Category: Film Review

It’s only natural to find filmmakers gravitating towards stories about artificial intelligence, with concerns about the creation of synthetic humans developing into headline news. For screenwriters Richard Greenberg and Drake Doremus (who also directs), the strange landscape of A.I. provides inspiration for “Zoe,” which isn’t a tech thriller or a doomsday event, instead taking a look at the manufacturing of companionship and feelings for a future society that’s gone numb to the ways of organic connection. It’s timely work and the writers have a fantastic idea to develop, especially when examining how humans would choose to create a partner instead of find one. “Zoe” gets most of the way there, but Doremus doesn’t know when to quit with this drama, which eventually spirals out of control, losing concentration on the very ideas that offered it originality and intriguing reflection on trends of loneliness.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While controversial and on the quickie side, 1987’s “Billionaire Boys Club” (which aired on NBC) managed to catch the ambiance of the 1980s by sheer proximity to the true crime details of a 1983 murder that inspired the production. 2018’s “Billionaire Boys Club” looks like a collection of baby-faced actors playing dress-up, straining to sell the wonders of the decade with a well-worn story of drugs, lies, and greed. Co-writer/director James Cox has been unsuccessful in true crime before, with 2003’s tepid “Wonderland,” and his streak of mediocrity continues here, fumbling through scenes of financial swindling, broheim swagger, and venomous confrontations, with the big screen take somehow less cinematic than the television film.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Alien invasion stories are plentiful these days. Just last week there was the Australian actioner “Occupation,” and now there’s “Extinction,” which arrives with working parts from other, better movies, and it carries a Big Idea to separate itself from the pack, but it doesn’t know quite what to do with it. The screenplay isn’t very strong with secrets and enticing characterization, and director Ben Young isn’t seasoned enough to launch eye-popping spectacle, keeping the picture fairly pedestrian until it’s time to clarify exactly what’s going on. Such reveals bolster other productions, but “Extinction” begins lethargically and remains there for 90 minutes, giving viewers familiar sights and sounds before making the foolish assumption that they’re going to be interested in a potential franchise with a story that barely supports a single film.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

We’re currently in this wonderful era where the wants and needs of adolescent girls are being represented honestly on the big screen. There was “Edge of Seventeen” and “Lady Bird,” and now “Eighth Grade,” which offers a snapshot of even younger concerns, but emerges as the most authentic of the group, which is no small feat. Writer/director Bo Burnham endeavors to capture the moment junior high wonder becomes high school hell, and he doesn’t miss a beat with this small but special picture. The helmer is making a comedy, but one with deep pathos and care for its lead character, who’s a uniquely positive creation despite suffering setbacks in mental health. Burnham avoids cliché in a remarkable way, preferring to dig his own groove of cinematic emphasis and rich characterization, giving audiences time with a typically unrepresented age, now free of Disney Channel glitter and Larry Clark grime. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Garth Davis won accolades and reasonable box office for his last feature, “Lion,” which detailed a young man on a special emotional and spiritual journey. Now Davis tackles unfinished business with the Bible, examining a more famous story of self-inspection, giving the saga of Jesus a special spin with “Mary Magdalene,” which sets out to right the titular woman’s wronged reputation, isolating her origin story, giving her a modern appreciation in line with current filmmaking trends. Davis doesn’t do explosive, keeping this drama extremely mild, aiming more for poeticism and reflection than prolonged suffering, approaching familiar stories from the Bible with a more artful perspective. “Mary Magdalene” isn’t a fiery collection of characters and their struggles to define faith, with Davis keeping the effort crawling along, electing to make something visually appealing and insular than traditionally dramatic.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2015’s “Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” brought the longstanding franchise to full attention, with writer/director Christopher McQuarrie trying to leave his fingerprints on the evolving series by stretching the spy game and upping the suspense factor, bringing classic Hollywood reverence to modern blockbustering. “Rogue Nation” supplied some of the finest set pieces the big screen brand name has produced since its debut in 1996, but it also suffered from iffy plotting and pacing, with McQuarrie excited to launch the sequel but unsure how to land it. With “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” McQuarrie is determined to show his work, creating an extended climax that will likely blow audiences away. The rest of the movie isn’t bad either, with Tom Cruise and the IMF unit continuing their impressive cinematic hustle for a new adventure that’s the most bruising to date, and the most cohesive in years. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

