Category: Film Review

In 1997, Peter Cattaneo directed “The Full Monty.” The little picture about working class blues and male nudity became a big deal, enjoying critical acclaim and sizable box office, also starting a trend of sorts, with studios suddenly ordering their own tales of miserable people overcoming great odds through peculiar hobbies. Cattaneo couldn’t capitalize on the hit film (bottoming out with the awful 2008 comedy, “The Rocker”), and now he’s attempting a similar viewing experience 23 years later. “Military Wives” is based on the true story of female choirs who pour their heart and soul into song while their significant others are away on duty, and the premise is ripe for feel-good entertainment, observing emotionally wounded people coming together for a greater good. While the whole thing seems unbearably contrived, Cattaneo actually locates a pulse for “Military Wives,” finding a sincere way to approach pure cliché. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Two years ago, director Vaughn Stein delivered “Terminal.” It was his attempt at a stylish crime thriller, boosted by star power from Margo Robbie and a rare turn from Mike Myers, but the feature was seriously underwhelming, falling apart long before it reached its crescendo. Stein returns with “Inheritance,” which happens to peak way too soon, delivering an intriguingly twisted premise from screenwriter Matthew Kennedy (making his debut) before it doesn’t do anything of note with it. Stein once again provides a dearth of thrills with his twists and turns, and his feel for casting is way off this time around, finding the wrong people in the wrong roles trying to make a tepid, anticlimactic tale of dark secrets connect on some level. If “Terminal” was slow-burn stroll into tedium, “Inheritance” is in a hurry to get there, making a series of poor creative choices on the way down. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Fighting a fledgling directing career, Michael Showalter scored a hit with 2017’s “The Big Sick,” impressing many with his ability to balance frightening elements of medical uncertainty with silliness, going for big heart with a side of wackiness. Showalter also turned comedian Kumail Nanjiani into a leading man, as viewed in last year’s bomb, “Stuber.” The pair reteam for “The Lovebirds,” though sensitivity is really the last priority for the production, which intends to play as more of a farce, with brief elements of romance to preserve the date movie appeal of the picture. “The Lovebirds” doesn’t possess any noticeable depth, and its sense of humor is seriously lacking, with Showalter in more of a coaching position, cheering on Nanjiani and so-star Issa Rae as they stumble through terrible improvisations, trying to cover for the lack of a complete script. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Scoob!” marks the return of the “Scooby-Doo” franchise to the big screen (at least that was the original release plan), arriving after 2004’s “Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed” failed to match the gross of its 2002 predecessor. However, there’s been no shortage of “Scooby-Doo” entertainment over the years, with Warner Brothers mining the brand name for everything it’s worth, churning out DTV animated movies (where the Mystery Machine gang has paired up with pro-wrestlers, Batman, and KISS) and television shows, making sure there’s a Scooby-themed offering for every star in the sky. And now there’s “Scoob!” Instead of ordering up a uniquely spooky adventure for the characters, the producers have decided to launch the Hanna-Barbera Cinematic Universe, blending known cartoon personalities to help give Scooby-Doo and Shaggy the big-budget formula to inspire future sequels and spin-offs. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After scoring a commercial success with 2012’s “Chronicle,” director Josh Trank lost almost all of his critical and industry goodwill with his follow-up endeavor, the disastrous “Fantastic Four” do-over. While such a public flameout would kill most careers, Trank has managed to hang on to his employability by his fingertips, returning five years later with “Capone,” a much smaller picture for the helmer. While there was a lot of speculation as to who was really behind the colossal failure of “Fantastic Four,” “Capone” basically underlines Trank’s shortcomings as a storyteller, getting lost in his own unpleasant whims with the feature, which gradually becomes a prison sentence for viewers as it tracks the steady decay of Al Capone — a tale nobody asked for, especially from Trank. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Adam Sandler has a major deal with Netflix to create films for himself and his friends, and nobody seems to be benefiting more from the arrangement than David Spade. After appearing in Sandler-starring endeavors such as “The Ridiculous 6” and “Sandy Wexler,” Spade graduated to co-star status in 2016’s “The Do-Over.” He was presented with his own starring opportunity in 2018’s “Father of the Year,” which paired the actor with director Tyler Spindel, and they made one horrible movie. Trying their luck again, Spade and Spindel return with “The Wrong Missy,” which is another collection of gross-out gags, tired references, and buddy-buddy connections to the Sandler Cinematic Universe. And guess what? They’ve made another horrible movie. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Cult movies aren’t born, they’re made by audiences willing to put in the time and money to celebrate features that either died while trying to be mainstream, or never stood a chance when offered for universal acceptance. Cult entertainment is a topic that’s been explored repeatedly in all forms of media (it’s bread-and-butter content for podcasts), but director Danny Wolf hopes to provide expanse and access with “Time Warp: The Greatest Cult Films of All-Time,” which is a three-part examination of cinematic offerings that’ve become a secret language for some, creating legacies few could predict but millions adore. Next up is “Volume 2: Horror & Sci-Fi,” which visits a corner of fandom where the thrills are greater and nightmares are formed, exploring genre efforts that’ve managed to survive initial financial failure and critical dismissal to find popularity, with a few titles going on to be considered some of the greatest features ever made. