Category: Film Review

The collision between humans and monsters is once again recycled for family entertainment in “Smallfoot,” with the picture’s focus on neurotic, sheltered yetis about to have their whole world shattered. The feature is an adaptation of a Sergio Pablos book, but the production goes out of its way to be its own thing, eschewing a sustained run of madcap antics to become a musical of sorts, with periodic breaks in the action to do some singing and dancing. “Smallfoot” has color courtesy of co-writer/director Karey Kirkpatrick (“Over the Hedge,” “Imagine That”), but it’s a laborious film that’s too caught up in exposition to have much fun with itself, with an uneven balance of mischief and metaphor. Whatever amusement manages to make it all the way to the screen doesn’t last for very long.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Donald Petrie has been here before. 30 years ago, he helmed “Mystic Pizza,” a low-key dramedy about life around a pizzeria that co-starred Julia Roberts. And now there’s “Little Italy,” another dramedy about life around a pizzeria (two of them to be specific), and this one offers Julia’s niece, Emma Roberts, as one of its main attractions. Perhaps Petrie is trying his luck again after striking out with many duds (“My Life in Ruins,” “Just My Luck,” “Welcome to Mooseport”), but he’s an impossibly bland filmmaker, and “Little Italy” is another offering from his creative kitchen that has no discernable flavor. 1988 can only happen once, leaving Petrie struggling to do something with his latest endeavor, which plays everything so safely, it’s exhausting long before it’s obnoxious.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“All About Nina” is a difficult film to watch. It’s partially engineered to be that way, with writer/director Eva Vives endeavoring to create a screen space that’s suffocating and unrelentingly bleak, using a tightening grip to support a character study of a thirtysomething woman suddenly facing the demons she’s been unable to outrun. The movie is a churning assortment of abrasive personalities and self-destructive behaviors, but somewhere in the middle of all the hostilities, there’s supposed be some faint light of realization, giving viewers an exit out of the darkness Vives supplies. It’s hard to sense any sense of achievement here, but there’s plenty of pain to go around, giving actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead a meaty role that demands a full-body commitment to both the abyssal agony of the part and her vocation as stand-up comedian.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The curious career of Alexander Nevsky takes another deadening turn with “Maximum Impact,” the Russian actor’s latest attempt to achieve some level of global fame with a Hollywood-style actioner. Nevsky’s big but he can’t act, electing to surround himself with a highly bizarre collection of thespians who are known for taking any type of paycheck role that comes their way. Nevsky’s got the physical presence, but his energy reserves run low in this painfully amateurish production, which doesn’t take long to shed any level of seriousness, emerging as a parody of VOD thrillers, with director Andrzej Bartkowiak trying to make sense of Ross LaMann’s loopy screenplay, which tosses cliches and characters into a blender, making B-movie paste that’s impossible to make sense of, much less enjoy.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I can’t think of a movie more perfectly suited for a Sunday afternoon matinee than “Tea with the Dames.” It’s a film about friendship, camaraderie, and memory, taking viewers to the English countryside to spend 80 minutes with Judi Dench, Joan Plowright, Maggie Smith, and Eileen Atkins as they discuss themselves and others for director Roger Michell. While not without some moments of gravity, “Tea with the Dames” is as delicious as its sounds, breezing through easy banter that’s been in play for decades, with cameras capturing a friendship among actresses that’s developed with care and respect. Michell knows what he’s doing here, wisely getting out of the way as the Dames feel around for topics, digging up personal history as they discuss their lives, offering fascinating perspectives and triggering unexpected bellylaughs along the way. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

There’s a lot of information out there concerning the life and times of Gilda Radner, including her years on “Saturday Night Live” and her 1989 autobiography, “It’s Always Something.” The challenge for director Lisa Dapolito is to reach beyond established evidence and create a more intimate study of Radner, and “Love, Gilda” manages to do just that. Utilizing home movies and diary pages, Dapolito embarks on a psychological odyssey with Radner’s own thoughts driving the documentary, examining her fears and frustrations as the picture surveys numerous successes where the comedian’s own brightness of spirit was the very thing that defined her stage appeal. “Love, Gilda” is missing a few key perspectives here and there, but it’s a rounded understanding of Radner’s experience and her headspace as she tried to navigate the demands of fame, the quest for love, and hope for inner-peace. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

