Category: Film Review

Ever since he made his directorial debut with 1999’s “American Pie,” Paul Weitz has been determined to prove he’s more than just a comedy filmmaker. He’s had an eclectic career, but few of his endeavors have managed to find their creative footing, despite fine actors (“Admission,” “Being Flynn”) and interesting worlds (“Cirque du Freak”). Weitz almost achieves complete screen stasis with “Bel Canto,” which has the advantage of being based on a fascinating true story of a hostage crisis and loaded with capable actors. However, despite the positives, “Bel Canto” doesn’t have much energy, dramatic or romantic, to keep attention trained on the screen. Weitz goes through the motions with this melodrama, and while it certainly hints at pressure points to come, the feature doesn’t follow through on suspense, at times accurately recreating the feeling of being held against one’s will.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The biggest film director Pierre Morel ever made was 2009’s “Taken.” It was also the best film he’s ever made. The Liam Neeson one-man-army actioner wasn’t an original creation, but it possessed atypical ferocity for the genre, showcasing momentum similar productions are often too afraid to pursue. It was a blast of B-movie attitude and a hard production to replicate, with sequels to “Taken” pitiful, while knock-offs were easily ignored. After dimming the brightness of his career with terrible efforts such as “From Paris with Love” and “The Gunman,” Morel returns to the formula that provided him with career Viagra. “Peppermint” is another “Taken” riff, only here the focused bruiser is Jennifer Garner, who’s trying very hard to act butch for a production that doesn’t reward her commitment. Trashy and pointless, “Peppermint” isn’t the joyride of pain Morel is hoping for, finding the picture’s nastiness and idiocy too much to bear at times. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

It’s been interesting to watch producers scramble to create an extended cinematic universe for 2013’s “The Conjuring.” The surprise horror hit, which tracked the efforts of demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren, had built-in potential for sequels, with the main characters owning a room of cursed artifacts, permitting the film’s creators to pull anything off the shelf and explore its history. However, an actual game plan for spinoffs never materialized, with 2014’s “Annabelle” a quickie picture that managed to do major business, while it’s 2017 sequel found an even larger audience and a noticeable uptick in quality. For the next round of franchise teat-squeezing, there’s “The Nun,” which travels back decades to discover the origin of the ghastly holy figure from 2016’s “The Conjuring 2,” with screenwriter Gary Dauberman laboring to make a threat best appreciated in moments sustain for an entire feature. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

After achieving cult fame for her supporting role on the popular program “Stranger Things,” actress Shannon Purser is rewarded with her own starring vehicle in “Sierra Burgess is a Loser.” The young actress fits comfortably into director Ian Samuels’s vision for the teenage experience, which takes more than a few cues from the John Hughes oeuvre to help squeeze through some tight dramatic spaces. “Sierra Burgess is a Loser” doesn’t offer a radical approach to teen cinema, with Samuels simply trying to appeal to the pre-teen audience likely to find it first and watch it often. However, Purser is awfully appealing in the titular role, showing charm and vulnerability, paired well with co-star Kristine Forseth, with the duo giving strong performances, supporting the endeavor as it tries to work through sludgy formula.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Brian A. Miller is just one of those people who manages to work their way into job opportunities despite having difficulty proving their aptitude for the job. The helmer of B-movies such as “Officer Down,” “Vice,” “The Outsider,” and “The Prince,” Miller issues another nondescript title in “Reprisal,” a film which contains little to no reprisal. Instead, the effort throws around car chases and tough guys, with Miller laboring to transform a wafer-thin script by Bryce Hammons into a meaty actioner, using every trick in the no-budget book, even periodic incoherence. “Reprisal” is dopey and dull, but Miller isn’t capable of much more than that, piecing together a feature most viewers have already seen before, only cliches are rendered half-speed for some strange reason, making the brief run time feel punishingly long.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer Nick Hornby has a specific vision for his relationship stories, taking a look at wounded hearts often with the help of music, adding another level of communication as characters struggle to express themselves. As an author, Hornby has delivered “High Fidelity” and “About a Boy,” and now there’s “Juliet, Naked,” which is perhaps the most autopilot-y of Hornby’s work, but remains inviting for the first half. Director Jesse Peretz (who hasn’t made a movie since 2011’s “Our Idiot Brother”) arranges a soft and amusing overview of characters in professional and personal limbo, and when “Juliet, Naked” focuses on the slow build-up of trust between the lead characters, there’s plenty here that’s engaging. Peretz and the screenwriters (Evgenia Peretz, Jim Taylor, and Tamara Jenkins) can’t shake a few of Hornby’s less successful ideas, but they get the feature off to a strong start, which helps the production coast to the finish line.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The trials of sleep paralysis have risen in popularity with filmmakers, with most looking at the innate horror of a situation where a sleeper has no mobility but full awareness when visited by torturous visions. 2015’s “The Nightmare” did an effective job creating a visual representation of the event, helping outsiders understand exactly what happens when sleep paralysis kicks in, and how it creates a terrifying vulnerability against imagined evil. “Mara” hopes to use such panicked stillness to fuel a horror endeavor, rejecting science and study to make a straightforward demonic visitation event. “Mara” has a host of problems that prevent it from achieving scares, with its primary sin being a general lack of suspense, with director Clive Tonge using formula instead of ingenuity in an attempt to generate a sufficiently disturbing sit.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The desktop thriller is generally associated with horror pictures, with last month’s “Unfriended: Dark Web” a recent example of the genre moving toward an online realm to toy with evil as it emerges from the shadows, using the anonymity and ubiquity of screen slavery to conjure a new style of chills for the target demographic of young teenagers. “Searching” breaks from the norm by refusing supernatural influence, trying to remain grounded as it unfurls a missing persons case where the lead detective is an average suburban father trying to follow his own daughter’s digital footprints to bring her back home. “Searching” isn’t scary, only suspenseful for about an hour before co-writer/director Aneesh Chaganty gives up on the concept of everyday fears, electing instead to close a previously promising mystery with a prolonged Lifetime Movie-style decline. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Working on a directorial career for nearly 25 years, Boaz Yakin has been an extremely problematic helmer. There was mainstream success with 2000’s “Remember the Titans” and critical respect with 1994’s “Fresh,” but the rest of his filmography is littered with dire endeavors such as 2003’s “Uptown Girls” and his last effort, 2015’s “Max.” He’s drawn to tales of outsiders and identity, coming up with a genre tease in “Boarding School,” which initially seems like an off-kilter, Burton-esque study of damaged youths coming together to fight the evil of conformity (shades of “Miss Peregrin’s Home for Peculiar Children”), but Yakin doesn’t possess that level of focus, going here, there, and everywhere with “Boarding School,” which fails to congeal as a mischievous chiller. It’s a big mess, but not without some appealing ideas and performances that manage to survive Yakin’s sluggish execution. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

