Category: Film Review

Are audiences ready for a sympathetic portrait of German authority during the dawn of WWII? “The Exception” believes so, striving to mix sex and contemplation during a hostile time in European history, searching for the nuanced psychology of those participating in, or at least confronted by, a horrific change in wartime atrocities. Director David Leveaux leans toward sensuality to help ease the audience into a challenging plot, finding some success with raw feelings and urges. But the overall feel of “The Exception” isn’t defined to satisfaction, stuck between the demands of its literary origins (based on the book “The Kaiser’s Last Kiss,” by Alan Judd) and its slightly veiled desire to become a wartime melodrama, with hunky Nazis, conflicted women, and a raving old man. It’s a passably engaging film, but anyone expecting a serious deconstruction of Third Reich policies and complications of animal-like attraction aren’t likely to be enlightened by anything presented here. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

If you’re not a scholar on all things Tupac Shakur, there’s no reason to see “All Eyez on Me.” Those new to the slain rapper’s world aren’t going to learn anything of value about the man or the myth, with screenwriters Jeremy Haft, Eddie Gonzalez, and Steven Bagatourian simply rehashing a greatest hits package of hot tempers and bad decisions, barely making an effort to dig below the surface. It’s a tongue bath meant to celebrate Tupac’s questionable legacy instead of challenging it, playing to the devoted with disjointed storytelling that liberally leaps through the years, creating a loose portrait of a music artist who never did wrong, constantly suffered through persecution, and always led with a heroic attitude. Much like 2015’s “Straight Outta Compton,” it’s a hagiography, but one that never rises above the quality of a basic cable movie. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Cars 3” is the apology for “Cars 2” we all deserve. Not that 2006’s “Cars” was an amazing achievement in animated entertainment, but “Cars 2” was built almost entirely out of bad ideas, with Pixar so concerned with taking the franchise in a fresh direction, it forgot what was modestly appealing about the material to begin with. Recognizing a swing and a miss, Pixar rebounds with “Cars 3,” which eliminates the gratuitous violence and slapstick antics of bumbling tow truck Mater to return to the essentials of Lightning McQueen race world anxiety. Director Brian Fee (taking over for John Lasseter) knows exactly what he want from the second sequel, keeping the picture stuffed with likable characters, mild tests of integrity, and a sustained examination of aging, preserving a circular arc of maturity that picks up where “Cars” left off. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As the title suggests, things do not go well for the characters in “Rough Night.” Keeping up with Hollywood trends, the feature is a hard R-rated comedy that enjoys shock value and the limited reach of improvisational comedy, providing its five leads with ample opportunity to riff their way around scenes, searching for the funny instead of bringing a completed script to life. There are limits to this type of entertainment, and co-writer/director Lucia Aniello finds them all, but not before landing enough decent scenes and ace one-liners to make one wonder what happened to “Rough Night” in the editing room. The finished product has an appealing first half, but dies horribly in the second, overstaying its welcome as the screenplay is only partially paid attention to, keeping the picture either screwball or weirdly serious, never particularly successful at either end of the spectrum. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Last summer, there was “The Shallows.” A relatively low-budget effort, the feature promoted the heck out of its shark attack angle, hoping to rope in ticket-buyers for what was actually more a survival film with a pronounced emotional hook. “The Shallows” turned out to be a surprise hit, inspiring the competition to cook up a shark tale of their own for the summer of 2017. Surprisingly, there was already one completed, awaiting a DVD release, even making it into a few stores before it was acquired for a major theatrical release. “47 Meters Down” was yanked from the precipice of DTV obscurity, offered a shot to prove itself with a shark-hungry audience, with hopes that its painfully limited budget and lack of polish won’t matter to those who simply crave a deep water frenzy, and nothing more. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Book of Henry” wants to be loved, and it won’t allow its audience to consider any other reaction to the work besides pure, teary joy. It’s a return to smaller-budgeted filmmaking for director Colin Trevorrow, who gained industry attention with 2012’s “Safety Not Guaranteed,” quickly accepting an opportunity to try blockbuster helming on for size, guiding 2015’s “Jurassic World.” Perhaps searching for a palate cleanser before taking the reins on “Star Wars: Episode IX,” Trevorrow gives the impression he’s returning to a human story after orchestrating dinosaur rampages, but “The Book of Henry” just as fantastical as “Jurassic World,” with screenwriter Gregg Hurwitz lost in preciousness with what should be a devastating drama, while Trevarrow welcomes any chance for manipulation, making as candy-coated a feature as possible, avoiding realism and characterization to focus almost solely on cloying storytelling. