Author: BO

While Richard Linklater collects deserved accolades for his upcoming experiment, “Boyhood,” and his ongoing “Before Sunrise” series, writer/director Cedric Klapisch has been working the same concept, tracking the lives of special characters throughout the years. The third chapter is what’s become a continuing examination of maturity, “Chinese Puzzle” follows 2002’s “L’Auberge Espagnole” and 2005’s “Russian Dolls,” catching up with these peculiar personalities as they prepare to greet the age of 40, with a fresh set of complications and responsibilities to manage as lives are turned upside down. Keeping up with a decent sense of humor and oddball interactions, “Chinese Puzzle” manages to sustain the mischief Klapisch started over a decade ago, making this update charming and funny when it’s not pursuing artificial conflicts. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Over the past two decades, James Gray has directed only four features (“Little Odessa,” “The Yards,” “We Own the Night,” and “Two Lovers”), each with their own style, restless fixations, and beauty. His fifth picture is “The Immigrant,” a period melodrama that’s finally seeing release a year after its debut at the Cannes Film Festival, and it fits in perfectly with his oeuvre, using a decidedly cinematic approach to expose raw feelings and gut-rot acts of survival. It’s old-fashioned work befitting its time period, but “The Immigrant” is also gorgeously executed and incisively acted, depicting the isolation of the American Dream with a pure concentration on desperation and manipulation, gifted a sepia glaze to sell the step back in time. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A legendary brand name built over the course of nearly 30 feature films, Godzilla has proven himself to be a valuable cinematic icon, with his monster-stomping ways thrilling audiences all over the world. Often the center of citywide destruction, there isn’t much to do with the character beyond large-scale violence, leaving the human factor to guide all these efforts, in a series that kicked off 60 years ago. 2014’s “Godzilla” isn’t a remake but a reboot, hoping to reignite the fervor for creature mayhem with a newly designed King of the Monsters and a supporting cast of talented actors hired to make awestruck faces and smoothly exchange expositional dialogue, with a newfound concentration on heartbreaking scenes of loss. There is might and fury to “Godzilla” that’s often amazing to behold, but its limitations and weird storytelling choices throttle the escapism, while the titular Goliath merely makes an extended cameo in his own picture. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The stag party is not an uncommon premise for a comedy, permitting filmmakers with ample opportunity to stage all types of drunken debauchery and expose pent-up aggressions. Emerging from Ireland, “The Bachelor Weekend” eschews traditional hell-raising to play out as a comedy of neuroses and secrets, trusting in the significance of character and sharp dialogue to help shape the evolution of a celebration as it goes from hesitation and dismissal to bonding. Hilarious and mindful of heart, “The Bachelor Weekend” does a fine job avoiding expectations, while the cast is simply perfect, managing pathos and punchlines with superb timing and feeling. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Poised to become the sleeper hit of 2014, “Million Dollar Arm” plays a familiar feel-good tune to reach a mass audience. It’s a charmer, but not an especially original one, and those on the hunt for more challenging fare should seek their summer entertainment elsewhere. Instead of edge, “Million Dollar Arm” offers heart, assembling an off center baseball picture that’s big with culture clash comedy and character arcs of self-improvement, leaving little to the imagination. While it’s a formulaic effort, it’s not entirely lazy, putting some genuine thought into these personalities and the struggle of the foreign experience without resorting to mean-spirited stereotyping. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Acting veteran John Slattery makes his feature-length directorial debut with “God’s Pocket,” and while the performer has spent a lifetime around numerous filmmakers, absorbing the finer points of tonal balance, his own foray into storytelling often finds its shoelaces tied together. Death is played for laughs, life is miserable, and there’s not a problem that can’t be solved with alcohol in “God’s Pocket,” and while select scenes brim with a deliciously uncomfortable tension, the overall picture feels incomplete, lost in an effort to summon a sense of neighborhood decay instead of following through on interesting subplots and simmering animosities. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As an actor, Dan Fogler has always been a troubling screen presence. Often stuffed into sidekick roles where his red-faced, mumbly sense of humor could be counted on to bring the laughs, Fogler often floundered in hapless pictures such as “Fanboys,” “Good Luck Chuck,” and “Take Me Home Tonight.” With “Don Peyote,” Fogler aims to enhance his shtick with a heavy dose of surrealism, co-creating (with Michael Canzoniero) this expedition into the folds of consciousness, with emphasis on splattered visions, a taste of madness, and musical numbers helping to bring this no-budget effort to life. To write that this is the most appealing Fogler has been on-screen to date doesn’t mean much, but as scattergun, super-freak-out cinema goes, “Don Peyote” is almost patiently weird enough to work. