Category: Film Review

It’s been a long time since Pauly Shore has the been the star of comedy. The once mighty pop culture force has been elsewhere since the 1990s, when he delivered one genuinely fun feature (1993’s “Son in Law”) during his brief reign, soon falling out of favor with audiences, leaving him to wander around the industry for decades. There was one stab at a comeback (2003’s “Pauly Shore is Dead”), but “Guest House” is Shore’s highest profile release in a long time, putting the former weasel back in charge of laughs for co-writer/director Sam Macaroni, who puts his faith in the star to deliver the goods in a raunchy, riffy offering about a hostile living situation spinning out of control. Unfortunately, “Guest House” doesn’t have much more on its mind than shapeless shenanigans, with Macaroni trying to raise hell without putting in the effort, creating an unimaginative ride of dismal antics and desperation while Shore displays little participatory interest in this mess. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With musician bio-pics all the rage these days, it’s about time someone decided to bring the story of Helen Reddy to the screen. A powerhouse vocalist and cultural icon, Reddy has experienced all the ups and downs of the music industry, also enduring a multitude of challenges in her personal life. She’s a fascinating individual, but it’s strange to watch “I Am Woman,” which is more about her marriage to manager Jeff Wald than it is about Reddy’s achievements and ambitions. Screenwriter Emma Jensen (“Mary Shelly”) looks to honor Reddy, highlighting her as a key figure of the feminist movement with anthemic songs and fierce intelligence, but she makes a curious choice to downplay the individual to focus on the couple as they stumble through the years. There’s more to Reddy than her self-destructive spouse, and it’s very strange that “I Am Woman” doesn’t recognize that, resulting in a disappointing film. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

If we’ve learned anything over the last decade, it’s that Lifetime Movies and Hallmark Channel productions have the potential to be very popular. The business of being easy on the senses has increased in recent years, with the cable networks sticking to a formulaic understanding of new love, nostalgia, and holiday magic. Netflix offers their version of the subgenre with “Love, Guaranteed,” which isn’t set at Christmastime, but it retains a lightly comedic approach, sticky romantic entanglements, and easily solvable problems. There’s nothing here to challenge the audience, but that’s the point of the picture, with the screenplay by Elizabeth Hackett and Hilary Galanoy refusing to color outside the lines. It’s the kind of film made for nights filled with too much wine and regret, and while it does what it does, there’s a growing feeling during the viewing experience that it could try harder to be something special. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As Disney continues to mine their animation catalog for live-action remakes, “Mulan” emerges as the rare offering trying to keep some distance from its inspiration. In 1998, the material offered a broader take on the original Hua Mulan legend, turning the tale into a musical and hiring Eddie Murphy to voice Mushu, a talking dragon. Mushu is gone from the update, along with most lightheartedness, with director Niki Caro committed to a more serious take on the source material, playing up scenes of war and sacrifice, aiming to give the story a richer sense of purpose and influence for a different generation of viewers. The experiment largely works, with the new “Mulan” a different beast in all the right ways, with Caro delivering a sumptuous event film with an excellent cast and newfound fierceness, giving the remake some additional heft as it details an unusual quest for identity and honor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Christopher Nolan is consumed by the ways of time. Such obsessiveness has infused everything he’s made, with recent endeavors such as “Inception,” “Interstellar,” and “Dunkirk” all fixated on the demands and pliability of time. While Nolan likes to go big with his ideas, he’s not one to change up his routine, with “Tenet” his latest movie and, true to form, it inspects the manipulation of time. It’s easy to be wowed by the production effort, which presents massive action imagery and exotic locations sold with major technical achievements. It’s the rest of “Tenet” that’s rather ho-hum, finding Nolan repeating himself to remain in his comfortable, profitable filmmaking bubble, once again issuing a brain-bleeder that only he understands in full, offering audiences a speaker-rattling puzzle that’s not all that interesting to solve. It’s a shiny creation, but if one doesn’t buy into the central concept, there’s nothing here beyond occasional property destruction and heaps of exposition. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Silver Linings Playbook” was the first Matthew Quick novel to enjoy a big screen adaptation, and the author found tremendous success with the movie, which did well at the box office and collected Oscar gold. Eight years later, “All Together Now” tries its luck with the Quick way, this time adapting his YA novel, “Sorta Like a Rock Star,” which examines a teenager with an unbreakable spirit facing tests to her heart and soul that forces her to rethink her positivity. It’s a much softer tale from the writer, who shares screenwriting duties with Marc Basch and Brett Haley, who also directs. The team manages to generate something wonderfully human with the work, and while the midsection teases an onslaught of unbearable melodrama, “All Together Now” remains in control of its tone and sensitivity, securing characters and feelings for this slice of feel-good cinema, earning its warmth along the way. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Measure for Measure” is an adaptation of a William Shakespeare play, which was originally classified as a comedy. In the hands of co-writer/director Paul Ireland (a longtime actor, recently appearing in “Judy and Punch”), the material is stripped of any lightheartedness, going dark with its tale of forbidden love and crime world power plays. Ireland has also downplayed the original dialogue, transforming the story into a modern understanding of hostilities between gangs and cultures, but he keeps sweeping displays of romance and familial discord. “Measure for Measure” doesn’t become exactly what Ireland wants it to be, showing difficult handling deep feelings and, in some cases, thespian expression, with the picture gradually falling apart when it means to come together as a tight exploration of troubled relationships. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When a movie sits on the shelf for two years, it’s usually a sign the picture isn’t very good. Actually, it’s always a sign the picture isn’t very good, with “The New Mutants” finally hitting theaters after a lengthy delay, having been shot over three years ago. It was intended to be a minor riff on the “X-Men” world, with co-writer/director Josh Boone (“The Fault in Our Stars”) trying to bring a little teenage drama to the superhuman superhero franchise, going very small to try something different when it comes to the daily drudgery of being a mutant. While Boone has a history with melodrama, he’s not a visual effects guy or even a horror maestro, painfully ill-equipped to handle the genre demands of “The New Mutants,” which ends up becoming 75% exposition and 25% underwhelming action. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 1989, there was “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” a modest teen comedy that wasn’t expected to do much business, only to become one of the biggest hits of the winter. It offered the world two lovable goons who needed time travel to help finish their history homework and save the world. A sequel arrived in 1991, and “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” was a risk, dialing back the cuddliness for an edgier take on time travel, sending the characters on a darkly comedic adventure to Heaven and Hell. It was magnificent fun. There was a cartoon, merchandise, and even a cereal, but the Bill & Ted experience was pronounced dead in 1992 (after an unwatchable live-action series rightfully tanked), leaving fans to dream about another lap around the circuits of time. 28 years later, the boys are back with “Bill & Ted Face the Music,” and while they’re older and not necessarily wiser, the chemistry shared between stars Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter remains delightful, while screenwriters Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon actually find a way to shake up this universe for one last round of musical unity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Binge” is a semi-parody of “The Purge,” going fully ridiculous with the original picture’s premise, which had a frustrated nation accepting a one-night stand with legal murder, permitting participants to go hog wild as the powers that be cull the herd. For “The Binge,” future American leaders relax their policies toward drugs and drink, giving the nation an evening of complete permissiveness. Of course, screenwriter Jordan VanDina is a little late to the party, as “Purge” sequels have already brought the series down to the level of self-parody, but he tries to create something raucous and tasteless with the new film, looking for a younger audience that might appreciate such a raunchy endeavor. VanDina doesn’t reach the potential of his idea, and he has a funny way of making his adult characters more enjoyable to watch, creating a teen-centric feature where the adolescents only get in the way. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Anthology pictures typically remain in the world of horror, a genre that welcomes small bites of the macabre and the scary. “Immortal” has its moments of uneasiness, but screenwriter Jon Dabach aims for something different with the feature, concocting four tales of titular indestructibleness, viewed through characters experiencing great trauma, personal loss, and pure sadistic glee. The change in pace really suits the endeavor, which ebbs and flows like most omnibus efforts, but it has an offbeat approach to chills. “Immortal” is inventive and engaging, with more emotionality and surprise than similar offerings, as Dabach attempts to lead with strange tests of personality, not always shock value, giving the movie a pleasing unpredictability and comfort with small-scale fantasy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“You Cannot Kill David Arquette” welcomes viewers into the world of the titular actor as he tries to shake up his stagnant life with a return to the weirdness of professional wrestling. If you weren’t aware David Arquette was once a pro-wrestler, don’t feel too bad, nobody really did, with the actor claiming the WCW heavyweight championship title in 2000, forever marked as a fake titan of the squared circle. Following the “sports entertainment” lead of pro-wrestling, there’s nothing particularly real about “You Cannot Kill David Arquette,” with directors David Darg and Price James eschewing a firm documentarian focus to make a reality television pilot for the once and future Deputy Dewey. It’s a fairly obvious submission of career rehabilitation, with Arquette trying to downplay the circus his life has been for the last two decades by…jumping right back into the circus. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Centigrade” is a survival picture that’s based on true story, though the specifics of the inspiration are vague at best. It’s better to put the reality of the story aside and approach the feature as a two-hander drama, where the participants are stuck inside of a car buried in the snow for 85 minutes of screen time. Screenwriters Daley Nixon and Brendan Walsh (who also directs) have quite the creative task, trying to make near immobility into a nail-biting experience of panic. “Centigrade” doesn’t achieve a few of its limited goals, but the movie is largely successful as a claustrophobic mission of self-preservation and logic. It’s not the easiest film to sit through, presenting all sorts of anguish and argumentative behavior, but Walsh believes in the endeavor’s importance as an offering of emotionality and perseverance, even when he can’t communicate such urgency to the viewer. