Category: Film Review

Somehow, without anybody really taking notice besides Rowan Atkinson’s accountant, 2003’s “Johnny English” has become a franchise. There’s been no rush on sequels, with “Johnny English Strikes Again” coming seven years after the first follow-up, “Johnny English Reborn,” giving Atkinson time to breathe between spy comedy assignments. It’s pretty clear this downtime isn’t used to refine the screenplay, as “Johnny English Strikes Again” is an incredibly routine assortment of physical humor and mugging from the star, who isn’t interested in doing anything different with the series, once again returning to the world of feeble 007 parody and lengthy slapstick sequences. It certainly isn’t mean-spirited, but everything that needed to be said about the character was presented in the original film, leaving the second sequel missing a reason to be.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Don’t Go” takes an unimaginable situation of loss and grief and attempts to use such despair to fuel something of a time-travel mystery. It’s an uneasy mix of the very real and sci-fi, and screenwriters Ronan Blaney and David Gleeson (who also directs) at least try to do something with it for the first half of the movie. It’s the decline after key reveals that torpedo most of what “Don’t Go” is hoping to achieve, offering an unsatisfying conclusion to a grand build-up of sin and misery, making its most outlandish ideas the most effectively sold. There’s unrealized potential throughout the feature, which seems afraid to go for a wilder ride of the unknown, even when it clearly doesn’t want to remain in touch with reality.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Halloween” isn’t the first time the franchise has decided to shift gears, attempting to rework the brand name for a fresh run of sequels. Heck, it’s not even the first time Jamie Lee Curtis has been involved in long-time-coming installment, popping up in 1998’s “Halloween: H20” to complete her arc as battered babysitter Laurie Strode. After four decades of strange creative decisions and wacky character arcs, the new “Halloween” hopes to link arms with the old “Halloween,” with co-writers Danny McBride, Jeff Fradley, and David Gordon Green (who also directs) bringing back Curtis for another long-time-coming showdown with the masked monster, hoping to give fans a proper continuation after they’ve sat through a few rotten ones. The Shape is back, in a proper killing mood, but the writing isn’t pushing for a fresh take on old holiday business, playing to the faithful with a formulaic endeavor that only colors outside the lines for a few brief scenes. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

“The Purge” films (and, apparently, a television show) are often praised for their depiction of American life as decency and community melts away into war between classes and races, merging exploitation cinema with social commentary. It’s a bit lofty to assign such intelligence to what’s largely B-movie nonsense, especially with “The Oath” now in rotation. It’s hard to believe that a decade ago, Ike Barinholtz was doing Batman impressions for Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, and now he’s written and directed one of the most precise depictions of the country in the Trump age. While he’s making a comedy, Barinholtz cuts fairly deep with his understanding of political divide and familial antagonism, maintaining a scarily realistic depiction of America in 2018, with all of its bluster, misinformation, and dangerous patriotism, rolled up tightly into a darkly hilarious farce that’s as attentive to laughs as it is knowing winces. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