“Puzzle” presents a story that’s been done many times before, examining the awakening of a bored homemaker as she finds inspiration beyond daily duties and finds attraction to another man. It’s the stuff of Lifetime Television, where such primal urges are approached with a superficial treatment. “Puzzle” offers blue-collar New York stasis, marital shackles, and parental concern, but screenwriters Oren Moverman and Polly Mann remain attentive to the subtleties of distress and the first steps of liberation, creating a drama that’s tinged with quirk (taking place in the world of competitive puzzle assembly) but always interested in difficult spaces of communication and messy acts of empowerment. It might sound cutesy, but “Puzzle” has a real soul and interest in the working parts of its personalities, largely refusing the easy route of melodrama to capture deadening routine shattering into a hundred little pieces.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While it’s difficult to forecast just how well “Teen Titans Go! To the Movies” is going to go over with ticket-buyers, the picture will likely find two distinct audiences: those who live, eat, and sleep the “Teen Titans Go!” franchise, and those who wanted to get out of the heat for a chunk of time watching a hyperactive cartoon about marginalized superheroes. It’s the big screen debut for the popular Cartoon Network series (which began its run in 2013), with producers hoping to cash in on comic book cinema fever by stretching a show that runs 11 minutes into a cheeky blockbuster that runs 90 minutes. The strain to fill the feature with stuff to do is evident throughout, but there’s a defined sense of humor on display that helps “To the Movies” get to where it wants to go, triggering sensible chuckles and a boatload of superhero cameos and references that should make it the second most pointed at picture of 2018 (placing right behind “Ready Player One”).  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

If you’ve ever experienced any sort of conflict with a neighbor, the Icelandic production “Under the Tree” will most certainly trigger some level of PTSD. Co-writer/director Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurosson is endeavoring to make a dark comedy out of this saga of warring couples living inside tight spaces, but he’s especially skilled at detailing the madness of suburban hostilities and the escalation of minor quibbles into all-out war. “Under the Tree” has some laughs along the way, but it mostly remains in a state of shock, picking up on human behavior when unimaginable stress is introduced, with Sigurosson playing a chess game with rattled characters, working his way to perhaps the most fitting conclusion of the film year. It’s uneasy work and wonderfully so, getting under the skin as it slowly works its way into madness.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

They don’t make ‘em like Larry Cohen anymore. The veteran helmer of such cult classics as “It’s Alive” and “The Stuff” is a man from a different age, when moviemakers went out into the world and just made features, often without asking permission. Cohen used New York City as his own personal playground, forging a career that celebrated the DIY spirit and satisfied genre appetites. “King Cohen: The Wild World of Filmmaker Larry Cohen” is a valentine to the creative force, using interview time with Cohen and his friends, family, and frequent collaborators to explore a wily oeuvre that transformed a guy from New York into a one-man movie studio, creating crazy pictures that were made with smarts and surprises when budgets weren’t immediately available.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Even if the whole thing doesn’t quite come together as forcefully as it should, “Dead Night” does have a great deal of inviting peculiarity. Screenwriter Irving Walker has a decent idea to develop, approaching slasher cinema from two perspectives, while adding some monstrous events to keep things comfortably growly and gross. And there’s help from actress Barbara Crampton, who seems to be having genuine fun in a villainous role, giving the feature some needed eccentricity. “Dead Night” is minor, running only 76 minutes, but there are many technical achievements to enjoy, and director Bradford Baruh (making his debut) certainly has potential as a genre helmer, displaying appreciation for gruesome events and moody settings.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I’ve stated it in previous reviews and I’m reiterating it here: I believe David Spade is a funny guy. The snarky comedian usually does well on talk shows, and his television output has been mostly successful, while recent forays into literature have permitted him time to explore a more autobiographical path to humor, putting a personal stamp on traumatic events and humiliations, always preserving the silliness of every situation. I like David Spade, but I loathe most of his movies, which never take advantage of his timing and successfully translate his stage persona. “Father of the Year” is his latest endeavor (working once again with Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions), and while it isn’t his worst picture (that honor goes to the wretched “Joe Dirt 2”), it’s pretty close, watching Spade stumble through a no-budget comedy for Netflix (apparently financed by Postmates, who enjoy a huge plug in the feature) that requires no punchlines, reactions, or acting. Just pratfalls. So many pratfalls.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With a title like “Hot Summer Nights,” certain promises are made by the production, and they’re not kept by writer/director Elijah Bynum. The idea here seems to be a modern revival of the 1950’s greaser drama, exploring bad boy concerns in a recognizable setting, with Bynum hoping to inject as much style as possible while wrestling with a smaller budget. Lusty business is staged and generally falls apart in “Hot Summer Nights,” with the rest of the feature weighed down by tedious subplots and an overall turn to hysterics in the finale. Bynum is a first-time filmmaker and it shows, getting the movie all worked up with potential, only to suddenly lose interest in the job at hand, with the screenplay piling on clichés just to connect the dots.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2014’s “Unfriended” was a minor surprise during the film year, offering a desktop chiller aimed at teenagers that actually worked in many respects, keeping suspense alive and the strangeness of the setting active. It was small in design and supernatural to boot, but it managed to make something out of next to nothing, giving the computer-based thriller subgenre a nice boost of invention. Four years later, there’s a sequel, and one that does away with ghosts and jittery teenagers, graduating to a more mature set of victims and the grim evening they’re about to experience. “Unfriended: Dark Web” doesn’t have the element of surprise, and it doesn’t have much of a story either, finding writer/director Stephen Susco (screenwriter of “Texas Chainsaw 3D”) trying to be edgy by going bleak with laptop hellraising, engineering a strangely angry sequel that liberally borrows from better movies to feed its own mediocrity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

