Category: Film Review

“Hunting Grounds” is a killer Bigfoot picture. The thought of it conjures all types of insane imagery concerning huge beasts stalking the woods, terrorizing those daring to enter Sasquatch domain. But the actual film isn’t nearly as exciting, dropping the ball in terms of violence and overall frights. Writer/director John Portanova admirably attempts to make a character journey with “Hunting Grounds,” hoping to pull viewers in tighter with strong personalities and troubled histories before the monsters are unleashed. But anticipation for mayhem becomes a weirdly prolonged waiting game for anything of note to happen, with Portanova almost reluctant to build on the material’s B-movie foundation and let this effort explode with creature feature fury. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s titled “Resident Evil: The Final Chapter,” and here’s to hoping the producers keep their promise. The sixth installment of the video game-inspire series endeavors to return the story to its origins, pitting long-suffer heroine Alice against old foes in the wilds of Raccoon City after spending previous sequels marching all over the world. It should be a back-to-basics romp for writer/director Paul W.S. Anderson, but the man can’t help himself, forgoing a chance to revive the simplistic fun of the original picture to craft another exposition-heavy, stiffly choreographed actioner, with star Milla Jovovich looking visibly tired, barely mustering up enough interest to portray a character who’s not really a character at all, but a poseable action figure. “The Final Chapter” is a drag, much like the rest of the franchise, but it’s the dropped potential of the movie that’s most frustrating, with Anderson recycling conflicts and combat as the script stumbles toward a non-ending. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While it's unfair to criticize a film due to its trailer, the marketing materials for “Gold” promise an adventurous romp with unhinged characters experiencing seismic changes to their bank account and notoriety. The actual “Gold” isn't anywhere near that feature, emerging as more of a study of integrity and honesty in the shadow of unimaginable greed. I'm sure director Stephen Gaghan is mortified with the way his picture is being sold to the public, but his take on the ecstasy of gold isn't appealing, delving into tediously diseased personalities that could benefit from judicious editing. Gaghan refuses focus and narrative balance for his endeavor, which is quickly crippled by his clouded vision and laborious plot. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Lasse Hallstrom has never been the most consistent moviemaker, boasting a filmography littered with gems (“My Life as a Dog,” “Once Around,” “The Cider House Rules”) and stained by stinkers (“Dear John,” “Safe Haven,” “Casanova”). He hit a creative highpoint with 2009’s “Hachi: A Dog’s Tale,” which successfully captured the behavioral tenacity of canines while handling a tearjerker story of undying connection between a pet and his owner. It’s a lovely feature that was rudely dumped on home video in the U.S. by its distributor, only to find a sizable, appreciative audience through word of mouth. Now Hallstrom’s attempting to reconnect with the animals for “A Dog’s Purpose,” which increases manipulations tenfold, straining hard to win over viewers with a tale of cute pooches dealing with mischief and existentialism, but not in an endearing manner. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Just when zombie cinema appeared to be all out of inspiration, “The Girl with All the Gifts” comes along to rejuvenate the subgenre. It’s a walking dead movie, but one that takes a more sympathetic approach to the ghoul nation, delivering a sophisticated depiction of evolution concerning a young girl caught between her macabre urges and her genius-level I.Q. Adapted from a M.R. Carey novel, “The Girl with All the Gifts” is a satisfying look at survival and unique relationships, and director Colm McCarthy (a television veteran) creates an evocative dystopian world on a limited budget, putting focus on his characters, not grand displays of horror. It’s an unsettling picture, but also engrossing and emotive, handling expectation for gloom and doom with inspired dramatic depth and performances. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Christopher Smith has dabbled in genre films throughout his career (“Severance,” “Triangle”), but he reached an impressively grim level of doom with 2010’s “Black Death,” a harrowing horror offering that showcased the helmer’s competent way with suspense and nightmare imagery. “Detour” doesn’t possess the sheer terror of “Black Death,” but it reinforces Smith’s skills behind the camera, commanding an effective thriller that plays with perspective and time, working to disrupt expectations for a traditional meeting of poisoned minds. “Detour” is swiftly paced and imaginative with narrative gamesmanship, but it’s also nail-biting stuff, keeping viewers attentive to character decisions and ongoing mishaps, with Smith celebrating the elasticity of B-movie exploration, keeping the effort angry and on the move. