Author: BO

“Americana” feels like a movie that was meant to come out in 1996. The picture (which was shot three years ago) seems like one of the many edgy indies that arrived after the unexpected success of 1994’s “Pulp Fiction,” with writer/director Tony Tost (making his helming debut) charging up his creative batteries on Quentin Tarantino energy, submitting his own take on criminal and relationship activity involving an assortment of characters. He even plays with time in the feature, which tries to deliver crime world thrills in the open world of South Dakota. “Americana” has some accomplished performances and early scenes of tension, but Tost can’t keep the endeavor upright as it moves into a meandering second half. There’s violence and a treasure multiple people are hunting for, but Tost allows the offering to slowly fall asleep instead of building to a thrilling finale. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The world is a pretty bleak place right now, and “Night Always Comes” offers a reminder of the hopelessness that permeates everything in this life. It’s an adaptation of a 2021 novel by Willy Vlautin, who explores the financial ruin of a thirtysomething woman as she spends an entire day trying to make one simple deal to own a home a possibility. There’s a lot on the mind of the material, and screenwriter Sarah Conradt is challenged to make it all make sense for director Benjamin Caron (“Sharper”), who’s also tasked with creating an approachable endeavor despite every moment of the feature being soaked in depression. “Night Always Comes” is almost two movies in a way, opening as a study of desperation before turning into a crime picture, and the mix of moods doesn’t always work. However, potent scenes remain in the offering, which successfully captures the way of life these days for the haves and have-nots. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Released in 2021, “Nobody” was put into theaters by Universal Pictures without any real clue if anyone would show up to see it. The pandemic world wasn’t kind to movie theaters as streaming began to take hold, and star Bob Odenkirk wasn’t exactly a star, primarily known for his comedy pursuits, not his mastery of action cinema. While hardly a major hit, “Nobody” found an audience ready for its very “John Wick”-ian ways, turning a profit during a time when such an achievement wasn’t easy. A four year wait for a sequel isn’t the optimum play for a feature like this, but now there’s a “Nobody 2,” with Odenkirk returning to destroy more bad guys, this time for director Timo Tjahjanto (“The Night Comes for Us”). Screenwriters Derek Kolstad and Aaron Rabin don’t come armed with a particularly inventive idea for “Nobody 2,” but they offer simple, violent entertainment, creating more of a group effort for the sequel to take some of the pressure off Odenkirk, who remains an oddball action figure. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Highest 2 Lowest” isn’t meant to be an original film from director Spike Lee. It’s a remake of a beloved 1963 Akira Kurosawa picture and an adaptation of a 1959 novel. It’s familiar work for those who’ve enjoyed the story before, but Lee is utterly determined to make his own way with the tale, joined by screenwriter Alan Fox. The effort maintains Lee’s DNA throughout, finding the helmer making one of the best features of his career with this examination of a kidnapping and response involving a record label executive already facing all kinds of difficulties on the job. Lee reunites with actor Denzel Washington for their fifth creative collaboration, and the men submit a consistently surprising and dramatically exciting endeavor that finds the helmer firing on all cylinders once again, finding his way through family ties and business trials in unique ways, reconnecting with his artistic soul. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Screenwriter Justic Piasecki makes his feature-length debut with “Relay,” and he offers a very interesting idea about a relationship the develops between two people involved in a whistleblower event gone horribly wrong. It’s a fascinating story that blends procedural action with deep characterization, at times recalling some of the better paranoia thrillers of the 1970s. Director David Mackenzie (who hit a career high with 2016’s “Hell or High Water,” only to come back down to Earth in 2018’s mediocre “Outlaw King”) is tasked with maintaining steady pressure on the audience, creating unusual tension from scenes of communication and surveillance. For the first two acts, “Relay” is excellent, hitting a few logic gaps while generating an impressive amount of suspense, promising a great conclusion to come. A satisfying ending doesn’t arrive, but Mackenzie and Piasecki get most of the way there, handling the nail-biting needs of the tale and its unique study of planning and pursuit. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Kate Beecroft makes a kind of docudrama with “East of Wall.” After spending time with horse wrangler Tabatha Zimiga and her family in South Dakota, she wanted to do something with their special energy, creating a loose story of grief and connection for a mix of professional and amateur actors. It’s not an experimental picture, but something that aims to be sincere, soaking in the atmosphere of the household and the locations as multiple personalities are examined. Beecroft has passion for the subjects and a love for ranch life, also offering an unusual dramatic focal point in Tabatha, who’s challenged to replicate her daily experiences and realize the script’s dramatic inventions. “East of Wall” is a modest offering, and doesn’t always provide a commanding viewing experience, but Beecroft’s attention to the family and their relationships maintains raw power at times, finding her ways into the aches and pains of these people and their remote Midwestern existence. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After the success of 1982’s “Conan the Barbarian,” plans were quickly put into motion to deliver a sequel and help expand the cinematic potential of writer Robert F. Howard’s literary creations with a spin-off. 1985’s “Ren Sonja” was intended to keep the world of Conan going, but it didn’t find an audience, who were offered a visually striking but largely inert fantasy adventure, while Brigitte Nielsen’s performance as the main character left much to be desired. Talk of returning to Red Sonja has been going on for decades, but now there’s another big screen pass at the character and her violent spirit, with actress Matilda Lutz (“Reptile,” “Magpie”) hired to bring the flame-haired warrior to life for director M.J. Bassett (“Rogue,” “Endangered Species”) and screenwriter Tasha Huo. The new “Red Sonja” has a plan for Hyborian Age action and adventure, but not a lot of resources to pull off the adaptation, which often struggles with low-budget visuals and a few critical miscastings. