Author: BO

As a musical entity, Fishbone was unlike anything seen before. A fusion of funk, ska, punk, and metal, the band blazed the music scene sharing frantic, glorious sounds, sold with some of the most animated live performances around. They’re legends, yet never quite achieved the worldwide popularity required to shape raw talent into a viable business. Instead, the crew scrapped and slugged their way to the middle, creating an intense, intriguing narrative of backstage creation and erosion, captured superbly in “Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone,” a documentary that probes the current state of the group while tracking their origins and industry challenges.

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“Melancholia” is a disaster movie, though it doesn’t resemble the work of Irwin Allen or Roland Emmerich. There are no near misses or romantic melodrama, and the Capitol Records Building remains intact for the duration of the picture. This is Lars Von Trier’s opportunity to stage the end of the world. With the effort comes a flood of misery and doomsday terror, expressed with incredible visuals and a refreshing sense of detachment to monumental planetary chaos. In fact, it would make a corker of a double feature with “2012” — one movie using widespread death to entertain the popcorn-munching masses, the other examining increasing mental clarity as a dire situation greets a soothing psychological position of utter despair. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After all these years, I sort of forgot Martin Sheen can really act. Not that his work has ever been less than stellar, but there’s a hardness he’s perfected on television and film over the last few decades, a posture of authority that’s convincing but curiously repetitive. “The Way” features the finest Sheen performance in quite some time, refined yet superbly vulnerable, and who better to draw the man out of his shell than his own son, writer/director/co-star Emilio Estevez, who crafts an elongated, yet emotionally resonate story of man taking to travel to soothe his fractured soul. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Considering the troubling times we’re currently stewing in, “The Ides of March” has been released at an opportune moment, tempting the discontented with a story of utter political corruption. Of course, we’ve been here before, with cinema always there to expose the evils of ambition, especially when it concerns the fanged machine of Washington. The feature is a perfect fit for co-writer/director/star George Clooney, who constructs a decidedly modern take on underhanded business, yet channels the moviemaking masters of 1970s to help reach an unsettling position of stillness, watching as corrupt men and women slowly come to the realization that they’ve lost their integrity. It’s a sharp, satisfying plunge into duplicity, perhaps Clooney’s most intriguing offering as a filmmaker. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

To appreciate the clunky charms of “Real Steel,” one must accept a bizarre premise that finds the citizens of futuristic America clamoring to watch robots engage in boxing matches. It’s a ludicrous plot befitting an absurd motion picture, but one that at least makes the attempt to be more than just a simple metal-crunching exercise in mindless violence. Youngsters will surely get a charge out of “Real Steel,” but anyone who’s spent time attending movies over the last 40 years will be able to predict every turn of this script, every beat of the performances, and every last swing of the sock-em robots. It’s a film of unbearable formula and occasional stupidity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Taking on the world of astrology is an appealing launching point for the drama “Five Star Day.” Numerous movies have made the effort to celebrate the discipline, using the stars to backdrop tales of love and woe. However, “Five Star Day” has a bone to pick with the industry, with writer/director Danny Buday using a confrontational tone to uncover a rather tender story of human connection, following one man as he seeks to unearth a purpose for astrology, to test its validity in an increasingly cynical world.

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By dramatizing the life and times of biker-turned-angel Sam Childers, Hollywood is offered a golden opportunity to explore an inspirational, church-based tale intended to lift the spirits of the audience, while also leaving plenty of room for some butt-kicking action sequences along the likes of a “Rambo” motion picture. Instead of tears, “Machine Gun Preacher” cries bullets, an interesting twist on the “white man saves all” genre, but not subversive or insightful enough to rescue an otherwise limp, muddled biopic about a baffling man saving Africa once orphan at a time. The feature is well-intentioned, but its choice of director is all wrong. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