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There’s something about the idea of finding a bag of money in the middle of nowhere that excites filmmakers. The plot has been explored on multiple occasions, perhaps most effectively in Sam Raimi’s “A Simple Plan,” and it receives the low-budget treatment with “Blood and Money,” which takes the discovery of missing cash to the far reaches of Maine, giving suspense a wintry snap. Writer/director John Barr makes his debut with the feature, and he doesn’t bite off more than he can chew with the material, arranging a straightforward story of survival in a harsh environment, adding parental guilt and bad guys to the mix. “Blood and Money” isn’t a stunning endeavor, but the basics are appealing, finding Tom Berenger appropriately cast as a grizzled, pained man coming into contact with a discovery that changes his life. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Addiction dramas are plentiful, but more and more recent productions have taken a closer look at the opioid crisis, presenting a current examination of broken lives as more powerful drugs take hold of seemingly innocent lives. “Castle in the Ground” is a Canadian production that isn’t interested in preaching to the audience, with writer/director Joey Klein offering a dire immersion into the world of pharmaceutical submission, plunging to the depths of grief and confusion to track one character’s struggle for clarity as he’s clouded by hopelessness. “Castle in the Ground” isn’t an easy sit, and it’s not a complete one either, as Klein prefers to offer a wandering sense of dramatic direction for his characters, electing to examine moment-by-moment choices instead of sticking to a grand arc of deterioration. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When is a remake not exactly a remake? I give you “Valley Girl,” which is a reworking of the 1983 cult hit. What was once a gentle but textured look at a developing romance between opposites in L.A. (a riff on “Romeo and Juliet”) has now been turned into a jukebox musical that’s all about soundtrack hits, candied cinematography, and broad performances. To bring “Valley Girl” back to the screen, the producers have made several changes to the tone and approach of the original film, aiming to reach a much younger audience with a simplified tale of love as it works through cultural and social challenges, and is frequently expressed through song. Director Rachel Lee Goldenberg (a veteran of The Asylum) isn’t trying to find dramatic grit with her vision, she’s striving to generate a party atmosphere for sleepover audiences, delivering a pleasingly fluffy, high-energy offering of teen exuberance. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Beanie Feldstein made a sharp impression in last year’s “Booksmart,” handed a juicy role that provided opportunities for the actress to showcase her range as a dramatic and comedic talent. She did well with good material. Feldstein flies solo in “How to Build a Girl,” which is an adaptation of a 2014 Caitlin Moran novel (she handles screenplay duties), playing an English teenager who, in the early 1990s, receives a thorough education in the ways of maturation and selfishness. Feldstein is an odd choice for the part, but she throws herself into the role, taking on accent duties and cranking up her charms to help director Coky Giedroyc alleviate the often sludgy formula of the endeavor. “How to Build a Girl” doesn’t fall apart, but it threatens to repeatedly, held together by Feldstein’s energy and a colorful supporting cast. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I think most people, if they recall the saga of the Biosphere 2 experiment, remember it as a media-driven curiosity, finding the science of it all pushed away in favor of emphasizing the weirdness of the endeavor. In 1991, a group of trained “Biospherians” elected to seal themselves off from the rest of the world, living inside an Earth system research facility located in Oracle, Arizona for two years, put in charge of various biomes as a way of experimenting with early plans to transfer people to other worlds to live. It was years of build-up and promotion, and the result was a messy collection of mistakes, putting the pure science of the mission in jeopardy as money men and analysts feasted on the shortcomings of the project. Nearly three decades after its debut, director Matt Wolf makes a return to Biosphere 2 for “Spaceship Earth,” a documentary that searches for the true story behind the mystery of the event, with special attention paid to those who put the project together, spending decades of their lives devoted to a vision of environmental exploration. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

About a decade ago, actor Clark Duke started making the rounds as a supporting player in comedies. He was quick with a quip, approachably nerdly, and confident in his one and only hairstyle, making an impression in pictures such as “Kick-Ass,” “Hot Tub Time Machine,” and, well, “Kick-Ass 2” and “Hot Tub Time Machine 2.” Duke couldn’t sustain his demand or find work that really tested him as a performer, but now he’s returned with “Arkansas,” a movie he’s co-written and directed, also taking a supporting part that has him looking a bit different than before. With a newfound drive to tell stories instead of simply participate in them, Duke goes to a familiar place with “Arkansas,” which is a tale of backwoods crime, with a community of toxic types populating the narrative. Outside of Duke’s professional graduation, there’s nothing memorable about the feature, which has a to-do list of cliches it slowly checks off, ending up a bland offering of lowlife survival. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I’ve written this before and I will write again: Quentin Dupieux enjoys the strange stuff. The writer/director likes to make odd little movies, and he’s done so with exciting creativity, unafraid to reach some macabre places while often pursuing sly silly business. He made himself known with 2011’s “Rubber,” the killer tire picture, and continued with entertainingly oddball endeavors such as “Wrong Cops,” “Wrong,” and “Reality.” Staying true to his helming habits, Dupieux returns with “Deerskin,” which tells the tale of a special jacket and its relationship with an increasingly deranged man. Mercifully short and to-the-point, “Deerskin” never bites off more than it can chew, with Dupieux slowly but surely exploring a tale of insanity and filmmaking, offering all the dark comedy and violence one expects of a guy who’s graduated from tires to fringed outerwear when conjuring up cursed, malevolent objects. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Bad Education” plays like a chiller pulled from the darkest area of a screenwriter’s brain, coming up with tale of personal corruption that’s tightly braided with the American educational system, finding rot, literal and otherwise, within an institution meant to buttress the future. It’s frightening to note that the picture is actually based on a true story, with the saga of Roslyn, New York superintendent Frank Tassone brought to the screen by writer Mike Makowsky (“I Think We’re Alone Now”), who has the delicate task of exploring vain and greedy characters with specific attention to their inner lives. “Bad Education” avoids true crime grittiness to be more understanding with motivations, giving director Cory Finley a chance to portion out the shock value of the story, which creeps along, making critical discoveries about seemingly normal people in a riveting manner. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After building her resume with short films, actress Amy Jo Johnson makes her feature-length directing debut with “Tammy’s Always Dying.” While a working actor for nearly three decades, Johnson will be forever known as The Pink Ranger in “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,” delighting young audiences with her youthful spark and ability to sell complete weirdness with a straight face. And now she’s an accomplished moviemaker, taking command of Joanne Sarazen’s intensely introspective screenplay, capturing the material’s dire examples of mental instability while mastering an unusual sense of hope in the making. “Tammy’s Always Dying” has all the ingredients of a grungy indie production, but Johnson makes it all feel human, taking care of her characters and extracting wonderful performances as she shapes an atypical mother/daughter tale. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2018, the release of “Beastie Boys Book” was a surprising development for a band that prided itself on denying any closer inspection of its working parts. It was a massive tome (572 pages), filled with Beastie Boys history, guest commentators, photos, and even recipes, doing a fine job showcasing the lovable impishness of co-writers Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz as they strived to celebrate their professional achievements and highlight the fantastic mystery and humanity of Adam Yauch, who passed away in 2012. “Beastie Boys Book” was a smash success, inspiring Diamond and Horovitz to take the tale on a tour, transforming the pages into a multimedia presentation that delivers basically the same information, only with a bit more intimacy and visual evidence. Shot at the King’s Theater in Brooklyn last year, “Beastie Boys Story” is the document of the live show, offering those unable to see the event a chance to enjoy Diamond and Horovitz’s longstanding partnership, walking through the early years of the group as three teenagers with hardcore ambitions turned into one of the biggest rap acts in music history. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Chris Hemsworth is often cast in physical roles, with producers working very hard to transform him into an action-ready leading man. Recently, he’s done time in “Men in Black: International” and “12 Strong,” while continuing his work in the MCU as Thor in three recent features, but “Extraction” is meant to be his “John Wick.” Directed by Sam Hargrave, a veteran stuntman (in charge of the mayhem found in “Avengers: Endgame” and “Captain America: Civil War”), “Extraction’ makes a very specific attempt to deliver controlled chaos for its audience, going feral with extended chase sequences and moments of highly choreographed brawling. It’s Hargrave’s helming debut, and his instincts with editing leave much to be desired, but the raw power of the movie is impressive, making good use of Hemsworth’s non-Thor appeal, offering the performer a chance to pound bad guys and deal with his character’s potent sense of protection. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Cult movies aren’t born, they’re made by audiences willing to put in the time and money to celebrate features that either died while trying to be mainstream, or never stood a chance when offered for universal acceptance. Cult entertainment is a topic that’s been explored repeatedly in all forms of media (it’s bread-and-butter content for podcasts), but director Danny Wolf hopes to provide expanse and access with “Time Warp: The Greatest Cult Films of All-Time,” which is a three-part examination of cinematic offerings that’ve become a secret language for some, creating legacies few could predict but millions adore. First up is “Volume 1: Midnight Madness,” which delves into the genesis of the cult film as we know it today, inspecting a handful of pictures that managed to survive distribution woes, studio mismanagement, and initial audience apathy to develop into special events that celebrate all the weirdness and wonderfulness of their filmmakers. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Martha Stephens made a distinct impression in 2014 with “Land Ho,” a film she co-directed with Aaron Katz. A deeply idiosyncratic picture, “Land Ho” endeavored to understand the subtleties of male friendships, using the premise of a unique trip to Iceland to examine the interplay and extremes of such a pairing. Losing Katz, Stephens embarks on a solo flight with “To the Stars,” which takes a close look at the details of female relationships when pressure builds inside a rural community during the 1960s. “Land Ho” was a bit of a lark, funny and proudly weird, but “To the Stars” is far more sobering in its depiction of broken hearts and troubled times. Screenwriter Shannon Bradley-Colleary eventually turns to cliché to find a way to close the effort, but there’s true emotion winding through the movie, which takes its characters seriously, treating their wants and needs with a wonderful level of respect, gifting the feature refreshing power when it comes to primal emotions. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com