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After experiencing a creative wipeout with the 2009 comedy, “Miss March,” director Zach Cregger took some time to reinvent himself. He returned to theaters in 2022, delivering the modestly budgeted chiller, “Barbarian,” embarking on a new career path to disturb viewers instead of tickle them. The film performed well at the box office, but, more importantly, it suddenly turned Cregger into a talent to watch, keeping the movie business interested in his next offering. “Weapons” is the follow-up, and while “Barbarian” was a deeply flawed endeavor, Cregger shows noticeable improvement in his command of tone for the picture. It begins as a terrifying tale of loss involving missing children and the guardians dealing with such an event, but the helmer isn’t strictly focused on examining trauma. “Weapons” gets a tad weirder than that, keeping up Cregger’s impishness and love of surprises in a feature that manages to maintain some dramatic balance for most of the run time. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

22 years is a long time to wait for a sequel, especially for a film like “Freaky Friday.” The original/remake/literary adaptation provided big screen appeal for the summer of 2003, delivering a spirited take on body switching mayhem while boosted by engaged performances from stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan. It was fun stuff, and probably could’ve handled an immediate follow-up, but an extended wait was encountered instead. “Freakier Friday” arrives to basically deal with the same situation of confusion and cover-up, returning Curtis and Lohan to their roles as overwhelmed characters handling a baffling hit of magic. Screenwriter Jordan Weiss isn’t coloring outside the lines with the feature, but she does a commendable job summoning chaos for “Freakier Friday,” generating a mostly light and zippy adventure that’s just as charming as the 2003 offering, even with some obvious pacing issues. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Julian Glander gets a little weird for his feature-length directorial debut, “Boys Go to Jupiter.” It’s an animated offering of absurdity and screen detail, delivering a Wes Anderson-y spin on the experiences of a 16-year-old kid trying to take on an adult world of financial responsibilities and relationships. Glander plays with dryness and video game-like visuals, but he’s fully committed to the oddity of his screenplay, which demands viewers go with its flow as it visits areas of adolescence, weird science, and late-stage capitalism while it also explores teen dilemmas of life and love. “Boys Go to Jupiter” is a creative effort from Glander, and it possesses enough humor and visual idiosyncrasy to hold attention as the tale dances with unreality and musical interests while visiting the secret lives of Floridians. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Strange Harvest” is a movie that’s been made to resemble a television show. Writer/director Stuart Ortiz makes an unusual creative choice with the picture, which is meant to resemble an episode of true crime T.V., aiming to transform a study of a serial killer into something slick and formulaic, hoping to entice viewers used to such journeys into darkness that streaming companies tend to favor, bringing real-world horror to an audience that loves the stuff. Despite the appearance of realism, “Strange Harvest” is a fictional study of menace concerning the brutality of a murderer known as Mr. Shiny and his reign of terror across a California town. Ortiz creates a mostly credible study of such evil, using interviews and crime scene media to generate an authentic atmosphere of dread for the endeavor. As a technical exercise, the feature delivers on its invented reality, making for an interesting examination of storytelling. Dramatically, the offering is a bit lacking, as there’s a reason why this kind of programming typically runs under an hour in length. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Kristin Scott Thomas has created an impressive career as an actress, working with some of the finest filmmakers around, taking in experiences with such talent as Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack, Joe Wright, and Robert Altman. “My Mother’s Wedding” is Thomas’s directorial debut, finally taking command of her own production, and she goes a semi-autobiographical route with co-writer (and husband) John Micklethwait, digging into her own past, which involved the presence of two fathers in her life. This experience fuels the screenplay, following three estranged siblings trying to make sense of terrible loss in their lives and their mother’s hope for love again, confronted by change and reflection during a celebratory weekend. “My Mother’s Wedding” is a smaller picture with milder dramatic goals, but Thomas holds it together with help from a talented cast and sincere emotion, exploring how these characters handle their feelings and their maturity when reconnecting with their past. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Greasy Strangler” was released in 2016, introducing film nerds to the curious anti-comedy vision of writer/director Jim Hosking. The picture was a wild ride of ideas and textures, and while it didn’t always hold together, the movie offered inspired goofiness at times, delivering an edgy understanding of a peculiar sense of humor. Hosking graduated to a slightly bigger moviemaking challenge in 2018’s “An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn,” offered some name actors and a decent budget to continue his exploration of oddity, coming up with another interesting study of lunacy. The effort was largely ignored by viewers, sending Hosking back to the world of small-scale storytelling for “Ebony and Ivory,” which actually doesn’t contain a plot. It’s more of an experience, following two characters as they deal with each other in a remote location. Hosking continues his hunt for slow-burn strangeness with the offering, but his creative drive is noticeably lacking this time around, showing more concentration on repetition in a feature that’s not easy to endure, even during its most inspired moments. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com