At this point, Gus Van Sant either makes completely impenetrable cinema for display on his own IKEA shelf of esoteric achievements (“Elephant,” “Paranoid Park,” “Last Days”) or he slips into mainstream mode, working with name actors and poignant material, creating features intended to be appreciated by a larger audience (“Milk”). “Restless” is an attempt to find a middle ground between approachable and cryptic, but it’s mainly affected, disastrously so, to a degree that’s unimaginably punishing. Allegedly a soft tale of lost souls connecting in the dusk of life, “Restless” instead feels like an Urban Outfitters catalog shoot, boasting two intolerable lead performances from young actors who treat extraordinary trauma as a lazy Sunday afternoon acting school exercise. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Courageous” is a sloppy feature film that concerns an important subject. It’s a Christian-themed picture, leaving its messages unlikely to be viewed by those who need it the most, preaching to the choir about the challenges of fatherhood and responsibility. However, to achieve those pivotal moments of cloud-questioning submission, writer/director/star Alex Kendrick elects a route of cornball storytelling, encouraging flat performances and employing iffy racial stereotypes, unable to snap the increasingly tedious amateur-hour spell. The Godly messages are direct and sincere, but delivered ineffectively, leaving “Courageous” somewhere between a basic cable cop show and a church infomercial. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

If we’re supposed to take Hollywood gossip seriously, it seems there was quite a bit of disagreement when it came to the execution and assembly of “Dream House.” The actors and director have essentially disowned the effort, and Universal Pictures has done their part to hobble the enterprise by issuing one of the worst theatrical posters in recent memory, along with releasing a trailer that honestly gives away the intriguing twist of the movie. It goes without saying that “Dream House” is a distorted mess (and, for the record, isn’t a horror feature), playing like a workprint that somehow fell into a wide release, but the film is not quite the travesty its chaotic production history suggests. I’m not recommending it, but it’s always fascinating to watch a movie where everyone who made it has slinked away from the final product. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The curious case of Anna Faris takes another step sideways with the release of “What’s Your Number?” A confused mishmash of physical comedy and googly-eyed romantic formula, the film is a misfire, though one not content to passively admit defeat. No, Faris isn’t going down without a fight, giving an agreeably daffy performance in need of better material. She’s such an amusing screen presence, it’s painful to see her stuck in this, a contrived offering of relationship blues where the worst thing in the whole wide world to be is single and without dating prospects. You go (away), girl. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“50/50” belongs in that rare subgenre known as “The Cancer Comedy.” It’s not a popular cinematic topic, practically untouched throughout the years, yet this new film from director Jonathan Levine makes the troubling process of merging meaty laughs with exhausting medical emergencies seem like a piece of cake. This is a tremendously endearing, emotionally complex motion picture that gracefully inspects the stages of grief, worry, and, of course, catharsis, approaching a delicate subject matter with a disarming confidence. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A glaring hillbilly with greasy overalls, iffy personal hygiene, and an askew trucker cap is an iconic image in horror cinema, guaranteeing a feature of haunting backwoods torment and chaw-spewing threat. Who better than the uneducated, unshowered people of the earth to trap and devour the privileged youth of today? The horror comedy “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil” looks to pull a little switcheroo with creaky genre stereotypes, disrupting the traditional redneck rampage to dream up something sly, frequently funny, and consistently surprising. In a season of routine scares, here’s something silly and occasionally gruesome, ideal for those who like their shock value with a little more slapstick flavoring. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Music resides at the heart of this joyful documentary, yet the picture is more fascinated with the influence of music education, examining how that discipline and interest helped to inform and shape a generation of young African-American men and women. “Thunder Soul” is the story of the Kashmere Stage Band, a student group from Texas who rose to prominence in the 1970s under the director of Conrad O. Johnson, or “Prof” to his students. It’s a film flooded with memories and declarations of respect, laughs and tears, and plenty of funk to keep toes tapping along as director Mark Landsman investigates how one man’s authority carried from high school to the modern day.

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