While writer/director Dan Fogelman has made other movies (2015’s “Danny Collins”), one would never know that by simply watching his latest endeavor, “Life Itself.” Best known as the creator of the NBC show, “This is Us,” Fogelman’s small screen addiction to melodrama doesn’t sit well in multiplexes, attempting to replicate the smashing fates formula that’s served him well on network television. Playing like a T.V. pilot that badly wants to be taken seriously as an R-rated inspection of human connections, “Life Itself” makes the crazy creative decision to be completely unlikable. Downright odious at times. It’s enough for Fogelman to be manipulative, which every frame of this picture is, but it’s another to be completely tone-deaf with characterization, turning the film into a twisted game where the audience is actively rooting for death to win in the end.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Nicole Holofcener is known as a filmmaker capable of quality work. The architect of “Friends with Money,” “Please Give,” and her last effort, 2013’s “Enough Said,” Holofcener is one of the few helmers left with a distinct interest in the lives of adults, giving maturing concerns screen time to bloom into near-disasters. For “The Land of Steady Habits,” Holofcener finds inspiration from a book by Ted Thompson, but she makes the material her own in many ways, guiding a gifted cast through an obstacle course of setbacks, poor decisions, and lost hope, all the while infusing the screenplay with dry wit and understated emotion. “The Land of Steady Habits” isn’t going to satisfy those in need of hospital corners from their dramedies, but the few familiar with Holofcener’s world view are going to find plenty to enjoy here.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Trying to produce something on the spooky side for the whole family to help usher in the Halloween season, Universal Pictures and Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment turn to Eli Roth to entertain the kiddies with an adaptation of the 1973 John Bellairs novel, “The House with a Clock in Its Walls.” Roth is, of course, not known for making PG-rated movies, having spent his career orchestrating extraordinary torture for his characters (and the paying audience) with horror films that focused on bloodshed and agony. Even as recently as this year too, with the spring bomb “Death Wish” once again reinforcing Roth’s inability to hold a picture together. “The House with a Clock in Its Walls” poses a unique challenge for the helmer, who’s forced to mute his splattery instincts, playing reasonably nice with playfully creepy material. Roth’s not prepared in full, creating a feature that’s tonally off-balance, making delight with the dark side a chore to experience.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The strange saga of Lizzie Borden has inspired countless dramatic interpretations, crossing all types of media. The magnetic pull to the accused murderer is easy to understand, as Lizzie’s tale hits on social position and domestic abuse, and culminates with the bloody, brutal death of two people utterly destroyed by an ax. It’s the stuff of pulp fiction, and the true story of the woman’s fight for identity returns to screens in “Lizzie,” with Chloe Sevigny taking a producer credit, giving herself the lead role, which provides a dramatic challenge not normally associated with the actress. “Lizzie” has its aggressive moments, but they’re largely saved for the midsection of the movie, with director Craig William Macneill keeping to intense atmospherics, not actual incident, to support the feature.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“American Dresser” initially wants to be a biker movie, following characters as they take off across the country on two wheels, embracing the romantic notion of daily tourism at top speed, taking in national grandeur and local color along the way. Writer/director/co-star Carmine Cangialosi achieves this feeling of freedom for about ten minutes, with the rest of picture sent in several different directions during its run time, and few of them come together in any meaningful way. “American Dresser” is scattered and ill-conceived, but there’s the saving grace of seniority, with stars Tom Berenger and especially Keith David turning in expressive performances as older men on a quest for one last perfect ride, getting the material halfway to competency while Cangialosi employs a blindfold and a dart board to select where the writing goes next.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I’m sure Paul Feig wanted a change of scenery. This is the man who tried to reboot “Ghostbusters” a few years ago with a new cast, treading on sacred ground armed with a massive visual effects budget and a threadbare screenplay, trying to make his brand of make-em-up comedy fit into a fantasy spectacular. The experiment didn’t quite work for audiences, and Feig took a lot of heat for his creative choices, leading him to step away from blockbuster ambitions and tackle the beach read mystery of “A Simple Favor.” Smaller in scale and lighter with improvisations (the riffing remains to a smaller degree), the picture tries to make sense of Darcey Bell’s 2017 novel, which strived to get in on “Gone Girl” mania and deliver its own swirling storm of low impulse control and abrasive personalities, while twists are meant to tie the whole thing together. I’m all for Feig getting out of the funny business, but “A Simple Favor” remains a very broad creation, which doesn’t inspire secretive business this type of entertainment requires to remain surprising and seductive. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

Writer/director Austin Vesley has a lot of influences and interests he’d like to put on the screen with “Slice,” but no particular game plan on how to do it. A horror comedy with its heart in the right place, the movie is a messy presentation of genre imagination and production realities, with the low-budget endeavor struggling to make sense of itself. It only runs 79 minutes, which may help to understand what happened between the feature’s 2016 shoot and its 2018 release date, with Vesley’s vision subjected to severe editing, finding the brutal cutting shaving down “Slice” to the bare essentials of world building and monster making. I’m sure it was a fine screenplay at one point, but in its finished form, the picture is a jumble of ideas that never gels.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Eight years ago, Panos Cosmatos made his directorial debut with “Beyond the Black Rainbow.” The film was a brain-bleeder of the highest order, oozing with style and soaking in the juices of psychedelia, with Cosmatos bending cinema to aid in his mission to disturb audiences with unusual visions and atypical screen intensity. He’s back with “Mandy,” which is a slightly more linear tale of a mental breakdown, but Cosmatos doubles down on wild imagery and extreme violence, taking the audience on a ride into Hell in a manner that’s greatly unsettling and massively thrilling, especially for those who embraced the outer limits of “Beyond the Black Rainbow.” “Mandy” is specialized work, but it’s a doozy, cutting through the cosmic cream with nightmare realms, monstrous encounters, and a path of revenge that literally tears people apart. Maybe Cosmatos doesn’t know when to quit, but he’s making movies on a whole other level of consciousness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