Perhaps some comparisons will be made to the 2013 thriller, “The Call,” but the Danish thriller, “The Guilty,” is truly its own thing, doing something deeper and more suspenseful with the basic premise of an emergency services operator suddenly in charge of a volatile situation during what should’ve been a routine shift. Co-writer/director Gustav Moller doesn’t cheapen the viewing experience with chases and act-based escalations, electing to remain tight on the main character as he tries to manage a potentially disastrous situation from the comfort of his work station. “The Guilty” is suspenseful, providing all the nail-chewing moments an effort like this requires, but it’s also morally complex, with Moller delivering a fascinating character study to go with all the twists and turns.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A few years ago, co-writer/director Jim Hosking made his feature-length debut with “The Greasy Strangler.” It was a largely indescribable film, made with equal parts silliness and madness, showcasing Hosking’s idiosyncratic point of view and willingness to push visual oddity about as far as he could get away with and still have something fans of fringe entertainment would want to see. “The Greasy Strangler” is really its own thing, but Hosking returns with a similar vision for “An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn,” which continues the helmer’s fascination with the bizarre, this time bringing on bigger stars and enjoying a larger budget to help create his universe of unpleasant people engaged in bizarre relationships and personal missions, participating in a grand game of extremity for Hosking.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Gareth Evans turned himself into a cult movie deity with 2011’s “The Raid: Redemption,” a hard-charging actioner with extreme attention to stunt detail and ferocious violence. Evans stayed close to home for 2014’s “The Raid 2,” an overlong sequel that worked to up the intensity of the series, placing direct attention on ways to deliver a prolong big screen massacre. Evans breaks free from the world of “The Raid” with “Apostle,” which is far removed from urban pummelings and crime family dynamics, marching forward with something ghoulish, primal, and period. “Apostle” is as screamingly graphic as anything Evans has done before, with the helmer making sure aggression flows throughout this turn-of-the-century horror show, dipping a mix of “The Crucible” and “The Wicker Man” into a gurgling vat of blood and pain.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There’s temptation with movies about addiction, with most filmmakers hoping to ease the frustration of such a lifestyle by going sentimental, trying to adjust the focus to tears instead of true behavioral comprehension. It’s a logical dodge, but “Beautiful Boy” isn’t compelled to take things lightly just to secure audience interest. It’s an adaptation of David Sheff’s book, “Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction,” and Nic Sheff’s book, “Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines,” with screenwriters Luke Davies and Felix Van Groeningen (who also directs) combining two experiences with drug abuse into one tough but understanding picture. “Beautiful Boy” is hobbled somewhat by confusing editing, but the core message of powerlessness remains in full effect, treating addiction and recovery with the clear-eyed sense of confusion it deserves.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s difficult to know what to think about an 83-minute-long movie that spends its first 12 minutes killing off a character the audience has no emotional attachment to. That’s a hefty chunk of screen time to devote to an event that’s not entirely critical to the plot, but “The Super” doesn’t have much else to offer. It’s a horror picture from director Stephan Rick and screenwriter John J. McLaughlin, who pursue a formulaic ride through the shadows, blending bits of black magic with twists and turns, trying to remain one step ahead of the audience. They succeed at conjuring confusion, but probably not the kind they intended, as “The Super” has spent a little too much time in the editing room, emerging as an overly managed chiller that’s not particularly scary. Mostly bewildering.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Judge “Change in the Air” by storytelling alone, and there’s not much to recommend. It’s slow, with long stretches of introspection that prevent it from achieving a cinematic rhythm. One has to approach the picture as something slightly more poetic, with writer Audra Gorman teasing spiritual awakenings to inspire personal drama. It’s a slightly disorganized drama, but director Dianne Dreyer has a lot of faith in her cast, giving the ensemble plenty of distance to help them find their way as personality mildness eventually darkens into an assessment of deepest sin. “Change in the Air” is bizarre but never outrageous, with the production aiming to disarm an older audience with its assessment of aging and death, dusted with a little heavenly magic.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2015’s “Goosebumps” didn’t exactly light up the box office, but it did the right kind of business for the spooky season, managing to entice families into the multiplex during October, which is a month normally reserved for more adult escapism. The film brought the world of author R.L. Stine to the screen, cheekily inserting the writer into his own adventure, delivering a self-referential romp with horror elements that took its time to get going, but once it did, highlights arrived, primarily due to the acting effort from Jack Black, who played Stine. Black is absent (at least in physical form) for much of “Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween,” which remains in the YA chiller universe, but moves on to new characters and a challenge of monster-busting that isn’t anything special, but it’s not difficult to digest either. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s a credit to director Damien Chazelle’s creative drive that he decided to tackle “First Man” as his follow-up to 2016’s “La La Land,” which not only did excellent business, it brought him Oscar gold, reaching career heights with only his third movie. Instead of trying to milk the success with a knock-off, Chazelle heads the moon and back with this Neil Armstrong bio-pic, forcing the helmer to turn away from syrupy sentimentality and cinematic wonders and focus on the steely procedure that sent Neil into space. It’s an epic story told with as much breath-on-glass intimacy as possible, with Chazelle and star Ryan Gosling striving to respect the accomplishment, but also detail the ferocious inner drive of the astronaut. “First Man” is intense, with visceral highs and emotional lows, and it pushes the helmer out of his comfort zone, resulting the best feature he’s made to date. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

As it has been often reported over the last year, “The Old Man & the Gun” has been marked as the final acting gig for star Robert Redford, who’s trying to find an elegant way out of his incredible career, at least for now. There’s really not a better role to retire on than this, with Redford required to use most of his charm to bring the picture to life, doing so with remarkable effortlessness. It helps that Redford has a fan in writer/director David Lowery, who does his best to make sure the actor is backed up with a quality feature, and one that shows off a lighter side to the helmer, who was last seen plumbing the depths of ennui with 2017’s “A Ghost Story.” “The Old Man & the Gun” stays with a slower rhythm of mischief, but it handles well, with Lowery paying homage to the cinema of his youth with the star of many of those movies. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Tamara Jenkins is a filmmaker, but she doesn’t work with any sort of regularity. I’m sure there’s a story there that either details industry ugliness or personal detachment, but when she finally does manage to put a project together, it’s usually quality work. In the last two decades, she’s made three movies, including 1998’s “The Slums of Beverly Hills” and 2007’s “Savages,” and now she returns with “Private Life,” providing another reminder that she’s a thoughtful helmer who should really be out there more often. Embarking on another story of startling intimacy, Jenkins turns her attention to the trials of conception, examining the process of fertilization as its endured by an older couple struggling to have a baby of their own. It feels autobiographical but it plays solidly dramatic, with Jenkins keeping her sense of humor and honesty when taking on a medical journey that has the capacity to decimate the human spirit.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

