Category: Film Review

It takes a special person to be a documentary cinematographer. The job requires a balance of creative thinking and physical stamina, while the emotional toll is often horrendous, putting oneself in the line of fire with hot button issues, war zones, and volatile interviewees. Kristen Johnson has built an impressive resume in the field, working on “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” “Darfur Now,” and “The Invisible War,” and “Cameraperson” is her way of summing up achievements and making something out of discarded footage, permitting viewers a chance to see the process of filmmaking from the perspective of the woman who shot it all. Those already tuned into this world and its style are sure to enjoy the odds and ends of “Cameraperson,” and even those unaware of Johnson’s work are gifted an unusual break from the documentary norm, exposed to slices of life that reinforce the fragility and the oddity of the human experience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Perhaps looking to snatch a little of the money the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series has collected (another sequel is on the way), the producers of “Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life” return to the plight of a young adolescent facing numerous challenges to his head, heart, and hallway reputation. An adaptation of the YA novel, co-authored by James Patterson, “Middle School” offers a familiar smorgasbord of teen rebellion and parental cluelessness, only the tonality of the movie is problematic at best. Director Steve Carr (“Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” “Daddy Day Care”) enjoys his mischief, with pranks staged by kids against their educational overlords dominating sections of the film. However, the rest of the effort is unexpectedly solemn, requiring more attention to psychological damage than Carr is comfortable offering. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

This year’s applicant to be the Fall Thriller of the Year is “The Girl on the Train,” an adaptation of author Paula Hawkins’s best-seller, which enjoyed a run as the It Book of 2015. The story presents the usual sex and violence, requiring an inventive helmer able to pay specific attention to escalation, generating a charged viewing experience with a thick atmosphere of disease and paranoia. The producers hand the effort over to Tate Taylor, last seen on screens with “Get on Up,” but most famous for his work on “The Help.” He’s not the first director that comes to mind when considering talents suited to launch the semi-exploitational event to come, and Taylor showcases his indifference to chills throughout “The Girl on the Train,” which fumbles most of its cheap thrills and devious motivations. Tate keeps the movie small and uneventful, trying perhaps too hard to make Hawkins’s broad work fit the needs of a feature. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The release of “The Birth of a Nation” is ideally timed, tapping into the zeitgeist with its depiction of race-based violence, deliberately erecting a bridge between woes of the past and fears for the future. It’s a provocative picture, intending to stimulate discomfort and inspire horror, but co-writer/director/star Nate Parker doesn’t have much more than shock value with this latest attempt to inspect the savagery of American slavery. “The Birth of a Nation” has some sensational visual ideas and a few strong performances, but it’s also a tired “Braveheart” retread with nothing new to say about the Black Experience, often recycling brutality found in better features. Instead of inspiring a cultural awakening, Parker has a made an exploitation movie, and not a terribly effective one at that. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s difficult to watch “Blue Jay” and not think of Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise.” The pictures are different in many ways, but they share a common interest in conversation, studying two characters as they spend a considerable amount of time together, sharing pleasantries and humor before deeper feelings come into view. There’s no direct comparison to make, but it’s interesting to see another feature added to the walk-and-talk-and-talk-and-talk subgenre, and it’s a pleasure to report how well “Blue Jay” works thanks to patient direction by Alex Lehman and exceptional lead performances from Sarah Paulson and Mark Duplass. There’s no heavy feel of artificiality to break the mood, just an opportunity to watch natural chemistry take shape over the course of a particularly eventful day. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

