Author: BO

Ben Stiller is primarily known for funny business. While every artist deserves the opportunity to expand their creative horizons, it’s difficult to understand what Stiller was aiming for with “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” After “Reality Bites,” “The Cable Guy,” “Zoolander” and “Tropic Thunder,” the director/star drops the overt laughs to play lyrical, helming this hymn to the human experience that’s insistent in its importance, but void in its emotions. While gorgeously shot and peppered with sweet, alert performances, “Walter Mitty” doesn’t add up to much, stuck in neutral as Stiller attempts to figure out what type of movie he wants to make. It’s the most elaborate piece of mediocrity in the 2013 film year. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Wolf of Wall Street” is a work of pure insanity. Mercifully, it’s also the latest from director Martin Scorsese, which guarantees some degree of cinematic refinement when it comes to the depiction of excess in all its forms. It’s a rowdy, relentless picture, chasing a rowdy tone of chemically-drenched madness and lip-licking greed, eating up three hours of screen time as it beats a repetitive sense of physical collision and brain-spinning hyperactivity into the ground. Although it overstays its welcome, “The Wolf of Wall Street” has some truly inspired chaos to hold attention, led by an eye-bulging, spittle-spraying performance by Leonardo DiCaprio, who once again takes the title as the most feral actor working today, channeling his inner badger to portray a man without morals, decency, and self-control, flaming out in a most spectacular manner. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom” is a strong, articulate portrait of South African leader Nelson Mandela, but it wouldn’t be as compelling as it is without the participation of stars Idris Elba and Naomie Harris. Two powerful performances that are direct in their firepower and subtle in emotion, the actors bring density to the traditionally thin bio-pic genre, allowing the viewer to understand deep-seated motivations and the passage of time, which is a crucial element to this story. Competently assembled by director Justin Chadwick (“The Other Boleyn Girl”) and screenwriter William Nicholson (“Les Miserables”), the feature is surprisingly honest and welcomingly underplayed, generating an understanding of the Mandelas instead of blindly celebrating their accomplishments. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The holiday season receives a dose of troubling behavior in “White Reindeer,” a darkly comic tale of mourning from writer/director Zach Clark. Working with a limited budget, the helmer brings to the screen an unusual tale of mourning, employing Christmas cheer as a mocking reminder of false sincerity as we watch a woman’s life fall to pieces. Sounds like a treat, right? Well, in many ways “White Reindeer” is a delight, with a sharp script of surprises and a finely bewildered lead performance from Anna Margaret Hollyman contributing to an amusing, vaguely horrifying journey into psychological paralysis, soaked in eggnog and scored to the repetitive sounds of seasonal hits. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Somewhere underneath all the hair and costumes is a fine motion picture called “American Hustle.” It’s a period piece sampling from the style and discomfort of the 1970s, and it’s the latest from writer/director David O. Russell, a helmer currently on a tear with the back-to-back successes of “The Fighter” and “Silver Linings Playbook.” That momentum is halted a bit by “American Hustle,” but the movie remains an evocative, churning inspection of responsibility and deception, only communicated in a Russellian cinematic language that takes some time to get used to. A bizarrely still, tortured caper, the feature offers exceptional performances and a coarse script, yet attention always manages to return to its visual impression, calling up the decade in the strangest ways. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Saving Mr. Banks” tells the story of how the 1964 smash “Mary Poppins” came to be, weathering a difficult creative process that featured intense disagreements between author P.L. Travers and Walt Disney. Although it may seem like a joyous picture about the birth of a classic, “Saving Mr. Banks” is unexpectedly dark, prone to belaboring its mournful elements as if to apologize for its lighter side. Masterful performances carry the effort, and observance of the screenwriting process is fascinating, but here’s a movie that seems far too bland to truly explore the diseases that haunted Travers for the duration of her life, leaving director John Lee Hancock powerless to manufacture the tearjerker the screenplay is aching to become. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Walking with Dinosaurs” is based on the popular 1999 documentary series that tried to put the viewer into the world of these massive, fierce creatures through a mix of CGI and live-action cinematography. A massive hit, the program spawned a brand name that carried on to a live stage show that used puppetry to wow audiences. Now it’s time to conquer the big screen, though the producers have decided to water down the educational inspiration behind the material, hoping to capture more imaginations through action sequences, cartoon voicing, and jokes about fecal matter. “Walking with Dinosaurs” is impressively constructed, with stunning animation, but it’s a frustratingly insulting endeavor that pushes away the awe of paleontology for the comfort of family film convention. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Joel and Ethan Coen make movies a certain way — a thumbprint that’s created some of cinema’s most powerful and delightfully lopsided features. They rarely miss, and even when they fail to live up to expectations, their pictures are exceptionally layered, idiosyncratic efforts that charm with their tight craftsmanship and impish sense of humor. “Inside Llewyn Davis” is perhaps their most challenging endeavor, asking viewers to process the existence of a man who refuses to get his life together, embarking on an aimless tour of his own misery with razor-sharp edges to his personality that cut those daring to get close. Evocative and steadfastly Coen-esque, “Inside Llewyn Davis” is nevertheless a chore to sit through, missing a certain snap that usually comes so easily to the filmmakers. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The original “Anchorman” didn’t exactly tear up the box office, but the comedy did fairly well in the summer of 2004 before soaring as a cult hit on home video. It’s odd that it took nearly a decade for a sequel to come together, finding the creative team of co-writer/star Will Ferrell and co-writer/director Adam McKay a little rusty when it comes to the revival of screen insanity. While not quite as snappy as the previous effort, “Anchorman 2” remains loaded with laughs and heavy-handed but clever satire. Missing a certain hellraising attitude, the follow-up nevertheless finds its footing quickly, allowing Ferrell and his supporting cast time to feel around the edges of stupidity, locating old rhythms as Ron Burgundy is hit in the face by 1980. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In an effort to expand his empire, writer/director/producer/star Tyler Perry has set his sights on the holiday season and all the perennial business it offers. “A Madea Christmas” is the eighth film featuring the titular behemoth, though it feels like the hundredth, with Perry serving up the same stale brew of moral lessons and pratfalls, only here the antics are infused with a yuletide ambiance that’s only marginally convincing. Aggressively broad, half-realized, and intermittently inexcusable, “A Madea Christmas” is dead on arrival, and no amount of seasonal cheer and supporting turns from former “Facts of Life” stars is going to steer the sleigh to satisfaction. Even for a Tyler Perry movie, this feature seems excessively cheap and lifeless. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The question posed last year was how director Peter Jackson was going to stretch the thinness of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel, “The Hobbit,” to meet the needs of three feature films. With the release of the second chapter, “The Desolation of Smaug,” the strain is beginning to show. Not built for such an extensive big screen adaptation, “The Hobbit” is fighting for oxygen in this sequel, failing to provide a reason (beyond a financial one) why the material should carry on for three years. It’s still enjoyable fantasy fun, but “The Desolation of Smaug” has difficulty coughing up reasons for its extended run time (161 minutes) and legion of characters. And this is only the midway point in the story. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com