The world doesn’t need a “Mamma Mia!” sequel, but when a jukebox musical that wasn’t expected to make many waves at the box office ends up grossing as much as a superhero film, an attempt to make a second chapter isn’t surprising. What is unusual about “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again” is that it took a decade to reach multiplexes, which is an eternity with this material, which generally thrives on in-the-moment charms, not waiting games. There’s some disappointment with this rusty installment of an unlikely franchise, which clearly doesn’t have the same spring in its step as the 2008 original, but writer/director Ol Parker tries to put on a big show with a limited scope, going the origin story route to establish a fresh perspective and inject a little youthful energy into a movie that always seems happiest when sitting down. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com 

“The Cakemaker” contains a lot of heartache, examining the ways of love and obsession, but writer/director Ofir Rual Graizer handles all the hurt in a most humane way, capturing unspeakable feelings with a powerful cinematic language. It’s a production from Germany and Israel, already bridging a few gaps in culture and history while the script sets out to do the same thing, with the titular character working through emotional divides while embarking on an unusual mission of observance as a form of grief. “The Cakemaker” is tender and often unexpected, and Graizer absolutely nails the confusing feelings and anxieties of the moment, creating a modest but open space for the actors and the craft to achieve a sublime rhythm of discovery, making the endeavor quite special.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When Robin Williams died in 2014, he took a part of the entertainment industry with him. The comedian, actor, and all-around madman seemed almost indestructible and definitely indefatigable, and when he passed, there were few words that could pinpoint exactly what the mood of the world was when Williams left it. “Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind” is an attempt to wrap both arms about the experience of being one of the fastest, funniest people of all time, and director Marina Zenovich almost touches fingertips, creating a documentary that’s light on extreme detail, but generally gathers the basic elements of Williams’s personal and professional experience, asking viewers to fill in the gaps with personal recollections while the feature covers most of the essential movements in an extraordinary life. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Equalizer” started life as a television series for CBS in the 1980s, making Edward Woodward into an unusual force for justice, celebrating the steely authority of an older man. 2014’s “The Equalizer” handed the lead role of Robert McCall to Denzel Washington, who also projected wizened confidence as the titular vigilante, only instead of a mild reprise of network television heroics, director Antoine Fuqua cranked up the ultraviolence, with plans to make the pain McCall inflicts as vivid as possible. It was overkill in a dim movie, but “The Equalizer” found something of an audience, with the fanbase large enough to lure Washington back into McCall’s shoes for “Equalizer 2.” Keeping in line with traditional sequel mentality, Fuqua recycles most of everything that was found in the original picture, serving up the same scenes of intimidation and graphic punishment to stoke the fires of a newfound franchise.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Deborah Haywood goes dark for “Pin Cushion,” her feature-length debut as a writer/director. She’s made a movie that introduces itself with extreme quirk, and slowly but surely poisons it with tremendously unsettling scenes of emotional abuse. Haywood attempts to communicate the pain of the outsider, and one who isn’t adjusted to the cruelties of the world, and she’s amazingly accurate in her summary of despair. However, while bleak, “Pin Cushion” has its artful achievements, dramatic potency, and fantastic lead performances from Lily Newmark and Joanna Scanlan, who march into horrors as instructed by the helmer, but find ways to make doom relatable, especially for female audiences hunting for an accurate overview of juvenile bullying in the connected age, while most mothering fears are realized in this disturbing chiller.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2008, Director Gus Van Sant made “Milk,” his passionate bio-pic of activist and politician Harvey Milk. It was work that felt vital and intimate, with Van Sant’s focus on the nuances of the story resulting in a vivid depiction of a noble life tragically ended by another. And then there was nothing for a decade, finding Van Sant obsessed with quirk (“Restless”) and environmental issues (“Promised Land”), hitting rock bottom with “The Sea of Trees,” an unexpectedly inept pass at mournful cinematic poetry that was soaked in confusion and pretention, becoming one of Van Sant’s worst films. Mercifully, “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot” is a return to form for the helmer, who offers a passion project that actually plays like someone who doesn’t want to let go of the moment, showcasing a newly recharged director eagerly exploring the struggle, dark humor, and unexpected grace notes of life.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com