“The Predator” is the fourth installment of the “Predator” saga (technically sixth if one includes the dismal “Alien vs. Predator” films), and it’s the one production that carries the greatest sense of hope. It’s co-written and directed by Shane Black, who appeared in the original 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger classic, and a guy who generally knows his way around action screenplays, with credits such as “Lethal Weapon” and “The Long Kiss Goodnight” maintaining the shine on his industry medals. It’s a match made in geek heaven, but Black turns out to be one of the worst things ever unleashed on the franchise. Unfocused and obnoxious, “The Predator” takes a hardcore sci-fi/action premise and transforms it into a comedy for this latest brand reawakening, with Black running around with no sense of editing or performance, trying to turn an inherently gruesome concept into blood-drenched wackiness just to smudge his greasy fingerprints all over something that didn’t need such a drastic reworking.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Every now and then, Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves are involved in a film project together, with some endeavors more intimate then others. They’ve appeared in “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” and “A Scanner Darkly,” but “Destination Wedding” isn’t just a case of co-starring in distinctly separate roles. Here, the entire feature rests on their shoulders, with Reeves and Ryder tasked with carrying all the dialogue and physical discomfort the material requires, finding writer/director Victor Levin giving his work over to the actors, who feast on all the misanthropy. “Destination Wedding” is simple and speedy, watching Ryder and Reeves rise to the challenge of characterization, having a ball with a consistently amusing, periodically hilarious effort that brings out the best in the leads.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With Bruce Willis having abandoned enthusiasm for the “Die Hard” series long ago, why not bring in Dave Bautista to take his place? The former professional wrestler and possible former Drax from “Guardians of the Galaxy,” Bautista makes for a fine man-against-the-odds for “Final Score,” which is as close to a “Die Hard”-style of actioner without triggering interest from 20th Century Fox lawyers. Ultimately overlong and improperly balanced in the script department, “Final Score” does have Bautista, who, despite his hulking frame, does a steady job of playing the everyman caught in a terrorist situation that takes place on a grand scale. The lead is welcome with emotion, but he’s best with ferocity, providing the production with a sizable punch and level of panic to help refresh the familiar.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Richard Wershe Jr. is primarily known for being the youngest F.B.I. informant, working with the bureau at the tender age of 14. It’s a fascinating piece of trivia and likely the one and only thing interesting about “White Boy Rick,” which hazily recounts his rise and self-inflicted downfall in the world of crime. Screenwriters Andy Weiss, Logan Miller, and Noah Miller go the “Scarface” route with the Wershe’s life and times, trying to turn a bad seed into a sympathetic figure to best fit into the formulaic mechanics of the feature. The labor doesn’t take hold, and while director Yann Demange ladles on the stylistics, trying to make an underworld study set during the 1980s pop off the screen, he’s not careful enough with characterization, playing fast and loose with the details of Wershe’s life, only giving the audience just enough to keep the young man a bruised saint who’s been wronged by the system, keeping things predictable and easily digestible. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Dog movies are plentiful these days, and most of these productions reaching for cheap sentimentality to connect with audiences, going saccharine with pooches make sure the endeavor is loved no matter the actual quality of the film. With “Pick of the Litter,” directors Don Hardy Jr. and Dana Nachman avoid dramatic manipulation to make a documentary about the raising and training of guide dogs for the blind, putting their faith into the inherent emotion and suspense of canines put to the test, with hopes they have a future as a powerful companion for the sight impaired. “Pick of the Litter” isn’t about adorable close-ups (although there are plenty of those) and tragedies, offering a more procedural examination of what it takes to develop the right stuff in rambunctious puppies who live to play but are tasked to learn the extraordinary discipline required for one of the most important jobs a dog can have.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Basement” is meant to be a horror film, but it really could pass as an actor’s reel. Co-star Jackson Davis receives the workout of his career with the material, which requires him to embody the curse of dissociative identity disorder, tasked with playing 12 characters, with most of them deranged in one way or another. It’s a thespian challenge that almost gets the picture to where it needs to be, showcasing an actor working very hard to make his part of the movie connect in full. The rest of “The Basement” doesn’t share the same level of commitment, finding co-writers/directors Brian M. Conley and Nathan Ives trying to knot material that’s best served as straight as possible, with concentration on a secondary plot and a wicked ending proving to be too much of a distraction.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com