In the mid-2000s, Hollywood picked up on the monster success of "Jackass," trying to turn its bruised and battered lead, Johnny Knoxville, into the next big thing. He was offered prominent supporting parts and a few leads, and audiences responded to this development by largely refusing to buy tickets. Perhaps the most potentially disastrous project to emerge during this dark period was 2005's "The Ringer," a film that attempted to poke good-natured fun at the Special Olympics, shepherded by the Farrelly Brothers. Pre-release press wasn't favorable and audiences were clearly uncomfortable with the idea, yet, in the midst of all the suspicion, "The Ringer" proved itself to a refreshingly mild comedy that made good use of whatever Knoxville actually does in front of a camera ("acting" just isn't the right description). It takes some serious unclenching to get used to the plot of the movie, but once comfort is established, it's clear that director Barry W. Blaustein ("Beyond the Mat") and screenwriter Ricky Blitt aren't out to offend with this effort, working to celebrate Special Olympics participants with a liberal helping of silliness. "The Ringer" isn't a classic comedy by any means, but that it's approachable at all is an achievement. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
Author: BO
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Blu-ray Review – Juggernaut
During a decade of terrorist thrillers and paranoia cinema, 1974's "Juggernaut" emerges as a crisp, efficient chapter in the era's examination of global mayhem. Director Richard Lester submits some of the tightest work of his career in this engrossing suspense effort, trading theatrics to take on a coldly procedural event that's teeming with A-list actors, working with a script that's paced wonderfully, always paying close attention to the nail-biting aspects of the story. "Juggernaut" is deceptively casual, yet there's hardly moment when it's not extracting near-perfect details of character and setting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Blu-ray Review – Space Raiders
"Space Raiders" was Roger Corman's attempt to piggyback on the release of 1983's "Return of the Jedi," hoping to steal a few gold bars from George Lucas's vault before anyone noticed. Instead of putting in a heroic cinematic effort, Corman instead recycled footage, music, and design achievements from such movies as "Battle Beyond the Stars" and "Galaxy of Terror" to construct another space opera, creating a kiddie adventure with the bare minimum of budget. This is why the film, while determined to entertain, is shoddy, incomprehensible at times, and shameless. All the space battles and rogue banter in the world can't scrape away the crummy penny-pinching vibe of this excessively noisy feature. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Film Review – No Good Deed
You may want to keep your receipt after a viewing of “No Good Deed.” My showing was completely devoid of suspense, passable performances, and basic screenwriting flair. I hope this isn’t a widespread problem. If so, writer Aimee Lagos and director Sam Miller have a lot to answer for with this stillborn thriller, messing up a straightforward exercise in exploitation entertainment. Instead of producing nail-biting tension as the central nightmare escalates, “No Good Deed” is weirdly conversational and bafflingly protracted, laboring to fill 80 minutes with the most tedious interplay seen in an intentionally trashy production all year. The ingredients couldn’t be simpler, yet the end result is lifeless and, worse, boring. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Film Review – The Drop
“The Drop” emerges from the mind of Dennis Lehane, the author of “Shutter Island,” “Mystic River,” and “Gone, Baby, Gone.” The latter is important to note as “The Drop” carries enormous similarities to its film adaption, with both efforts concentrating on the sticky folds of a tough neighborhood, where bad business carries on while daily business continues without question or comment. It’s another dip into working class woe, only here Lehane stuffs in more of a slow burn thriller element, pulling the audience into a troubling situation of deception and antagonism while focusing on building character through strange conflicts. It’s an odd one, but the movie has a terrific curveball that’s worth the patience required to digest all its eccentricities. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Film Review – Dolphin Tale 2
I doubt anyone who saw “Dolphin Tale” back in 2011 could’ve imagined such a story was ripe for a sequel. Not only was Winter the dolphin a powerful source of inspiration for visitors to her Florida rehabilitation aquarium, but she proved surprising muscle at the box office, allowing producers an opportunity to continue the drama with “Dolphin Tale 2,” a pleasant follow-up that’s more meaningful than its predecessor, touching on a few choice adolescent dilemmas before it plunges back into Disney Channel-esque habits that are harsh on the senses. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Film Review – Leprechaun: Origins