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s difficult to fully comprehend what’s motivating the release of “Robin’s Wish,” which documents Robin Williams and his final days. The feature is basically hosted by Williams’s widow, Susan Schneider-Williams, who endeavors to explore Lewy body dementia, the degenerative disease the comedian was struggling with in the last years of his life, ultimately committing suicide in 2014. Perhaps Schneider-Williams means well enough, sharing the experience of the disease and its nightmarish takeover of the human brain, but she’s also making something of a commercial with director Tylor Norwood, selling the genius of Robin Williams (of course) and her relationship with Robin Williams, making a valentine to her husband that often feels self-serving. Despite its warm intentions, “Robin’s Wish” is a bleak viewing experience, and one that doesn’t feel particularly honest about the subject’s wants and needs, with the package more about Schneider-Williams and her experience with life, death, and self-appointed heroism. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Armando Iannucci is best known for his love of silliness, developing a reputation for smart funny business, which has evolved into a career in satire, expanding his fanbase with work on “The Thick of It,” “The Death of Stalin,” and “Veep,” which has awarded him a chance to take his imagination anywhere. He’s chosen to explore the world of Charles Dickens with “The Personal History of David Copperfield,” adding his fingerprint to material that’s been celebrated and reimagined many times since its publication in 1850. Iannucci has enormous production support for the feature, which intends to bend his career away from more politically minded endeavors, and “The Personal History of David Copperfield” is a gorgeous picture, filled with period details and blessed with the cast that’s greatly appealing. It’s the overall focus of the screenplay that’s less impressive, with Iannucci (and co-writer Simon Blackwell) juggling Dickensian structure with his comedy habits, emerging with a slightly deflated semi-farce. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The One and Only Ivan” presents itself as “Inspired by a true story,” only to introduce the main character, who’s a talking gorilla. It’s not clear how much reality is actually included in the feature, which is very much a modern Disney movie, keeping the story simple with cuddly characters and mild dramatic incidents. It’s easy on the senses but not especially satisfying, with screenwriter Mike White trying to create a picture aware of animal cruelty but not exactly condemning it, refusing a broader sense of villainy out of fear of losing young audiences getting their first sampling of confined creatures and the humans who exploit them. “The One and Only Ivan” is technically impressive, offering a lovely voice cast and excellent CGI, but as an offering of heart, the film remains cold to the touch, sticking with Disney formula to find its way to a conclusion. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Unhinged” had an opening to do something with the idea of thinning American patience hitting the open road, searching for a reason to explode. Other films have explored the idea (including 1993’s “Falling Down”), and the way things are going these days with citizens and their need to express themselves violently, there’s definitely a movie here for the taking. “Unhinged” tries to remain topical for the duration of its main title sequence (showcasing increasing roadway violence), but the rest is pure exploitation from screenwriter Carl Ellsworth, who previously showcased the limitations of his imagination with the “Red Dawn” remake, “The Last House on the Left” remake, and “Disturbia,” which was a loose remake of “Rear Window.” Aiming to create something efficient and ugly, Ellsworth succeeds for the first half of the feature, doing much better with setups than payoffs with this simple exercise in audience manipulation. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Actor Bruce Willis and director Matt Eskandari have a friendly relationship, as “Hard Kill” is their third collaboration in the last year. And by collaboration, I mean Eskandari is in charge of creating low-budget mayhem while Willis sits comfortably somewhere away from the action, collecting what I assume to be a sizable paycheck. They teamed for “Trauma Center” and the reasonably engaging “Survive the Night,” but they press their luck with “Hard Kill,” which puts in next to no effort when it comes to creating even basic suspense or excitement. It’s a siege picture in a way, with the helmer in charge of making pennies spent on the production look like dimes. The production doesn’t have any fresh ideas or, at times, basic competency, staying weirdly small with a plot that welcomes a grander feel for B-movie escapism. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s been almost two decades since the release of “Spy Kids,” and it’s not been fun to watch director Robert Rodriguez run the bubblegum appeal of the original film into the ground, churning out increasingly disappointing sequels. Screenwriter Sarah Rothschild has the idea to semi-revive the concept with “The Sleepover,” and while the feature doesn’t oversee the spy-ening of spunky kids, it does follow the general idea of children getting to know the secret life of parents. Director Trish Sie isn’t the most visionary talent for this type of entertainment, but she handles the escapism adequately, overseeing a lighthearted adventure across Boston as a collection of little ones sample dangers once reserved for adults. “The Sleepover” doesn’t have a special snap, but it offers an amusing ride for family audiences. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Considered the “de facto leader” of the Wu-Tang Clan, RZA has made his way from music to movie direction with mixed results. He attempted to scratch his genre filmmaking itches with 2012’s “The Man with the Iron Fists,” and addressed the power of personal expression in 2017’s “Love Beats Rhymes.” Now RZA is turning his attention to the plight of New Orleans during the shadow of Hurricane Katrina, coming up with a crime story to attract viewers to “Cut Throat City,” which has a lot of frustration to share. Taking on urban ruin and governmental indifference, the feature represents a primal scream from RZA, who’s working to highlight cycles of power and corruption while delivering a tale of thievery concerning reckless young men with no way out. “Cut Throat City” often moves as slow as possible to help underline its points, but there’s fury in the message, easily making it the best picture RZA has concocted during his burgeoning helming career. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com