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s never easy for movies to portray the cutthroat world of business. Tales of fierce ambition generally require sensitivity to reach viewers, creating a foundation of human behavior to best appreciate dubious financial and legal tactics to come. “The Founder” tells one of the most important tales of hardcore corporate gamesmanship, recounting the rise of McDonald’s, the most successful fast food chain in history. It’s not a comforting story of a dream realized or mission accomplished, but an overview of shady business practices that launched billions of hamburgers. Through screenwriter Robert D. Siegel (“The Wrestler,” “Big Fan”), “The Founder” actually manages to find psychological depth underneath all the scheming and frustrations, shaping a fascinating examination of opportunity born from legal duplicity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While director Garth Davis tries to resist it for as long as he can, there’s little chance for dry eyes when exiting a showing of “Lion.” It’s artful feel-good storytelling, bringing the true tale of Saroo Brierley to the screen, dramatizing a personal experience that’s equal parts horrifying and heartfelt. Davis makes a pretty picture, and his eye for casting is impressive, with the ensemble contributing deeply felt performances that support the lengthy emotional journey that guides the viewing experience. “Lion” isn’t revolutionary filmmaking, but as comfort food cinema goes, it carries requisite anxiety and release, making it palatable to the mass audience while still retaining some subtlety with periodically intense character examination. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Dad’s Army” is a big screen update of a popular British television series that ran from 1968 to 1977. It already spawned a feature film adaptation in 1971, challenging the producers to come up with something substantial to warrant another dive into this franchise, which has been away from public consciousness for four decades. Director Oliver Parker and screenwriter Hamish McColl aren’t looking for ways to update the material, instead embracing its interests in old fashioned comedy, hiring top actors to have a ball with very silly situations. Trouble is, “Dad’s Army,” while perfectly pleasant, isn’t very funny, fighting to find something grand to do with its WWII setting and cast of quirky characters. Parker isn’t asleep here, but he isn’t inventive either. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After dazzling audiences with “Jackie,” his take on American history, director Pablo Larrain makes a quick return to theaters with a piece of his homeland. And established student of Chile and its political unrest (helming the inventive “No” and “The Club”), Larrain and screenwriter Guillermo Calderon try to make sense out of the life and times of Pablo Neruda in “Neruda,” which isn’t a strict biographical dissection, but more of a free-flowing assessment of character and spirit. It’s an odd picture that weaves though fact and fiction, toying with reality as it tinkers with noir-ish flavors and conflicted souls. Larrain makes a valiant effort to keep Neruda an interesting subject, bending his public persona as much as he can to conjure a stimulating assessment of personality and behavior to best fuel this odyssey into South American history. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Get the Girl” wants to do something with a premise that merges bumbling crooks and a kidnapping plan gone awry, resembling a screenwriting sample that somehow ended up in production, showing ambition with character connection and overall mischief. Director Eric England (“Contracted”) works hard to secure some style and intensity to the effort, which is surprisingly gory as deadly accidents occur, but overall rhythm doesn’t come through as clearly. “Get the Girl” doesn’t feel refined, and while it pats itself on the back for its twists and turns, energy dips on multiple occasions. We’ve seen much of what this movie is offering in other pictures, challenging England to come up with something memorable to keep audiences engaged. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Trespass Against Us” marks the second collaboration between actors Michael Fassbender and Brendan Gleeson in just a matter of weeks. The last was December’s “Assassin’s Creed,” which offered Fassbender a chance to play a superhuman with extreme martial art skills, and Gleeson portrayed his mysterious father. “Trespass Against Us” is a far more sobering feature, but the character dynamic is almost the same, this time taking a look at the tight-knit world of Irish travelers, where privacy is almost as impossible to achieve as a personal dream. It’s easy to see why Fassbender and Gleeson are joined at the hip recently, generating a usable comfort between them that creates opportunities for silent hostility and frightening acts of parental intimidation. Instead of managing drama around CGI, the pair creates their own visual effects with this crime saga, building a credible relationship to help carry screenwriter Alastair Siddons’s somewhat lukewarm take on generational influence. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan recently restored his fledgling filmmaking career to an upright position. After a solid decade of critical and commercial failures, “The Sixth Sense” helmer shed budgetary needs and chased a trend for 2015’s “The Visit,” a tepid found footage endeavor that unexpectedly found an audience hungry for cheap thrills, giving Shyamalan a second wind as a conductor of low-budget genre shenanigans. “Split” is his latest effort, and while more traditional in execution, the feature remains fixated on exploitation pursuits, working to find nail-biting manipulations with a screenplay that’s rooted in real-world agony. Shyamalan knows a thing or two about suspense, but he has questionable awareness of good taste, keeping “Split” more of a bummer than a barnstormer. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Moviegoers had to endure “xXx” back in 2002 because Hollywood smelled blood in the water, jumping on the chance to cash-in on star Vin Diesel’s sudden popularity after his work on 2001’s “The Fast and the Furious.” The feature was a valentine to Diesel’s meaty screen persona, with the production attempting to shape a spy movie for Generation X, using extreme sports and extreme mumbling to give James Bond some youthful competition. The film did well mostly due to hype, but Diesel promptly abandoned the franchise, handing the reins to Ice Cube for a 2005 sequel that completely tanked. Now that the “Fast and Furious” franchise is capable of producing billion-dollar hits, the industry wants Diesel all over again, resurrecting the tattooed hero for “xXx: Return of Xander Cage,” hoping there’s still some box office magic left in the teat for the now 49-year-old actor to squeeze. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2010’s “Beginners,” writer/director Mike Mills mined personal experiences to inform a tender story of parental understanding and acceptance, delivering a level of intimacy his debut effort, 2005’s “Thumbsucker,” completely lacked. “Beginners” offered a more exploratory viewing experience, and Mills wisely builds on it for “20th Century Women,” which also presents a semi-autobiographical approach to best capture nuanced human behavior. Taking audiences to 1979, a year of remarkable social, political, and music transitions, Mills inspects ways of sexuality, friendships, and maturation, but he really zeros in on parenthood, showing interest in the dynamic between a mother and her rebellious son. While a collection of actresses contributing some of their finest work is enough to entice, it’s the texture Mills brings to his characters that completely sells “20th Century Women,” securing a rich understanding of personality to go along with his more artful take on the flow of life. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

For most people on Earth, Antarctica is an unreachable continent, possessing an environmental fury and physical distance that makes a full understanding of its secrets and beauty impossible to understand. For scientist Claude Lorius, Antarctica is a second home. For such a faraway land, Antarctica is now the key to Earth’s future, home to evidence of life before industry and population began to change the planet’s climate. “Antarctica: Ice & Sky” recounts Lorius’s multiple trips to the frozen land, greeting the 82 year old as he reflects on his excursions and discoveries, including critical research into climate change over 30 years ago that’s now beginning to take shape. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Actor Stephen Graham has appeared in a great number of films, showing up in supporting roles, typically playing lackeys and goons in pictures like “Snatch,” “Gangs of New York,” and “This is England.” “A Patch of Fog” doesn’t rework Graham’s screen presence, but it does offer him atypical depth, gifting him a chance to play a “Single White Female”-style game of stalking with screenwriting that sympathizes with the monster, using thriller conventions to make sense of loneliness. Graham is terrific here, joined by an equally sharp turn from co-star Conleth Hill, with the men committed to the inspection of a particularly tense relationship built on blackmail and opportunity. However, “A Patch of Fog” doesn’t work itself up into a frenzy, taking a more subtle direction when spotlighting a toxic union between predator and prey. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When comedians speak about Fred Wolf as a person, they’re usually very kind, describing his sharp sense of humor and general pleasantness. I’m sure Wolf is a gentleman, but he’s a lousy filmmaker. The screenwriter of “Joe Dirt 2,” “Grown Ups” and its sequel, and “Black Sheep,” Wolf returns behind the camera to guide “Mad Families,” which isn’t really a movie, but more of a loose collection of improvisational dueling and random characterization that’s occasionally broken up by childish racial humor. Wolf is credited as the director, but there’s no noticeable control over the picture, which basically brings a large group of actors to a single rural location and allows them to do whatever they want, no matter how useless and painfully unfunny it is. “Mad Families” is available to watch free online, but even then, it feels like too high a price, handing a chunk of life over to Wolf, who doesn’t deserve it. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As an offering of quirky sentimentality, “The Book of Love” fails miserably. It’s a replication of a mid-1990s indie hit, trying to reach audiences with heavy amounts of eccentricity while dealing with heavy real-world issues such as abandonment and death. Screenwriters Bill Purple (who also directs) and Robbie Pickering (“Natural Selection”) push too far with plastic personalities, working to win over viewers with peculiarity, which comes off strained and unpleasant. Building a bridge between paralyzing grief and raft construction, the production ends up a tedious routine of manipulation. Perhaps Purple and Pickering have honest intentions, but “The Book of Love” doesn’t deliver sincerity. It’s more comfortable with heavily sugared predictability. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As a writer/director, Ben Affleck enjoyed an impressive streak of exceptional pictures, creating truly fantastic efforts in “Gone Baby Gone,” “The Town,” and “Argo.” He showcased a filmmaking talent unseen in his thespian pursuits up to this point, regenerating his enthusiasm for the art form with movies that were easily among the best of their respective years. With “Live by Night,” Affleck’s instincts fail him for the first time, abandoning the relative intimacy of his previous endeavors to mastermind a gangster saga adapted from a 2012 Dennis Lehane novel, giving him narrative responsibilities that quickly overwhelm him. “Live by Night” is a frustrating sit before it becomes a dull one, with Affleck unable to shake himself out of a creative coma, treating the material too preciously, refusing to give it the adrenaline shot it needs. It certainly doesn’t suggest Affleck has lost his touch, but the feature does showcase his tendency for misguided passion. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com