The “Leprechaun” series is not precious. Conceived as satiric dig at the unstoppable killing machine craze of the 1980s and ‘90s, the original film merged silliness and shock with some degree of care, launching a franchise that carried on for five increasingly ridiculous sequels, making star Warwick Davis a cult icon and his agent very happy. 2003’s “Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood” was the swan song for the tiny monster, but a decade of dormancy hasn’t been as educational as one would hope. “Leprechaun: Origins” is the inevitable reboot, reworking the goofy premise into an R-rated chiller with a radically redesigned foe. Unfortunately, the production asks the audience to take the whole effort with the utmost seriousness, which somehow makes it even more absurd. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Film Review – At the Devil’s Door
The admirable aspect of “At the Devil’s Door” is how careful it works to disrupt predictability. The horror genre has basically seen it all in terms of plots, tricks, and scares, with most filmmakers beating the same routines into submission, content to recycle to play into profitable trends. Writer/director Nicholas McCarthy doesn’t necessarily introduce new ideas with his picture, but the helmer is determined to keep viewers on edge with twists and blunt transitions, striving to advance a mystery that’s impossible to deduce from the opening act. However, in his attempt to pull “At the Devil’s Door” inside out, McCarthy has forgotten to retain a gripping consistency to the work, rendering the effort distanced when it should snowball into something menacing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Film Review – Life of Crime
There has been no shortage of Elmore Leonard adaptations over the last 30 years, with efforts such as Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown,” Steven Soderbergh’s “Out of Sight,” and Barry Sonnenfeld’s “Get Shorty” representing the cinematic highlights, while forgettable features such as “Killshot” and “Touch” populate the other side of the creative spectrum. “Life of Crime” isn’t a particularly urgent slice of Leonard, but this take on “The Switch” is appealing enough to pass, with writer/director Daniel Schechter locating a casual rhythm to a pressurized situation, relying on the writer’s way with characters and twists to feed into well-acted adventures with criminals and the hostages who love them. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Film Review – Wetlands
I wouldn’t advise a trip to the concessions counter before a showing of the German film “Wetlands.” It’s not a movie made to stoke appetites, it’s a creation hoping to repulse in a myriad of ways. Based on a novel by Charlotte Roche, “Wetlands” sets out to the capture the head rush of a broken adolescence, with all its impulses, curiosities, and emotional unrest, and the feature is certainly vivid enough to reach a few high points of experience that are rarely explored on-screen. However, its visual intensity is tiring and incessant shock value tends to weaken emotionality present later in the picture. This is certainly unforgettable work, but often for the wrong reasons. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Blu-ray Review – The Little Rascals (1994)
After achieving major success with 1992's "Wayne's World," it's amazing how badly director Penelope Spheeris stumbled with her subsequent career choices. Hunting for an easy lay-up Hollywood hit, she accepted the challenge of bringing "The Beverly Hillbillies" to the big screen during the great T.V. adaptation gold rush of the 1990s. And then Spheeris turned her attention to an update of Hal Roach's "Our Gang" film series of the 1920s and '30s. It was an impossible mission of tonality that was doomed from the start, working to bring something that was defined by its era into the present, yet still retaining all the old-timey shenanigans and iconic character design. "The Little Rascals" wasn't a smart professional decision for the helmer, and the stress shows in every scene of this misbegotten endeavor. Instead of paying tribute to a golden age of comedy, the production merely reheats established bits, adding crudeness to lubricate likability, generally missing the appeal of the original shorts. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Blu-ray Review – The Toxic Avenger
1984's "The Toxic Avenger" is the movie that put Troma Entertainment on the map. Previously employed as a distribution machine for titillation comedies, Troma hit pay dirt when they switched their focus to silly splatter efforts and horror pictures, finding a rabid audience who couldn't get enough of their specialized brand of winky mayhem. "The Toxic Avenger" is the prototype for subsequent Troma endeavors, mixing a bewildering cocktail of one-liners and ultraviolence in a production that actually desires to make audiences laugh, even while it kills a kid and a dog, and points a shotgun at a baby. Still, the earnestness of the feature is amazing, always working to find a note of absurdity to molest as directors Michael Herz and Lloyd Kaufman (billed here as "Samuel Weil") bathe the screen in blood, nudity, and slapstick, funneled into a superhero spoof with a vague environmental message. 30 years after its initial release and "The Toxic Avenger" still manages to trigger disgust and a handful of laughs, representing not only a key Troma financial victory, but it's quite possibly their finest original work. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Blu-ray Review – Bloodsucking Freaks