Last December, Netflix released an episode of their popular show, “The Toys That Made Us,” that focused on the rise and fall of the “He-Man and the Masters of the Universe” toy line. It was done with the program’s attitude and speed, acting as more of an overview than a detailed breakdown of just what happened with the brand name during the 1980s and beyond. Directors Randall Lobb and Robert McCallum attempt to go deeper into the He-Man universe with “Power of Grayskull: The Definitive History of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe,” offering a more ambitious survey of the ins and outs of the Mattel moneymaker, looking to scan 40 years of development and execution in 90 minutes. “The Toys That Made Us” got there first, but Lobb and McCallum have more material to work with, offering some lively interviews and fascinating discoveries as they examine how He-Man exploded from a throwaway idea into a toy that was, for many years, the most popular item on store shelves.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Kin” doesn’t have it easy. It has a terrible title, a worst release date (the dumping ground of Labor Day weekend), and the story is incredibly ambitious, starting as a family drama before evolving into a crime movie, and eventually becoming a sci-fi saga with YA overtones. Directors Jonathan and Josh Baker make their feature-length helming debut here, giving themselves quite the tonal and thematic challenge. The good news is that “Kin,” while problematic in some areas, is promising work from the brothers, who give the endeavor style and suspense, and they do well with the stranger events that periodically emerge during the run time. Screenwriter Daniel Casey also pulls off an impressive feat with his attention to character, giving the effort a tad more feeling than what’s typically extracted from this type of glossy entertainment. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

