Category: Film Review

Paul Verhoeven was once a mighty force in Hollywood, and we have him to thank for the brilliance of “RoboCop,” “Total Recall,” sections of “Basic Instinct,” and at least half of “Showgirls.” But after suffering through a few flops, Verhoeven elected to return to his European filmmaking roots, and doing so in a semi-retired state. His last proper production was 2006’s WWII thriller “Black Book,” and now the helmer has reconnected to his once alluring appreciation of psychological disease with “Elle.” While lacking extremity Verhoeven is known for, “Elle” still packs quite a punch, examining sexual violence and almost casual self-destruction, plucking the strings of David Birke’s screenplay with shards of glass. It’s a strange feature, but one doesn’t want Verhoeven any other way, and he delivers a unique viewing experience as the story touches on some truly disturbing events. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Movies about cities populated with anthropomorphized animals are all the rage these days. Coming after the astonishing success of Disney Animation’s “Zootopia” is “Sing,” which does away with social commentary to emerge as a musical of sorts, working to win over audiences with songs. So many songs. The picture is written and directed by Garth Jennings, who, nearly a decade ago, found perfection with “Son of Rambow,” which featured an off-kilter sense of humor and encouraged oddball performances. “Sing” is Jennings playing it safe, creating a world of cutesy creatures and colorful antics, and the film is missing his mischievous sense of humor. While some dramatic grit remains in small amounts, the effort isn’t anything special, checking off a to-do list of animated antics with a large cast of characters, with performance sequences breaking up a slow slide into banality. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Movies like “Moonlight” are rare. While the picture investigates a multitude of behavioral issues and cultural crimes, it’s most interested in identity, displaying remarkable patience and understanding of the process of self-discovery, which often elicits more fear than satisfaction. “Moonlight” is a film about the Black Experience in America, but the war it wages with personal comfort and corruption is universal, and its depiction of this struggle is exceptional. Writer/director Barry Jenkins handles the material with courage and indie cinema style, providing a clear view of murky issues, also guiding a gifted cast through intricate emotional speeds. It’s a special feature, rich with character and perspective, and it showcases what Jenkins is capable of, especially with difficult tales of lives lived in a constant state of fear. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Due to various reasons, some of them legally inclined, Kenneth Lonergan doesn’t make movies very often. “Manchester by the Sea” is his third directorial effort since 2000, and it’s a cruel reminder that Lonergan should really work more often, as he possesses such a pure vision for character and drama, giving his films a 3D feel just from behavioral nuance alone. Sure, 2011’s “Margaret” was a bit messy due to extensive production problems, but Lonergan returns to stability with “Manchester by the Sea,” which plays with raw nerve concentration and authentic emotional flow, joining 2000’s “You Can Count on Me” as another example of Lonergan’s gift with storytelling and timing, taking a slow but engrossing journey into the ways of grief and responsibility, and doing so with an expert handling of humor, heart, and paralyzing pain. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When Will Smith decides to get serious, there’s cause for concern. “Collateral Beauty” is the actor’s latest attempt to project sincerity, which doesn’t come naturally, attaching himself to a screenplay by Allen Loeb (“So Undercover,” “Here Comes the Boom”) that requires intense bouts of staring and teary monologuing, serving up a chance for Oscar gold while trying to reach an audience that never arrived to see a similar exercise in saccharine behavior: 2008’s “Seven Pounds.” “Collateral Beauty” is impossibly flimsy work, trying to merge whimsy with profound pain, emerging with a ridiculous premise that somehow attracted top-tier actors who were either excited to work with Smith or delighted with the number of zeros on their paycheck. Either way, the feature is shallow, programmed, and obvious, with Smith at the center of it all, swinging for the fences with a showy emotion turn that only reinforces just how misguided the effort is. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Some movies are worthy of recommendation due to filmmaking care and control, with helmers fashioning elegant assessments of the human condition, using thespian skill and technical knowhow to master visual and emotional communication. And some movies are worth a look just to see Catherine Deneuve romance a gorilla. “The Brand New Testament” is a mischievous creation from co-writer/director Jaco Van Dormel (“Mr. Nobody,” “The Eighth Day”), who picks apart heavenly order to construct a cheeky comedy about creation, God, and a new dawn of human awareness. It’s clever and intricately manufactured, with the production putting everything possible into the picture’s details, making “The Brand New Testament” an effort to be studied, with its craftsmanship as engaging as its dark sense of humor.