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I appreciate how the Austrian horror film, “Blood Glacier” (now there’s an ominous title), has interest is using climate change revelations to jump-start a macabre monster movie. It’s not revelatory, but a nice change of pace, placing the blame for nightmarish developments on man’s misuse of Earth. However, not much is made of the premise, which loses intensity early and often, working to blend classic creature effects with low-budget CGI events, unable to drum up much excitement with either tradition. “Blood Glacier” doesn’t have a rich imagination, and while its locations are gorgeous, nearly saving the viewing experience, the mayhem contained within is lukewarm at best. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Belle” feels like sitting through the rehearsal process of a Broadway play that’s in serious need of work. A period drama from director Amma Asante, the feature is a handsome picture with a promising story in the plight of its lead character, who’s caught between her needs and her place during an unforgiving time. There’s plenty of ground to cover when it comes to English prejudices of the 19th century, but “Belle” would rather play to the back row with emphatic melodrama and neatly ordered subplots. When it comes to the business of slavery and bigotry, there’s little need for such formula, making the effort feel strangely safe and uneventful when detailing grandiose challenges to basic human rights. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Although he’s already celebrated the end of the View Askewniverse, and even threatened to retire from filmmaking altogether, Kevin Smith can’t seem to quit his most enduring creation. Last seen onscreen in 2006’s “Clerks II,” Jay and Silent Bob return to the realm of animation for “Jay and Silent Bob’s Super Groovy Cartoon Movie,” a low-budget affair that plays directly to the Smith fanbase with copious amounts of inside references, crude humor, and weed-scented shenanigans. It’s easy to dismiss the softball screenwriting, but there’s a definite speed to the picture that’s encouraging, sprinting through bits of awful humor in an irreverent manner befitting these stoner superheroes. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Moms’ Night Out” is a tamer take on the “The Hangover” formula, electing to play out its mischief as peacefully as possible to preserve its PG rating and respect its Christian inspiration. There’s an acceptable message on the fallibility of motherhood in here somewhere that’s worth screentime to develop, but that purity of feeling is buried under multiple layers of lame jokes and dim supporting performances, while the anarchic spirit the premise hints at never snowballs into a charming, mischievous comedy. “Moms’ Night Out” plays like a failed television pilot, consistently heading in the wrong direction while searching for funny business. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Locke” joins a special breed of movies that play out within a single location. Despite such an enticing filmmaking challenge, this is no thriller. Nobody’s been buried alive or pinned down in a phone booth, this is just the relatively simple tale of a man who’s devoted his entire being to a sense of order enduring the worst night of his life. Tension is conjured through tortured acts of recognition and passes at denial, while lead Tom Hardy delivers an exceptional performance that’s subtle and strong enough to hold viewer attention for 85 minutes, articulating an emotional breakdown with absolute precision. Although it might sound like unbearable directorial showmanship, “Locke” is a crisply defined drama that delivers on suspense and a swirling storm of heartache. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With his first two pictures, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “The Five-Year Engagement,” director Nicholas Stoller proved himself skilled at navigating the “everything improv” mentality that’s absorbed all reaches of American comedy. He showed good judgment, balancing story and silliness with laudable timing, making sure the features held some type of emotional resonance even as they sprinted into stupidity. His latest, “Neighbors,” slips out of his control early and Stoller never quite recovers, forging ahead with a slapdash effort that continually blows its potential on a series of sketch comedy bits that have no connective tissue. “Neighbors” is a blunt instrument, which will be appealing to some, but when one steps back and considers the possibilities of the premise, the disappointment is crushing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Between the release of “Oz The Great and Powerful” and the 75th anniversary reissue of the 1939 classic, “The Wizard of Oz” is officially back in business. “Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return” hopes to continue this financially lucrative run, only here the focus is on CG-animation, executed with a smaller budget than most big studio offerings, hoping to reawaken author Frank L. Baum’s world for box office dominance one more time. Filled with musical numbers and celebrity voices, “Dorothy’s Return” isn’t the expected embarrassment from untested independent film producers, but it’s not exactly magic in the making. More bizarre than charming, the feature has a pleasingly earnest quality about it, but no rousing creative ambition. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With 2010’s “Submarine,” writer/director Richard Ayoade proved himself to be a visually stimulating filmmaker with an addiction to idiosyncrasy, which nearly blocked out the dramatic power of the picture. “The Double” travels deeper into oddity, only here there’s a surreal story of identity to back up such cinematic detours. Inhaling the power of his favorite moviemakers, Ayoade submits a valentine to powerlessness with “The Double,” helming a mild comedy that’s eventually evolves into a technical exercise with the occasional blip of surprise. It’s a fantastic looking picture, but images are the only memorable element of this psychological puzzler, which works extremely hard to register as mischief. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com