“The Wife” finds its inspiration from a Meg Wolitzer novel, but it comes alive on screen due to the efforts of its cast. Acting is one of the most intoxicating elements of the feature, with Wolitzer dreaming up a prime conflict to explore, using the occasion of a Nobel Prize ceremony to unleash all kinds of anxiety and rage while examining the world of success from a female point of view. “The Wife” is powerful and intentionally grotesque at times, with leads Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce finding their footing immediately with the picture, giving director Bjorn Runge plenty of fire to photograph, opening the tale with cracks in a seemingly perfect foundation before slipping into Shakespearean lunges of malice. It’s quite the emotional ride.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Most musical bio-pics tend to favor a lifespan when examining the creation of an artist, tracing childhood dreams to adult woes, or matching youthful trauma to mature excess. “Nico, 1988” doesn’t make much time for biographical excavation, preferring to stick with its subject for the last two years of her life. Nico was an enigmatic musician and singer, and writer/director Susanna Nicchiarelli respects some boundaries as she hopes to assemble something of an understanding when it comes to self-destructive behavior and longstanding fatigue with a troubled career and life itself. “Nico, 1988” is also notable in the way it permits those with only a fringe appreciation of the subject to understand a larger psychological study in motion, with star Trine Dyrholm absolutely mesmerizing as Christa Paffgen, also known as Nico, who struggled to keep herself together while enduring personal catastrophes and industry dismissal.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As the Halloween season begins, the folks at Rooster Teeth are right there at the starting line with a film to help usher in the spooky season. The creators of “Lazer Team” and assorted online offerings, Rooster Teeth attempts to bite into a satiric genre offering with “Blood Fest,” which tries on the “Scream” formula for size, participating in horror cliches while lampooning horror cliches, hoping to come up with a mischievous bloodbath to tickle funny bones before breaking them. “Blood Fest” feels a little stale in the imagination department, but there’s motivation here to so something energetic with recognizable targets, gifting fans of Rooster Teeth and chiller entertainment in general with a valentine to all types of ugliness, often delivered with a slapstick sway.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As they proved with their previous collaborations, “Amer” and “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears,” directors Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani are not interested in supporting a traditional dramatic viewing experience. They like to toss their audience into the deep end of the ocean, pumping up stylistics and abstract asides to a point where everything else about the movie becomes a secondary pursuit, with pure cinema their personal deity. “Let the Corpses Tan” is actually based on a novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jean-Pierre Bastid, but the film version doesn’t concern itself with the ways of literary structure. Instead, the feature is a blast of sound and vision, becoming a premiere sensorial free dive that, after the first 30 minutes, does away with any intentions to tell a story. The helmers go wild with their widescreen craftsmanship, supplying a groaning, grinding cops and robbers tale that has no distinct shape, just pure filmic power.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Whether or not he intended to, “A.X.L.” writer/director Oliver Daly creates an ode to Amblin Entertainment efforts from the 1980s, when producer Steven Spielberg invested in a few movies that detailed the cuddly relationship between man and machine. Daly gives the production a modern edge, updating his 2015 short film with bigger effects and a larger scale, making his feature-length helming debut. It’s a picture for a younger audience, but the boy and his dog formula is successfully reheated for this adventure, which offers mild thrills but decent charms. Daly keeps chases and discoveries coming, and while familiarity shadows the endeavor, “A.X.L.” gets by on little blasts of excitement and the core relationship between a meek young man and the robotic war dog he befriends. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

Brian Henson has had a difficult time trying to sustain the legacy of his father, the great Jim Henson. He directed a couple of Muppet movies and worked on various puppet-related television shows, but the old Henson magic wasn’t quite there for him. “The Happytime Murders” feels like the work of a frustrated guy who’s trying to torch expectations for puppet-based entertainment, longing to make something offensive just to shake off the burden of the family name. If the film was funny, perhaps such an experiment would’ve been amazing, returning the Henson company back to the aggressive sense of humor Jim favored before he became a master of the art form. Brian doesn’t have the vision for such cleverness, and his work on “The Happytime Murders” is depressing to watch, finding the helmer barely making an effort with this rare R-rated outing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

To help explore “What Keeps You Alive,” I have to expose a bit of its plot, which, for some, is situated in spoiler territory. I have no interest in ruining the picture for others, so here’s a mini-review: it’s terrific. It’s a wicked, somewhat surprising chiller from writer/director Colin Minihan, who impressed mightily with “It Stains the Sands Red” a few years back, now newly energized to offer another slice of horror cinema that’s genuinely frightening at times, also doing much with very little money. Minihan’s got a special vision for “What Keep You Alive,” and his execution is confident, perhaps too much so at times. In short, it’s an impressive feature, and one that will likely delight those in the mood for something merciless and feral. If you’re sensitive to story information, this is a good place to stop reading.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

At first glance, “Support the Girls” seems like another restaurant comedy, picking up where movies like “Office Space” and “Waiting” left off, using the already iffy atmosphere of an objectification-centric establishment to inspire daily drudgery for the employees. Writer/director Andrew Bujalski doesn’t take the idea in an expected direction, which is a positive development for the feature. But he really doesn’t take the material anywhere, encouraging a meandering vibe to the effort to best dissect a particularly rough day for a managerial character. “Support the Girls” is hampered by habitual slackness, showing no interest in sharpening attention to a plot, but there are performances here worth paying attention to, rising above casual atmosphere to identify real frustration and confusion while trapped in the middle of professional duty. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After a small break from American distribution, writer/director Isabel Coixet returns with “The Bookshop,” bringing Penelope Fitzgerald’s novel to the screen. It’s a fitting project for the helmer, who typically finds creative inspiration with tales about the inner workings of women, and she has a careful story of submission to work with here. “The Bookshop” has all the opportunity in the world to become a soap opera, working through extreme frustrations and monitoring awful human beings, but Coixet doesn’t take the bait, instead offering a gradual unraveling of confidence that’s dotted with realistic emotions and literary liberation, achieving a sense of cultural position instead of blasting everything with hysterics. The feature may be too glacial for some, but those who can locate the rhythm of ache that’s presented here are sure to value the filmmaker’s patience with character development.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com