Author: BO

Revenge stories tend to celebrate violence, cashing in on the visceral appeal of righting wrongs with extreme aggression. “Blue Ruin” is a familiar tale of pent-up distaste, though writer/director Jeremy Saulnier works diligently to avoid expectations of stylish comeuppance, returning the drive of revenge to its most feral state, where gut-rot anxiety overpowers any fantasy of psychological liberation. An exceptionally composed and imagined film, “Blue Ruin” finds suffocating spaces of contemplation, doing a masterful job exposing the frightening yet functional steps of murder as it plays with the conventions of an operatic blood feud. Saulnier establishes himself as a major talent with “Blue Ruin,” displaying refreshing care for emotional wreckage and abrupt acts of violence. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Stage Fright” merges the worlds of musical theater and slasher cinema. The disparate traditions might not seem to be an ideal mix, yet writer/director Jerome Sable finds a splendid middle ground of camp and suspense, filling the picture with memorable songs and a traditional display of bloodshed. It’s certainly a bizarre movie, but also immense fun and surprisingly well-produced, having a ball as it dreams up ways to weave through musical numbers and stalker sequences. With the horror genre always chasing repetition to secure hits, it’s nice to see a feature that’s a little loopy and imaginative, delivering the goods with some hostility and a sense of humor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The decision to bring multiple villains into a superhero extravaganza has always been a difficult one to digest. It works periodically (Christopher Nolan’s Batman films established a memorable community of foes), but, for the most part, it results in severe overcrowding, with the production failing to juggle the needs of the protagonist as it faces the wrath of numerous antagonists. “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” a quickie sequel to the 2012 effort, suffers from too much, too soon, cramming three different villains, a parental backstory, a tepid love story, and comic book hero adventuring into a single picture. The fatigue is immediate, even when director Marc Webb struggles to jazz up the feature with event movie excess, resulting in a mediocre follow-up to a mediocre original, with the production’s speed to explore spin-off possibilities damaging the dramatic potential of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2.” Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There have been a few penis-centric comedies throughout the years (perhaps most notably, the 1988 Doris Dorrie picture, “Me and Him”), but “Bad Johnson” has the right approach for such an iffy cinematic premise. Instead of working around the oddity of a human organ suddenly attaining consciousness, the feature elects to personify the male member as a living, breathing wiseacre, thus allowing the movie breathing room to work out its plot. Mercifully, “Bad Johnson” has an adequate sense of humor, providing some hilarious punchlines here and there, but miscasting is the tight leash that keeps the film from truly inspired madness. When it comes to penis comedies, it always helps to cast funny people in the leading roles. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Despite obvious limitations, 2005’s “The Protector” was a pleasingly weirdo action fest from Thailand that chased every impulse it could get away with, from elephant adoration to a transsexual villain. Featuring thrilling fight choreography, the film was a stepping-stone in the once thrilling career of star Tony Jaa, who was building a powerful brand name at the time, using “The Protector” to inch his way into the global marketplace. Nearly a decade later, and there’s now a sequel, which arrives years after Jaa’s momentum cooled, hoping to trigger fond memories of the hero’s abilities by returning to one of his most popular characters. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Skeleton Twins” is going to attract a lot of media attention for its casting of comedy stars Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig in an edgy, indie drama. Mercifully, the movie isn’t a steady display of severity, but a strongly imagined screen depiction of desperation and clinical depression, with welcome breathers of levity and warm sensitivity. It’s a beautiful picture that understands the tenuous bonds of family and pressures of self-delusion, winningly explored with an emotionally consistent, graceful screenplay and assured direction from Craig Johnson. While it appears foreboding, and perhaps that’s the most tantalizing direction for all marketing efforts, “The Skeleton Twins” is approachable and meaningful, confronting an impossible darkness with a generous flow of humanity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When a movie wants to communicate the passage of time, it typically takes tricks in casting or make-up to sell the illusion of the years floating by. Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” attempts something different. Production actually commenced in 2002, with short segments of the helmer’s script filmed over a 12 year period, allowing the stars to age naturally, with emphasis on its youngest characters, who naturally work through adolescence as the feature progresses. It’s a fascinating experiment but a surprisingly relaxed effort. Linklater eschews the poignancy of time passage with this ode to growing up, instead highlighting the development of personality, interests, and defense mechanisms as he observes the world around him. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Quiet Ones” had potential. A creepshow co-produced by Hammer Films, the feature has the right ingredients to at least reach a comfortable plateau of scares and demonic happenings, boasting a creepy doll, unexplained telekinetic events, and a remote location. Disappointingly, director John Pogue doesn’t trust the essentials, trying his best to amplify every single creak and slam to goose the audience, never allowing them to slowly slip into the foreboding atmosphere. Although it’s well-acted, “The Quiet Ones” whiffs on true terror, caught between a habitual need to artificially jolt the viewer and a languid pace, unable to increase pressure in a manner that would benefit the chilling intentions of this misfire. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Jim Jarmusch always makes interesting pictures, but it’s been a while since he’s made a great one. “Only Lovers Left Alive” toys with the waning trend of vampire stories, only instead of plastic passions and teen angst, there’s conversation, history, and a heaping helping of ennui. Shellacked with Jarmusch-branded wit and coolness, the feature is kept in play through near-perfect casting, with stars Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton carrying the effort’s mystery and understandable concentration on fatigue with wonderful timing and physical presence. Eased with pockets of humor, “Only Lovers Left Alive” is comfortable in its own skin, permitting disparate moods room to breathe as the helmer searches for an angle that might make vampirism fascinating again. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s interesting timing to welcome “The Machine” into theaters a week after the release of “Transcendence.” Both pictures share an interest in the possibility of A.I. and human experimentation, but the Johnny Depp movie is a big-budget slog of half-baked ideas, while “The Machine” is a low-budget effort with a stellar visual presence, competent performances, and a tighter grasp on its message of humanity withstanding an artificial form. Although constructed with bits and pieces from other sci-fi films, “The Machine” retains a dynamic presence, with interesting futureworld ideas sharply realized by writer/director Caradog W. James, who submits quite a cinematic vision for next to no production money. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Young & Beautiful” is the latest effort from writer/director Francois Ozon, and it features his interests in behavioral anomalies and troubling domestic developments. It’s a coming-of-age story with a steep learning curve for its lead character, but there is a sense of understanding that permeates the picture, even when it inspects some rather unsavory bedroom business. Distanced but attentive, “Young & Beautiful” remains an intriguing look at a life derailed, though whether or not all this disturbance is intentional remains a question left up to the viewer, with Ozon providing the pieces of a fracture psyche, not the instruction booklet to put it all together. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I’m not exactly sure what audience “The Other Woman” is for. There’s an enormous amount of bathroom humor, a comedic crutch typically aimed at young males, and director Nick Cassavetes loves to ogle the exposed skin of his stars, making it difficult to comprehend its intention to appeal to a female audience. There’s a graphic conversation about pubic hair and scenes of bloodshed, vomiting, and defecation, and the leading man ends up assaulting a woman in the final moments of the movie. There are so many unappealing ingredients to “The Other Woman,” it’s difficult to remember what exactly works in the picture. Thankfully, that list is short, but the film feels very long. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The Luc Besson-created “District 13” and its sequel, “District 13: Ultimatum,” were interesting riffs on the “Escape from New York” template. Boasting a distinct French style and appropriately curt lead performances from David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli, the features also had a hand in bringing the evasion discipline of parkour to the masses, employing fleet-footed antics to jazz up the norm. The films were awfully fun, dusted with that Besson magic that makes mediocrity highly engaging. “Brick Mansions” is the Americanized remake, and Besson (who returns as co-screenwriter) is all out of sorcery. Dismal, appallingly shot and edited, and cast with the least interesting actors around, it’s clear that this carnival ride of flips, jumps, and gentrification should’ve remained a distant European memory. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I like Nick Frost. Who doesn’t like Nick Frost? But I’m not sure what the actor is trying to accomplish with “Cuban Fury,” his English take on the American underdog genre. Ostensibly a movie that celebrates the art of salsa dancing, it’s filled with all sorts of clichéd screenwriting that barely makes sense. There’s a terrific cast here ready to play with Frost, a few of them more jubilant than the leading man, but “Cuban Fury” doesn’t have a personality of its own, in dire need of a more robust collection of laughs and a few less painfully contrived subplots. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A hit in its native Australia, 2005’s “Wolf Creek” failed to find much of an audience in the U.S. Compounding the pain of its cold box office dismissal, the effort is one of a handful of movies to receive a grade of F from the audience-polling firm, Cinemascore (a dubious company, but the distinction remains), suggesting that those who saw the picture hated it. Glacial and needlessly sadistic, “Wolf Creek” wasn’t the type of horror experience than lends itself to a franchise expansion, but don’t ever doubt the conviction of a struggling filmmaking. Director Greg Mclean returns to duty with “Wolf Creek 2,” a did-anyone-ask-for-this? sequel that manages to improve on its predecessor, but I’m not entirely sure that could be classified as a positive reaction. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There’s a specific fantasy tied to the idea of abandoning society for the wild, where such solitude and self-governing promises a richer life, far away from the poisons of the world. “The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Paradise” details such ambition, with the documentary exploring the events surrounding Friedrich Ritter and Dore Strauch, two Germans who left their homeland in the late 1920s to oversee their own island kingdom in the Pacific Ocean, hoping to expand their minds with unencumbered thinking and daily labor. Instead, the pair endured a troubling existence that welcomed new arrivals to their private lives, triggering tensions and eventually suspicious disappearances. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com