Author: BO

Curse movies have fallen out of favor, with audiences more interested in slow-burn psychological freak-outs and slasher standards these days. A few decades ago, pictures about curses were all the rage, with Japanese productions such as “Ring” and “The Grudge” inspiring Hollywood remakes and rip-offs, giving horror fans plenty of options at the multiplex. With “Smile,” writer/director Parker Finn (making his debut) hopes to return some fury to the subgenre, presenting a chiller that details a creeping evil and the woman who sets out to challenge it. Finn has some imagery to be proud of, but “Smile” isn’t a complete nightmare package. It’s too long and too reliant on a deafening soundtrack to really cut to the bone, playing with every shock cinema tactic in the book without ever building something genuinely disturbing along the way. If you need to see it, my advice would be to bring earplugs. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The impossible happened in 2019. Peter Farrelly, co-director of “Dumb and Dumber” and “There’s Something About Mary,” took home two Academy Awards for his work on “Green Book,” a profoundly mediocre feature about the evils of bigotry and the soothing nature of friendship. The movie became a hit as well, giving Farrelly a level of respectability he’s never experienced before, helping to save a career that was close to its expiration date. For his follow-up, the helmer hopes to sustain his success with dramatic endeavors, aiming to bring the true tale of John “Chickie” Donohue and his impossible Vietnam adventure in 1967 to the screen. “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” is basically a “Green Book” sequel, only instead of a “racism is bad” message, there’s a “war is bad” one, with Farrelly once again trying to reach a wide audience with blunt filmmaking, which is perhaps the only way to approach this extremely bizarre tale of a man risking it all for reasons not even he fully understands. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s been a long time since Sigourney Weaver had a substantial big screen role. She’s been doing supporting work for quite some time, circling television too, but “The Good House” fully intends to challenge Weaver with a leading part that touches on all emotions, often going from light to dark in a matter of minutes. The picture is an adaptation of a 2013 Ann Leary novel, and the screenplay (credited to Thomas Bezucha, Wallace Wolodarsky, and Maya Forbes – the latter two also direct the feature) works very hard to maintain an arc of incoming calamity for Weaver’s character, which offers a special acting obstacle course that any actress would kill for. “The Good House” is a great performance in search of a compelling film, with Weaver easily the most interesting element in the endeavor, which struggles to manage supporting characters and larger psychological ideas, but it usually finds perfect focus when giving Weaver room to interpret pain and confusion, occasionally in comedic ways, making the performance all the more impressive. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Dead for a Dollar” returns Walter Hill to the director’s chair, a spot he hasn’t occupied in years. And for good reason too, with his last two features, 2013’s “Bullet to the Head” and 2017’s “The Assignment,” lacking creative authority, trying to be chewy genre entertainment with little lasting value. Hill revisits the western for “Dead for a Dollar,” a genre he’s spent quite some time in (including “The Long Riders” and “Wild Bill”). In fact, almost every picture the helmer has made has been a western in one way or another, but his latest returns him to the ways of horses, card games, hard men, and shootouts, trying to be a thick slice of B-movie escapism with a more theatrical sense of dramatic engagement. Hill aims to soak the production in atmosphere, delighting in traditional confrontations between salty characters, but he struggles to bring a cinematic quality to the endeavor, which often resembles a filmed play occasionally broken up by violence. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2014, writer/director Ana Lily Amirpour collected a small but loyal fanbase with her debut feature, “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.” She lost a lot of that support with her follow-up, 2017’s “The Bad Batch,” with some viewers catching on that while skilled at creating memorable imagery, Amirpour wasn’t much of a storyteller, boldly refusing dramatic interests in the pursuit of atmosphere. Five years later, the helmer returns with “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon,” which involves even less of a plot than anything Amirpour has mounted before, keeping the picture in a weird state of paralysis as attempts at comedy crumble and a proposed mystery is never tended to. Amirpour has her colors, lame offerings of playfulness, and cartoonish performances, but there’s nothing going on in “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon,” highlighting her severe shortcomings as a moviemaker. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Someday, Rob Zombie will write his autobiography, sharing his experiences in music and art, but also detailing his filmmaking career. Hopefully, there will be a chapter examining his desire to remake “The Munsters,” the beloved 1960s sitcom about monsters making it in human society. It’s a shame the book doesn’t exist today, as any help decoding Zombie’s decision-making skills is most necessary while watching this valentine/redo, which is meant to celebrate the silly world of the original series, but mostly resembles “The Paul Lynde Halloween Special.” Zombie tries to retain his usual interests in macabre cinema and pop culture while building a slightly different “Munsters” for the masses. It’s a cult-ready package that probably won’t please longtime fans or keep family audiences engaged (against all odds, this sucker is rated PG), remaining a distinctly Zombie-fied production highlighting his oddball sense of humor and love of extreme visuals. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Tyler Perry provided a surprise early this year when he broke his promise to the public, pulling his most popular character, Madea, out of retirement. The idea was to deliver some laughs to a world that desperately needs the distraction during bleak times. The result was a mess, with “A Madea Homecoming” as profoundly unpleasant as anything Perry has made before, reinforcing his severe limitations as a filmmaker and judge of funny business. Perry returns with “A Jazzman’s Blues,” which was actually shot before Madea’s unwelcome return, but is only now seeing a release, with autumn a more appropriate season for a more serious picture from the writer/director. “A Jazzman’s Blues” isn’t high art from Perry, who doesn’t stray far from his love of melodrama, cooking up a juicy tragedy concerning race relations and forbidden love in 1940s Georgia, going all-in with broad performances and thickly sliced horrors of the heart. While sections of the endeavor show some restraint, Perry can’t help himself, aiming for pure audience reaction with this exhausting soap opera. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Beloved actress Allison Janney, known for her skills in comedy and drama, is now an action star? That’s the idea driving “Lou,” which puts the actress behind the wheel of her own bruiser, albeit with slightly less interest in a sustained run of physical activity. Screenwriters Maggie Cohn and Jack Stanley are in charge of making this magic at least partially credible, transforming Janney into an ex-government recluse with a particular set of skills, out to protect a young mother searching for her kidnapped child. It’s the stuff of Neeson, but Janney is a nice change of pace for this type of entertainment, providing an authoritative performance as the eponymous character, giving director Anna Foerster some behavioral business to manage while also participating in stunt work. “Lou” doesn’t win points for originality, but it does provide an enjoyable viewing experience, and a chance to watch Janney go into butt-kicking mode is certainly worth a look. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2019’s “Booksmart” was special, emerging from a murky sea of lame teen comedy films, trying to offer a fresh take on adolescent high jinks from a female perspective. It was the directorial debut for actress Olivia Wilde, and she managed to balance tone and performances, working with co-screenwriter Katie Silberman to offer something oddball and somewhat loveable, capturing a volatile high school energy. It was a pleasantly surprising offering from Wilde, and she returns with an intentionally cryptic endeavor in “Don’t Worry Darling,” reteaming with Silberman for a much different study of power and paranoia. While “Booksmart” carried a casual energy, “Don’t Worry Darling” is attempting to be a suffocating viewing experience, hammering viewers with an intimidating soundscape and cranked-up acting. Wilde’s trying to master a mystery with her second feature, but she’s mostly making noise with this aggressive picture, which is too derivative of other movies to truly shock. And while its messages on the state of gender relations are valid, the effort’s violent execution and painful overlength erodes any lasting appreciation for its themes. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While time travel is often used to create fantasy scenarios of heroism and discovery, it’s also become a device to launch romantic comedies, with the potential of grand manipulation and relationship obsession driving a different kind of year-jumping momentum. “Meet Cute” is the latest production to use a “Groundhog Day”-ish approach to the obstacle course of love, with stars Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson tasked with playing people meant to be, only the path to partnership is complicated by disruptions in time. Writer Noga Pnueli offers some silliness with her concept, which involves weird science and dramatic repetition, but she’s also in sync with relationship concerns and demands, understanding how people often get in their own way when it comes to connecting with other human beings. “Meet Cute” is slight but funny, and Pnueli finds fresh ways to explore the same crisis of appeal, manufacturing a puzzle of emotions Davidson and Cuoco handle with authority. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Bandit” tells the story of Gilbert Galvan Jr., who, during the 1980s. became known as “The Flying Bandit,” traveling all over Canada to rob nearly 50 banks over a three-year period. It’s a tale that involves dented nobility and economic pressure, disguises and friendships, and a romance of sorts. It’s amazing this tale hasn’t found its way to the screen before, but the production turns to a 1996 book by Robert Knuckle for inspiration, trying to create a crime story worth paying attention to, filled with strange characters and conflicts of the heart. “Bandit” is a spirited picture, with director Allan Ungar (“Tapped Out,” “Gridlocked”) aiming to balance the sugar rush nature of criminal behavior with Gilbert’s emotional crisis, caught between the job he loves and the people he’s responsible for. Ungar keeps the feature on the move, and he has a dependable leading man in Josh Duhamel, who rises to the tonal challenge when playing this odd man and his particularly sticky situation. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Adaptations can come from anywhere, but “The Infernal Machine” attempts to do something with a newer form of media, trying to form a feature-length movie from a 25-minute-long episode of “The Truth” podcast. “The Hilly Earth Society” explored the declining sanity of a writer dealing with a most determined stalker through a series of calls to an answering machine, giving writer/director Andrew Hunt a foundation for a mystery, building on the thinnest of ideas. What he ultimately comes up with is a very Stephen King-esque overview of paranoia and intimidation, working to create a story to pair with the central phone call concept, coming up with an uneven viewing experience. The first half builds to a few promising questions of sanity, but “The Infernal Machine” slips out of control soon after, as Hunt gets sloppy with his ideas for suspense. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While it walks and talks like a generic thriller, “The Enforcer” has moments when it feels like it’s genuinely trying to do something with its characters and their seemingly hopeless situations of criminal activity. Perhaps this has something to do with the screenplay, which is credited to W. Peter Iliff, who long ago created “Point Break,” helping to bring one of the finest action films of the 1990s to the screen. Iliff doesn’t have a high caliber director this time around to bring intense visuals and extract ideal performances, but there’s something interesting buried in the feature, which attempts to get past B-movie formula on occasion. Unfortunately, there’s not enough of the promising stuff to support “The Enforcer,” which soon gets tangled up in underworld cliches and dismal casting, losing sight of its more compelling elements. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Action films aren’t as special as they once were. Blame the VOD market, which has inspired producers to go crazy making violent entertainment for the masses, churning them out without much regard for quality. “Section 8” is part of this generation of B-movies, offering a decent tale of dark servitude that’s poorly executed all around. Director Christian Sesma has worked this routine before, helming similar exercises in low-wattage distractions (including “Paydirt” and “Take Back”), but he’s not one to challenge the norm when it comes to the ways of hard men trying to intimidate other hard men. “Section 8” could’ve worked with some passion for the game, pushing the endeavor into more of a free-for-all experience of shootouts and fist fights. Sesma doesn’t have the vision to really go for it, and the writing (credited to Chad Law and Josh Ridgeway) has no imagination, sticking with familiar grunts of bad dialogue and unwelcome turns of plot. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Dig” is a minimally budgeted production made in the COVID-19 era, offering a low stakes plot featuring a handful of characters, with the action largely contained to a single location. It doesn’t exactly charm with its bland visuals, but it does open with a loaded moment of suspense and horror, establishing hope that the screenplay by Banipal Ablakhad might be interested in a more gripping level of viewer engagement, dealing with the dangers of the real world as a road rage incident goes horribly wrong for the lead character. “Dig” has a chance to be different than most VOD offerings, but such promise isn’t realized by the production, which gradually falls into routine with cartoonish villains and basic acts of survival. Director K. Asher Levin puts the movie into motion early on, but he’s soon stuck with a bad case of storytelling inertia, leaving the viewing experience disappointingly uneventful. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com