Category: Film Review

“Death House” is supposed to be an event movie. And perhaps it will be for horror hounds who demand very little from storytelling as long as highlights involving gore, nudity, and snarling genre legends are included. With those limited demands in mind, yes, “Death House” does deliver, with writer/director Harrison Smith in charge of a battle royal of cult film legends, pitting famous faces against one another to delight the faithful. The reality of the picture is its tedium, with Smith possibly unable (due to budgetary limitations) do something appropriately volcanic with the premise. He aims for something slightly ambitious, trying to bring a John Carpenter sensibility to what eventually becomes a prison riot feature, but Smith doesn’t work the material into a frenzy, potentially disappointing those expecting more of a free-for-all bloodbath, not just a series of pseudoscience monologues.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Hunter Killer” is trying to fill a gap, delivering a Tom Clancy-style military thriller while Clancy’s books remain out of fashion in Hollywood, with television currently home to the latest Jack Ryan adventure. Of course, nothing can top the sheer cinematic mastery of 1990’s “The Hunt for Red October,” but “Hunter Killer” (based on the book “Firing Point” by George Wallace and Don Keith) gives it a shot, taking to land, sea, and office to detail a point of crisis in world security. The picture has a few stars to help settle the viewing experience, but not a lot of originality, playing it careful with basic elements of patriotism and patrol. Director Donovan Marsh is in way over his head with the thriller, but he manages a few creative achievements as he sets out to make a movie that’s been done before, and much better too. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With other bands and artists having their music bio-pic moments over the last 15 years, it’s time for Queen to step up and enjoy the spotlight. However, “Bohemian Rhapsody” isn’t exactly about Queen as a unit, with most attention paid to its singer and showman, Freddie Mercury. The frontman passed away nearly 30 years ago, and the screenplay (by Anthony McCarten) sets out to focus on his rise to fame and music world dominance, also charting his handling of personal sexuality and identity, working through several complicated relationships. “Bohemian Rhapsody” isn’t a greatest hits compilation or a jukebox musical. It’s more of a funeral piece for Mercury, trying to polish his status as a legendary singer while circling over the same personal issues for 130 minutes. What probably should’ve been a rip-roaring summation of Queen’s lasting appeal is diluted into a television movie that ignores the group effort for long stretches of the feature. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

The idea of a film about a wild night out with actor Herve Villechaize conjures visions of a “Hangover”-style picture, highlighting crazy antics and strange sights, bringing out the beast of an unusual icon who was known to participate in craziness more often than not. What writer/director Sacha Gervasi (“Hitchcock,” “Anvil: The Story of Anvil”) actually delivers is an unnervingly genuine study of two fallen people trading bits of honesty over the course of a long morning, using his own interactions with Herve to inspire the deepest pits of despair found in the screenplay. “My Dinner with Herve” has some laughs and fits of manic energy, but surprises with its dramatic content, finding Gervasi interested in depicting Herve with tremendous care, remaining truthful about his mischief, but openly inspecting his thinly veiled depression.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Jonah Hill has come a long way since his breakout part as a particularly persistent eBay store customer in 2005’s “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” Mix in some box office successes and a few Oscar nominations, and Hill has enjoyed an unusually varied career. He’s now a director, taking command of “Mid90s,” a low-budget ode to the pains of youth, taking audiences back a few decades, recalling a time where the world wasn’t so connected, making social groups manageable and problems easier to hide. Hill evokes the era superbly, delivering a small but assured read of maturity before the digital age, while paying homage to the juvenile delinquent movies of his own time. “Mid90s” is a rough sketch of a film, but it’s compellingly made and acted, with Hill only offering small storytelling challenges for himself, more invested in the hang of the effort, not dramatic tautness.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There have been several documentaries about the rise and fall of Studio 54. There was even a 1998 film about the club that was pushed as the big movie of the summer, only to bomb when it opened, effectively destroying a comeback for the Studio 54 aesthetic. What most productions concerning the discotheque have in common is a great curiosity about its co-owner, Steve Rubell, zeroing in on his eccentricities and sexual appetites, embracing his reputation for showmanship at the hottest establishment of the 1970s. But there was another man shaping the madness. Ian Schrager is the often ignored figure behind the club, partnering with Rubell to bring New York City’s private nightlife to the masses. Director Matt Tyrnauer seizes a chance to approach the well-worn subject from a fresh angle, making his “Studio 54” as Schrager-centric as possible, using the run time to introduce the other half of the magic duo to pop culture consciousness.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s been a long, hard road for “London Fields,” which is finally being released after a series of delays. It was shot in 2013, making the last five years a gauntlet of production issues, lawsuits, and general reluctance to deliver it to an audience. And there’s a good reason for that, with this adaptation of a Martin Amis novel a complete mess of characters and situations, delivered with a slow pour pace that makes bad ideas and wrong tonal directions feel like an eternity to get through. Amis’s book has been repeatedly described as “unfilmable,” making the production’s effort to turn pages into cinema all the more baffling, wasting time and money on a project that should rightfully live only inside the reader’s mind, giving Amis room to play with idiosyncrasy and noir-scented fantasy in his own distinctive way.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

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