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Lost in Paris” is a latest effort from Fiona Gordon and Dominique Abel, a married couple who’ve built their career on numerous collaborations, holding a shared love of silly business, mastered by the likes of Chaplin, Keaton, and Tati. Co-directing pictures such as “Rumba” and “The Fairy,” Gordon and Abel maintain the family business with “Lost in Paris,” which plays to their strengths of slapstick, whimsy, and the absurd. It’s a fairly strange feature, but that’s exactly how the couple likes it, organizing a special series of physical and psychological challenges for the characters they portray, with the endeavor riding waves of pure comedic bliss and slower oddity. While the film never snowballs into an outright farce, moments of composition and timing are fantastic, showcasing just how sharp Gordon and Abel are with adorable lunacy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While certain movies have experimented with the first-person perspective, last year’s “Hardcore Henry” elected to utilize the unique POV throughout the entire picture. It was a hyper-violent, cheeky romp, with its experimental ambition its only real success, daring to give video game fans the cinematic experience nobody in particular asked for. “Kill Switch” is the next production up to bat, also employing a first-person perspective to detail the experience of a corporate mercenary lost in a strange land, with only his computer display in front of his eyes to keep him steady. Based on a short, “Kill Switch” doesn’t have much to do the stretch itself to the 90 minute mark, but it certainly embraces the technical challenge, with director Tim Smit aiming to please with an in-your-face viewing experience that’s just fine with violence, but less confident with dramatics, which struggle to provide life to an otherwise cold, digital production. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Bruce Willis hasn’t been the most invested actor in recent years, taking roles in a string of B-movies where his paycheck likely ate up half the production budget. As he enters his twilight years, Willis has stopped caring, which has been difficult to watch, finding the man who once dazzled with intensity in “Die Hard” now sleepwalking through his career, making awful choices to keep himself busy. “Once Upon a Time in Venice” isn’t a satisfying feature, but it requires Willis to be more active, accepting a lead role that asks the veteran actor to skateboard in the nude, dress as a woman, and tolerate improvisational efforts from Thomas Middleditch. For that alone, Willis deserves every penny he commands. “Once Upon a Time in Venice” is flat and unfunny but, at the very least, it requires Willis to break a sweat, which he does with a slight boost in thespian commitment. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Zoe Lister-Jones has been a problematic presence in film, often stuck portraying best friends and cold individuals, while her screenwriting career delivered “Lola Versus,” one of the worst movies of 2012. With “Band Aid,” Lister-Jones graduates to the director’s chair, helming an unusual ode to the pressures, trials, and weird balance of married life. Storytelling-wise, the picture is slow-pitch softball, basically creating a domestic gladiatorial arena for Lister-Jones and co-star Adam Pally to work on their improvisational skills, weaving through light and dark moments that are meant to represent the flow of codependency. “Band Aid” is a much better feature when it’s not trying so hard to be profound, coming alive in the rare moments when Lister-Jones isn’t taking a sledgehammer to drive home themes. There’s definitely something here that’s worth a viewing, but it takes some patience to get through Lister-Jones and her reliance on cliché to connect the dots. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Pray for Rain” offers a compelling setting, traveling to rural California where farmland is being destroyed by drought, and those most in need of water have little control over the management of resources. Screenwriters Christina Moore and Gloria Musca have all the opportunity in the world to focus on this conflict, which doesn’t show up in many movies, keeping political and combustible with the fight for water. Moore and Musca only get halfway there with “Pray for Rain,” which seems terrified of attempting to hang an entire film on headline news, instead hiding their passion in the middle of a formulaic mystery that repeatedly blocks the view of a stronger feature struggling to be seen. As much as I enjoy the image of Jane Seymour blasting away with a shotgun that’s probably bigger than she is, the melodrama of the effort only manages to cripple the production. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Perhaps it’s fitting that a character who’s a product of immortality should be subjected to repeated reboots and remakes over the last 86 years. Universal Pictures is not about to let one of their top horror icons fade into obscurity, reviving the creature for “The Mummy,” which also represents the first shot fired in the studio’s Dark Universe franchise movement, because nothing can just be a movie anymore, it has to be a multi-decade financial plan. The brand name hasn’t been touched since 2008’s “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” and for good reason, as it’s tough to make a chiller these days, especially with a titular character that offers few surprises. Sadly, the production doesn’t supply a stripped down version of the tightly wrapped menace, burying the monster’s core appeal under layers of needless exposition, prized supporting characters, and the starring demands of Tom Cruise, who’s completely out of his element in this update. Reaching for laughs, CGI-laden action, and sequels before the first installment has a chance to cool, “The Mummy” simply attempts too much, forgetting how this whole series began with mood, not fireworks and breathless backstory. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Who will survive and what will be left of them?” is the famous tagline of 1974’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” It’s also a fitting summation of “It Comes at Night,” the new film from the writer/director of “Krisha,” Trey Edward Shults. While lacking overt scares, the feature does successfully chart the mental and physical health of those caught in an inescapable crisis, inspecting the wear and tear of lives lived in perpetual paranoia. “It Comes at Night” is being marketed as a horror effort, which is incorrect. It’s not grotesque with violence, but purposeful, detailing a world gone mad from the perspective of those barely hanging on. It’s challenging, artfully made work from Shults, requiring those electing to see it to relax some expectations as the movie endeavors to unnerve, not shock. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The exploits of the Zodiac Killer, one of the most feared serial murderers in history, have been brought to the screen on numerous occasions. Most notably, there was “Dirty Harry,” where the titular character was allowed a chance to exact revenge on the enigmatic madman, preserving justice with the most powerful handgun in the world. And there’s David Fincher’s “Zodiac,” which examined real world panic surrounding the case, employing journalism as a way to detail the ways of murder, suspicion, and anxiety. “Awakening the Zodiac” isn’t joining the pantheon of great investigative movies about the Zodiac Killer case, but as a chiller, it’s not bad, mixing feverish decoding and paranoia, offering reasonable thrills along the way. It’s nowhere near as precise as Fincher or blunt as Clint Eastwood, yet “Awakening the Zodiac” can be appealing when it focuses on the heat of the moment. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Ken Loach doesn’t make easy movies. It’s not something that comes natural to him, preferring to stay in the realm of the real, with behavioral authenticity prized most highly by the lauded filmmaker, often searching for the tenacity of the human spirit in the depths of misery. Loach can be an amazing storyteller (“My Name is Joe,” “Raining Stones,” “Sweet Sixteen”), and he can be a frustrating one as well, perhaps a bit too obsessed with depicting onscreen misery. “I, Daniel Blake” is his latest effort, and it plays like a greatest hits mix of Loach fetishes, covering the pains of poverty, injustice, bureaucratic entanglements, and social humiliations. It’s not a light sit by any means, but the helmer is fully in his element, keeping “I, Daniel Blake” relatable and restless, with remarkable performances leading Loach’s mission to sustain realism for as long as possible. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Co-writer/director Aaron B. Koontz has a made a John Carpenter tribute film with “Camera Obscura,” only one that doesn’t celebrate the best the maestro has to offer. A homage to “In the Mouth of Madness” with a touch of “They Live” for flavoring, “Camera Obscura” toys with the unreal, building a supernatural serial killer story that begins with a touch of dark magic and ends in a nightmare realm of insanity. Koontz is determined to remain one step ahead of his audience, messing with grim visions and bloodied victims, but his command of tonality is severely lacking, somehow turning a tale of PTSD into a darkly comic chiller that rests on a bed of Carpenter-esque synth scoring, ultimately crippled by miscastings and a screenplay that’s often caught scrambling for something to do. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Jonathan Mostow was once primed to become a major force in thriller cinema. 20 years ago, he helmed “Breakdown,” an effective suspense piece starring Kurt Russell. “U-571” followed, while the moderately engaging “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines” permitted Mostow to take a bite out of blockbuster moviemaking. But that was pretty much all he was allowed to get away with, returning in 2009 for “Surrogates,” a career-slowing misfire. And now, nearly a decade later, he returns with “The Hunter’s Prayer,” a “Taken”-style actioner arriving too late to matter, starring Sam Worthington, who seems to have an allergic reaction to giving expressive, meaning performances. It’s an uphill battle for the production, but it doesn’t have the motivation to be either a brutal chase picture or a sensitive study of an ailing hitman. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s difficult to get upset with “Miles,” as it arrives with the purest of intentions, striving to give its audience an empowerment tale that explores sexuality and equality. Co-writer/director Nathan Adloff has a plan for a sensitive portrayal of clouded identity, but his vision isn’t always crystal clear, introducing an abundance of subplots and halfhearted crisis to beef up what should really remain a story about a young man taking possession of own life after experiencing a personal loss. Adloff has a willing cast to color “Miles,” and they do great job with the messy screenplay, which is fond of introductions, but not always examination, resulting a feature that’s kind and communicative, but seldom profound, never adding up to anything distinct. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Coming soon after the release of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul,” “Captain Underpants” is another picture that’s strictly for young audiences, or at least anyone who finds the very pronunciation of diarrhea hilarious. It’s the first of possibly many movies adapted from a book series by author Dav Pilkey, who plays to children with a tale that covers creative expression, teacher manipulation, and best friend interplay, setting the whole thing in a kids-rule-the-school scenario. “Captain Underpants” is occasionally imaginative, and director David Soren’s addiction to speed is helpful for adults hoping to get through a feature that offers more undergarment jokes than the 2017 film year needs, but the material doesn’t lend itself naturally to 90 minutes of screen time, with signs of stress increasing as the production searches for ways to feed the CG-animated beast. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Wonder Woman was introduced to the DC Extended Universe in last year’s “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.” It was a supporting turn, but a notable one, unveiling the full power of the character before any history was established. It was a chance to see an iconic superhero on screen, finally taking Wonder Woman’s considerable comic book history seriously with a broadly powerful figure, fighting alongside Batman and Superman. Now it’s Wonder Woman’s turn for a starring vehicle, with director Patty Jenkins (who hasn’t helmed a feature film since 2003’s “Monster”) taking on a considerable challenge of tone, working to find a balance between feminine power and franchise appeal. Jenkins is mostly successful with “Wonder Woman,” capturing the majesty of Diana Prince and her call to global consciousness, crafting a satisfying origin story that gifts the beloved Amazon a formidable first step toward big screen domination. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com