With a title such as "Bloodsucking Freaks," there's not much left to the imagination. Refusing such a pesky limitation, writer/director Joel M. Reed attempts to give the audience their money's worth with this twisted splatter effort from 1976, which also stomped through cinemas as "Sardu: Master of the Screaming Virgins." Pick any label you like, as Reed stages a perverse and bloody extravaganza that defies description, hoping to take a style of shock value pioneered by Herschell Gordon Lewis to fresh heights of repulsion. "Bloodsucking Freaks" isn't much of a movie, but it does retain an eye-popping sense of violence, brazen in its contempt for women and disregard for human life. It's best to treat it all as an extended joke, which helps to digest the intentionally sickening display of pain Reed is a little too eager to share with the audience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Film Review – Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
James Rolfe has a built a brand name with “The Angry Video Game Nerd,” a popular video game review show that covers the worst the industry has to offer. It’s no polite rundown of faults, but a program constructed with sketches, game play, and cursing. So much cursing. Rolfe’s foul-mouthed routine has turned him into a cult star with gamers, building a fan base interested in terrible product dissected with extreme silliness. Excessive profanity aside, Rolfe’s videos are very entertaining, but is the man who’s built an empire in his basement, screaming into a single camera, ready for a trip to the big screen? “Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie” is determined to turn the bespectacled, pocketing-protecting, beer-swilling, joystick-bending boob into a cinematic legend. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Film Review – Love is Strange
“Love is Strange” doesn’t emphasize its use of gay marriage to fulfill any political agenda, instead treating the celebration of love as a moment of unity that strengthens bonds and deepens emotions. The film proceeds to display how that connection is tested in unexpectedly subtle ways, focusing on characters facing a seismic lifestyle change while trying to preserve stability to the best of their ability. It’s a tale of tenderness and partnership, with co-writer/director Ira Sachs working to keep melodrama out of the material, preferring to approach the conflicts contained within as ongoing life, remaining observational and respectful with this lovely, mournful picture. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Film Review – The Longest Week
There’s influence and then there’s theft. “The Longest Week” lands somewhere between the two extremes, with writer/director Peter Glanz making sure the world understands that he loves the work of Woody Allen and Wes Anderson. It’s difficult to understand why Glanz submits totally to his tributes, as his own work loses its identity along the way, suffocated by an onslaught of memorable filmmaking originally articulated by better filmmakers. I’m all for a celebration of the movies we love, but “The Longest Week” quickly becomes mimicry, losing any emotional pull as it strives to preserve the hospital corners of other, better helmers. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Film Review – The Last of Robin Hood
“The Last of Robin Hood” is dedicated to Beverly Aadland, the underage girl who took part in a sexual relationship with 50-year-old Errol Flynn over the last two years of his life. Perhaps this is why the production takes it so easy on the young woman, electing to transfer motivation to others while romanticizing a union that’s already impossible to rationalize. In a stronger film, this provocative approach might conjure a riveting display of passion and violation, but in the hands of writer/directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (“Quinceanera”), “The Last of Robin Hood” is transformed into a melodrama, and one that’s suspiciously careful with the sordid details of the plot. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Film Review – A Master Builder
Ever since he won an Academy Award for directing “The Silence of the Lambs,” Jonathan Demme has attempted to derail expectations by selecting material that feeds his moviemaking soul, mostly avoiding industry temptations to recycle his winning formula. His idiosyncrasy has remained in full bloom, with the last decade of his career spent making concert documentaries with Neil Young and testing out the elasticity of digital cinema with efforts such as “Rachel Getting Married.” “A Master Builder” merges the two aesthetics in a manner that’s sure to polarize audiences, asking viewers to be patient with this adaptation of a 19th century play by Henrik Ibsen, which never leaves its single setting, remaining stagey, breathless, and unavoidably static when it isn’t absolutely riveting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
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Blu-ray Review – Breathless
"Breathless" is a little late to the "Mad Men" party, missing its chance to ride coattails as the iconic series ends its run in 2015. The production's timing is unfortunate, but so is the program, at least in fits. Attempting to create a stylish look at the traumatic events facing the staff of The New London Hospital, "Breathless" quickly drowns in melodrama, dropping all regality and sensibility to match "General Hospital" in nostril-flaring acting and prolonged narratives. This is an exhausting show, and not because of its emotional content, as there isn't any. Instead, it takes one hour of story and breaks it up into six episodes, dragging out secrets and indiscretions to a point where they cease to retain their intended meaning. Those on the prowl for a hospital procedural or even a period dissection should look for creative highlights elsewhere. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
BRIAN ORNDORF 