends to do its own thing, picking the worst time to do it. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Halloween is big business, and movie selections for the scary month have been plentiful. Showing renewed life this year are pictures aimed at younger audiences, giving them a horror experience without the extremity of R-rated content. We’ve already had “Spirit Halloween: The Movie” and “Hocus Pocus 2,” and now “The Curse of Bridge Hollow,” which pits a father and daughter against an uprising of possessed Halloween decorations during the holiday. It’s being sold as a Marlon Wayans comedy, but it’s not nearly as crude as the actor’s previous forays into scary silliness, with director Jeff Wadlow (“Fantasy Island,” “Truth or Dare”) more interested in visual effects, giving the film a bit more punch in the thrills department. “The Curse of Bridge Hollow” isn’t particularly striking, but the production hopes to charm pre-teens with the endeavor, and it remains successful at that, offering a boisterous, mercifully short feature that’s big on Halloween events. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The saga of “Romeo and Juliet” is detailed from a different point of view in “Rosaline.” Inspired by the book “While You Were Mine,” by Rebecca Serle, the picture hunts for a way to recycle the central heartbreak of the Shakespeare play without losing younger viewers. Screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber hope to hip up the particulars of the source material with a wry sense of humor, charting the development of love and jealousy among teenagers, trying to make such ancient woes a little more urgent for a modern audience. Director Karen Maine does what she can to make known story beats feel a bit bouncier, taking cues from Sophia Coppola’s “Marie Antoinette” and Brian Helgeland’s “A Knight’s Tale” to jazz up “Rosaline,” offering a pop take on a famous tragedy. It certainly helps to have actress Kaitlyn Dever in the driver’s seat, delivering spirited work as the eponymous character, always finding ways to become the best parts of the feature. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In early 2021, director Kevin Lewis was handed a B-movie gift in “Willy’s Wonderland.” The project was bizarre, focusing on a janitor forced to battle haunted animatronics inside a family restaurant, using what he can to survive the night. It was horror for the Chuck E. Cheese generation, and the endeavor had an ace up its sleeve with the casting of Nicolas Cage as the man against the machines. “Willy’s Wonderland” was no triumph of filmmaking, barely hanging on as silly, violent entertainment, but Lewis found ways to keep it compelling, maintaining pace and energy, and there was always Cage to keep the effort suitably crazed. Lewis is back with “The Accursed,” but there’s no Cage, no demonic animatronics, and no wild bottom-shelf vibe. There’s just a screenplay by Rob Kennedy that goes where many low-budget offerings have gone before, and the helmer is no help, keeping this exceedingly dull tale of trauma and dark magic crawling along, showing surprisingly little interest in thrilling viewers for the Halloween season. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The trials and tribulations of a long-term relationship is offered a sci-fi touch in “Significant Other,” which looks into the stress and resentment that builds between people on their way to spending their entire lives together. Co-writers/directors Dan Berk and Robert Olsen (“Villains,” “The Stakelander”) toy with tone and storytelling in the movie, which sets an intimate mood in the open world, looking to build suspense as two characters deal with unexpected challenges to their safety, also delving into universal feelings concerning commitment phobia and learned behavior. “Significant Other” has something to offer viewers for the first two acts, with the helmers creating a threatening atmosphere before they’re forced to explain things, which doesn’t go well for the picture, offering a conclusion that doesn’t live up to the endeavor’s enigmatic introductions. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Almost two decades ago, Court Crandall received a co-story credit on the hit film, “Old School.” He hasn’t done much since, but he’s back with “Bromates,” which hopes to use a similar level of sophomoric humor to inspire another success. He doesn’t have Todd Phillips to guide the project this time around, stepping up to be the writer/director of the project, which examines the misadventures of luckless, loveless men and their juvenile antics while pursuing some type of clarity in their hapless lives. “Bromates” endeavors to be a freewheeling viewing experience filled with slapstick and cringe comedy, but Crandall doesn’t go the extra mile when it comes to the imagination of such silliness. The crudeness of the feature is downright punishing, offering the lamest bits of wackiness and strangest moments of stupidity, with Crandall showing no discernable leadership with this assortment of artless incidents. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Lyle, Lyle Crocodile” has been around for a very long time, with author Bernard Waber’s book first published in 1965 (actually Lyle’s second literary adventure, but the first to offer his name as the selling point). It’s been a library staple for decades, charming generations with the misadventures and feelings of the eponymous creature, who aims to spread joy to all brave enough to meet him. The material was originally brought to small screens with a 1987 musical adaptation for pay cable, and now Lyle’s ready for the big show, gifted a feature, which is also a musical, with songs crafted by the team that worked on “The Greatest Showman.” Screenwriter Will Davies doesn’t manage to avoid the muddiness of family film formula with the endeavor, but he preserves the spirit of the books, giving “Lyle, Lyle Crocodile” a major push of positive energy, which pairs well with periodic breaks into song and dance. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 1987, author Clive Barker made his directorial debut with “Hellraiser,” adapting his own novella, “The Hellbound Heart,” looking to bring his own brutal sensibility to the screen. The film managed to accomplish quite a bit with a frighteningly small budget, translating Barker’s fetishes and dark imagination with terrific atmosphere and shocking scenes of horror. It was a tiny movie that made a profit, launching a franchise that would deliver three more wide-release theatrical efforts (1988’s “Hellbound: Hellraiser II” being the most thrillingly gonzo of the bunch) and six DTV features, with certain producers more concerned about keeping their legal claim to the material than delivering a follow-up as powerful as the original endeavor. Four years after the last installment, there’s a new “Hellraiser” on the block, and writers Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski are interested in revisiting the disturbing behavior of Barker’s picture. It’s not a remake, but a reboot of “Hellraiser,” with the material striving to bring back the gruesomeness and despair that made the 1987 offering unforgettable. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” was originally presented as a novella from Stephen King, included in his 2020 collection, “If It Bleeds.” Continuing its interest in bringing most offerings from the writer to the screen, Hollywood attempts to expand and deepen the source material for a feature-length examination of tech-based chills, with writer/director John Lee Hancock (“The Little Things,” “The Highwaymen”) working to transform King’s brief understanding of confusion into something potentially more substantial while retaining the author’s sense of the macabre and the unreal. Expectations are in place for a terrifying picture, but “Mr. Harrigan’s Phone” isn’t that type of viewing experience, and Hancock doesn’t force the story into awkward genre positions. He delivers a gentler sense of concern with the endeavor, trying to match King’s imagination with technophobia commentary, more attentive to characterization than the development of any fear factor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

At 82 years old, Dario Argento is still making movies, despite latter career choices that’ve managed to tarnish the amazing work he accomplished in his prime, during the late 1970s and early 1980s. “Dark Glasses” is the director’s first picture since the embarrassing “Dracula 3D,” which found the maestro trying to make something gothic and surreal happen, only to fall flat on his face. Hoping to stimulate renewed interest in his output, Argento returns to the wooby of giallo for his latest endeavor, once again overseeing a black-gloved killer tormenting an overly excitable target, while some strange events periodically break up the hunt. “Dark Glasses” has the weirdness one expects from the helmer, but the execution lacks style and ferocity, finding Argento pushing through a lackluster plot with limited effort, resting on his laurels with this uneven tale of murder. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

David O. Russell had quite a winning streak going in the early 2010s, with the director guiding “The Fighter,” “Silver Linings Playbook,” and “American Hustle” to big box office and Oscar gold, working fast and hard on spirited endeavors that appeared to reflect his own experience with a near-bipolar view of the world. Russell likes to feel the highs and lows of emotion and relationships, and he scored a hat trick of dynamic cinema. This all came to a screeching halt in 2015’s plodding “Joy,” finding Russell losing his rhythm with the lengthy dramedy, and perhaps some sense of fatigue was creeping into the work, with “Amsterdam” his first picture in seven years, returning to screens with a murder mystery featuring an all-star cast. The material plays to Russell’s strengths, delivering hyper situations and confused characters, but whatever the helmer lost while making “Joy” is not found in “Amsterdam,” which aims to be cheeky and offbeat, but it’s exhausting instead, never finding its way as a quasi-farce about people in deep trouble. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com