12 years ago, director Paul Greengrass made a potentially disastrous creative decision by trying to dramatize the events of United Airlines Flight 93, only five years after the terrorist attacks on 9/11. Dealing with wounds that will never heal, Greengrass put his faith in the power of cinema, using evidence and interviews to deliver a searing understanding of fear and courage, remaining very careful with the experience of lives lost. “United 93” was one of the best films of 2006, and its creative concentration supports the very existence of “22 July,” which recreates the 2011 Norway terrorist attacks that took 77 lives. It’s not that this story needed to be brought to the screen, but Greengrass is the right helmer for the job, showing caution with the thin-ice viewing event, hoping to shed light on issues in Europe by transforming headline news into an achingly personal story of grief and survival.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Megan Griffiths has made a handful of movies during her career, with a few of them failing to inspire much confidence in her helming abilities. Stumbling through “Eden” and “Lucky Them,” Griffiths tried to make intimate films about personal issues, but phoniness was difficult to shake, coupled with a few troubling casting choices. The planets align for Griffith in “Sadie,” which has the benefit of a disturbing premise sold without much distracting exploitation, keeping to a low rumble of dysfunction and manipulation, permitting some behavioral authenticity to come through as intended. There’s a “Bad Seed” element to the tale that’s enticing, but Griffiths doesn’t go wild with thriller interests, electing to preserve a natural development of disillusionment to entice emotional involvement before strangeness starts to creep in.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

From marketing efforts to screenplay nods, there’s a lot in “All Square” that’s meant to evoke the vibe of the 1976 classic, “The Bad News Bears.” Screenwriter Timothy Brady isn’t shy about his fandom, working to update the concept for a modern age, merging the innocence of Little League and the corruption of the adults in charge of raising the players. Despite some similarities, Brady generally pushes to do his own thing with the material, going darker with guardian motivations, while the kids are mostly pawns in a dangerous game of sports betting. “All Square” doesn’t succeed on the humor front, it’s a bit too oppressive to trigger laughs, but Brady offers a character study that’s textured, giving viewers a feel for life lived beneath a hardened exterior.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The big draw of “Stella’s Last Weekend” is the reunion of siblings Nat and Alex Wolff, who’ve come together to act for their mother, Polly Draper, who wrote the picture for her children. Eleven years ago, they were a family on the uncomfortably titled Nickelodeon program, “The Naked Brothers Band,” and now the Wolff boys have gone their separate ways, with Nat making his way through independent productions, while Alex scored a hit with last summer’s “Hereditary.” Draper doesn’t have much for her stars to do in “Stella’s Last Weekend,” which provides only a loose narrative to keep itself on course, while most of the feature is filled with brotherly riffing and wishy-washy behavior. It’s not a sharpened drama, though it may appeal to those simply here to enjoy the view, watching Nat and Alex manage a meandering story as Draper tries to conjure a reflective mood, putting her faith in the moment, not an entire story.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Better Start Running” is trying to be a road movie, and one that’s populated with damaged people hoping to escape their lives for various reasons. It carries the illusion of a mild ride of shenanigans, with characters on a mission to cross the country, stopping at roadside attractions and getting to know one another. The screenplay by Chad Faust and Annie Burgstede gives off the impression that it was really supposed to be about something, with bits and pieces of real-world trauma detected in the fog of formula that blocks out the sun in this surprisingly joyless dramedy. Director Brett Simon visibly struggles throughout “Better Start Running,” always hesitant to give the feature a defined arc of emotional enlightenment, preferring to make a meandering, almost incomplete picture instead.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Just over a decade ago, Sony attempted to do something with the character of Venom, adding the wily symbiote to an already overstuffed “Spider-Man 3,” assigning Topher Grace the challenge of bringing a vicious alien organism to life. It didn’t work, but there’s a distinct never say die attitude in the world of comic book movies, and Venom is much too bizarre a creation to pass up for good. The hulking black beast with Cadbury Creme Egg eyes and a Gene Simmons tongue has returned in “Venom,” finding a much more committed actor in Tom Hardy to portray the duality of man and symbiote. The picture is not without its problems, offering one of the weaker third acts in recent memory, but director Reuben Fleischer captures a particular spirit with “Venom,” which is violent and silly, juvenile and demented, summoning a compelling mess of personalities and property destruction. It doesn’t have the epic stance of its superhero competition, but the feature does just fine existing in its own world of impish behavior and premiere Hardy freak-outs. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com