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It seems like every filmmaker holds a secret desire to make a musical, but few actually take a chance and attempt to restore a little sampling of Old Hollywood for modern audiences. The biggies have tried: Scorsese, Coppola, and Allen, laboring to relive their childhood fantasies of choreography, costuming, and songwriting. In the case of “La La Land,” writer/director Damien Chazelle is quick to pounce on a rare opportunity, using accolades collected from his last effort, “Whiplash,” to help fund his dream project. An elaborate homage to the musical genre, with specific attention to the world of Jacques Demy, “La La Land” is expectedly indulgent, but it’s overlong and thinly scripted, with Chazelle putting everything into The Moment, breaking up the feature into bite-sized pieces of song, dance, and Hollywood reverence. Production passion is indisputable, but the movie doesn’t know when to quit.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Fashion mogul Tom Ford turned to filmmaking with 2009’s “A Single Man.” The highly designed and tightly measured drama still managed to communicate a healthy amount of personal history and emotionality, dealing with intimate issues of love, loss, and friendship. It was an ideal debut for Ford, who managed to highlight his visual gifts and his comfort with actors. “Nocturnal Animals” is his long-awaited follow up, and Ford attempts to switch gears, heading in a Hitchcockian direction with a melodrama that’s braided with thriller-esque events, once again using his interests in symmetry, style, and relationships to boost the significance of what’s essentially a weightless effort. “Nocturnal Animals” is more of an exercise in manipulation than a piercing story of paralyzed hearts, eventually dissolving into a movie of moments instead of a cohesive arc of illness.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Solace” isn’t trying very hard to subvert expectations, though it certainly has the opportunity to do something new with the serial killer subgenre. It’s a psychic warfare picture, though one that doesn’t go bananas with its depiction of special individuals capable of manipulating the present by seeing into the future. Director Afonso Poyart doesn’t explore the cinematic potential of the premise, electing to bring the production down to television standards, making the film more procedural than fantastical. “Solace” offers dead bodies, bruised backstories, and an all-consuming hunt for a sly madman, but it’s a frustratingly flat effort, and one carried along by an Anthony Hopkins performance where the actor’s lights are visibly switched off, creating a dramatic gap where urgency usually resides. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A long time ago on a place called Earth, there used to be an extended waiting period between “Star Wars” sequels, forcing fans to feast on scraps of information for years as the blockbusters marched through stages of production, find their releases practically declared national holidays. Those days are over. Now that the Walt Disney Corporation owns the brand, “Star Wars” is currently a yearly event, with “Rogue One” a spin-off of sorts, tiding over the faithful after last year’s “The Force Awakens” rocked expectations and box office records, and “Episode VIII” is prepped for a holiday 2017 debut. While it isn’t the first franchise departure (the Ewoks did have a pair of television movies in the mid-1980s), it’s certainly the largest, with “Rogue One” enjoying an immense creative push to help connect its story to the events of 1977’s “A New Hope.” It’s an experiment that mostly works, but there are moments when it’s clear that the task of finding new areas of “Star Wars” to play with is a bit too much for director Gareth Edwards to handle. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Now is the time for a tremendous, bawdy, take-no-prisoners seasonal comedy, hitting all the sweet spots during a particularly heavy year of bad news. “Bad Santa 2” stumbled right out of the gate, leaving “Office Christmas Party” a wide open shot to be the bellylaugh generator of the holidays. It almost reaches an inspired level of insanity too, but there’s not enough oddball behavior in the picture to make it truly memorable. Directors Will Speck and Josh Gordon have their hearts in the right place, but here’s the rare movie that’s hurt by characterization, finding “Office Christmas Party” so concerned with telling a coherent, emotionally resonate story, it often forgets to have fun with itself, eventually losing focus on chaos to adhere to convention, just to provide a comfort zone for its audience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After years spent trying to figure out how to make the internet scary (“Feardotcom” anyone?), Hollywood finally found something to work with 2015’s “Unfriended,” which inventively utilized online technology and social media connection to inspire a successful chiller. It was no great achievement in cinema, but a movie that was capable of surprise in a genre that often goes out of its way to avoid it. “Friend Request” isn’t as gonzo a picture, playing more traditional with its blend of witchcraft and Facebook, but it isn’t terrible, which is as close to praise as I’m willing to get. Co-writer/director Simon Verhoeven doesn’t go to the dark web to inspire the feature, but he does successfully land a degree of eeriness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When Darren Lynn Bousman makes a movie, it’s usually sold as a feature from “The director of ‘Saw II, III, and IV’.” While it’s an accurate claim, Bousman hasn’t enjoyed the most inspired career, also helming duds such as “11-11-11,” “Mother’s Day,” and “The Barrens.” “Abattoir” is the latest misfire from Bousman, who seems consumed with becoming a top horror conductor, only his orchestra is perpetually out of tune. Blame for the ridiculousness of “Abattoir” is shared with screenwriter Christopher Monfette, but Bousman doesn’t plan to cover the story’s strangeness with a big enough budget, keeping events on the cheap, which makes it impossible to get lost in this noir-ish take on murder, menace, and the gate to Hell. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s tough out there for action heroes these days. The titans of the industry have aged out of the quest for cinematic dominance, and the next generation doesn’t have the benefit of a VHS revolution, earning their reputation through basic cable repetition and games of lonely Saturday night VOD roulette. We once had Schwarzenegger, and now we have Scott Adkins. Trying to bring his own special sauce to the party is Tom Hopper, who beefs and strips down for “Kill Ratio,” delivering his take on a standard survival actioner. Hopper certainly has the physicality for the part, showcasing his muscular hairlessness throughout the feature, but there’s a more challenging war to be waged with the production, as director Paul Tanter struggles to make something out of nothing with “Kill Ratio,” which doesn’t have the budget to become the explosive bruiser he imagines. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s certainly understandable why Katie Holmes has decided to take more control of her career. Just over a decade ago, she was the focus of the marketing push for “First Daughter” and co-starred in “Batman Begins.” Five years ago, she was playing second banana to Adam Sandler in drag in “Jack and Jill.” Industry opportunities weren’t trending upward. Holmes makes her directorial debut with “All We Had,” an adaptation of an Annie Weatherwax novel and material that unsurprisingly permits the star to achieve the greatest performance of her career. It’s an episodic picture, and perhaps a premise seen one too many times, but Holmes finds a way to soften cliché and make the feature feel lived-in and emotionally true. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Sometimes, a movie simply doesn’t work due to a lack of seasoned professionals involved in the production. The screenplay (by Abe Pogos) for “Sugar Mountain” actually holds promise, looking to merge a “Fargo”-lite crime story about bad ideas gone wrong with a domestic disturbance tale, hoping to come out the other side with an emotionally profound, nail-biting feature that manages to do something with a limited budget. Director Richard Gray has a few credits to his name, but his command of “Sugar Mountain” is tenuous at best, struggling to fashion a suspenseful picture about family and betrayal, only to offer an amateurish drama that bites off more than it can chew. Early promise for a ripe inspection of brotherly unrest is quickly dismissed by limited actors and a helmer who never seems to know what he’s doing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Michael Shannon is an intense actor, and he’s maintained a career interest in playing intimidating or fried men, using his natural way with darkness to create often memorable characters that have complete contempt for humanity in common. Perhaps one day Shannon will stun the world with his portrayal of the Easter Bunny, or perhaps he’ll star in a music bio-pic about Raffi, but for now, he’s trying to corner the market on hard men, and he’s doing a wonderful job. “Frank & Lola” isn’t a professional detour for Shannon, but it does manage to harness his gift for threatening behavior, with writer/director Matthew Ross (making his helming debut) capturing raw nerve work from the actor, allowing him to define the unsettling tone of this burning, disquieting drama.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There are few actors like Isabelle Huppert. She’s a veteran of the industry, performing on film and television for 45 years, yet, unlike most of her contemporaries, she keeps trying to challenge herself, taking unconventional roles and working with sophisticated directors. She remains a fresh screen presence, and her experience is the engine that drives “Things to Come,” a seemingly mild story of domestic implosion that’s turned into something special by Huppert, who delivers an emotionally complex performance while maintaining her character’s tight command of social exposure. Writer/director Mia Hansen-Love isn’t big on sharp turns of plot, but she has Huppert and her drive to keep a potential cartoon summation of life’s cruelties as human and subtle as possible. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Filling in an empty slot during a release weekend that’s generally regarded at the worst of the film year, it’s up to “Incarnate” to thrill audiences with its take on demonic possession and the spiritual heroes sent in to challenge evil. Shot three years ago, it’s little surprise that the movie is a dud, but it’s not an aggressive disaster, just a poorly assembled effort that looks like it was re-edited dozens of times, with the final cut less about being functional genre entertainment and more about being done. A low-budget chiller that doesn’t really have any detectable scares, “Incarnate” is a Thanksgiving turkey put out for display a week late, trying to suck up as much single-weekend cash as it can before word spreads that it’s completely forgettable. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Eyes of My Mother” is the debut feature for writer/director Nicolas Pesce, and it’s quite the introduction. It’s a spare chiller that treats perversion and murder almost casually, managing to unnerve through distance, showcasing the young filmmaker’s interest in slow-burn storytelling and mystery, with the feature taking its sweet time to play out in full. Visually, it’s stunning, using black and white cinematography to unsettle as it depicts grotesque body horrors and the daily routine of demented individuals, with Pesce attentive to scenes where the unthinkable becomes mundane to the characters. “The Eyes of My Mother” is gruesome and macabre, but it’s also powerful work, following through on a vision for psychosis with welcome brevity and a weirdly compelling, periodically loathsome fondness for the unpleasant. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com