They don’t make movies like “The Great Gilly Hopkins” anymore, making the picture’s creation something to be valued, even with its problems. It’s a story about behavioral issues and abandonment, and it retains a slight edge to keep it away from Disney territory, bravely confronting ugliness the titular character wields to get a reaction out of people. It’s an adaptation of a lauded 1978 book by Katherine Paterson, the author of “Bridge to Terabithia,” and director Stephen Herek respects its literary perspective, working to get inside the mind of a young girl suffering through tremendous challenges and changes, most threatening to harden her at a tender age. Not everything comes together as profoundly as it could, but “The Great Gilly Hopkins” satisfies with characterization and deeply felt performances. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Movies have been made about The Beatles. They’ve been made about John Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman. But rare is the film that actually recreates the shock of Lennon’s death, treating his passing with the mournfulness it deserves and the journalistic eagerness it inspired. “The Lennon Report” doesn’t bother with mimicry or philosophy, it strives to recapture the hours where Lennon was just another patient at Roosevelt Hospital, where his global celebrity was at first denied, quickly inspiring a game of secrecy between staff and reporters. The production doesn’t have the budget to fully recreate the era, but “The Lennon Report” comes through with an original vision for a dire subject matter, creating an interesting but flawed take on a ticking clock situation, with urgency tied to the dwindling heartbeat of a dying icon. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After decades of supporting parts in a wide range of pictures (including “The Whole Nine Yards,” “The Usual Suspects,” and “She’s All That”), actor Kevin Pollak decides to take more control of his career with a move behind the camera. After helming the documentary “Misery Loves Company,” Pollak graduates to narrative features with “The Late Bloomer,” a comedy about prolactinoma, a benign tumor of the pituitary gland, which restricts the maturation of males, blocking expected adolescence. It’s an unusual subject to dissect for the screen, and it’s a shame “The Late Bloomer” isn’t interested in examining such oddity. Pollak goes the familiar route with the material, merging broad antics with teary sensitivities, unwilling to give his effort some much needed bite. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Fear of nuclear annihilation isn’t quite the hot button issue it once was, seizing a sizable portion of the last century with nightmarish imagery and political threats as hostile nations back up their severity with the ability to kill everyone on the planet, practically at once. “Command and Control” recognizes the gradual relaxation around apocalyptic visions, with more critical surges in national security issues taking top importance as the world now plays a different style of fear-based gamesmanship. Director Robert Kenner (“Merchants of Doubt,” “Food, Inc.”) seeks to restore utter horror when considering the reach of nuclear proliferation, isolating such tensions with a tale of homeland horror, examining the 1980 Damascus Titan Missile Explosion. “Command and Control” may not be overwhelming work, but as a critical reminder of the fallibility of men around doomsday devices, it’s terrifying. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

John Sayles hasn’t released a movie since 2013, but writer/director/star Miles Doleac tries to fill in for his absence with “The Hollow.” A slice of southern noir, the picture is similar in many ways to “Lone Star,” Sayles’s 1996 masterpiece of crime and personal confusion, picking apart the ugly details of small town life as buried secrets gradually meet the light of day. Doleac has the right idea with “The Hollow,” but his take on Sayles’s deliberate pace and commitment to deep characterization doesn’t find its footing, resulting in a lethargic effort in desperate need of more judicious editing. Instead of delivering inspired mimicry with an offering filled with dangerous people and dark pasts, the feature only triggers a burning desire to watch “Lone Star” again. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The Tim Burton of today isn’t the Tim Burton of yesterday. The once lively helmer of “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure,” “Beetlejuice,” and “Batman” is now a colder craftsman of quirk, turning to “Alice in Wonderland,” “Dark Shadows,” and “Big Eyes” to keep his career eventful, emerging with varied results. “Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children” seems tailor-made for Burton, presenting a YA playground of the fantastical and the whimsically odd, with plenty of room to explore strange worlds and characters. The Burton of yesterday would’ve swan-dived into the material. The Burton of today can only summon a modicum of interest in what’s intended to be the first step of a franchise, delivering monsters and idiosyncrasy, but only at half-speed. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With a title like “Flock of Dudes,” a promise of an unbearable film is made. It’s not a great name for a movie, but there are few options available to co-writer/director Bob Castrone, who’s attempting to make a picture about the expiration date of broheim culture and still celebrate its highlights. A low-budget comedy starring a host of “hey, it’s that guy from Comedy Central” types, the miracle of “Flock of Dudes” is how appealing it actually is, managing some sense of personal examination before it slips back into silly business. The potential is there for a greater understanding of Peter Pan Syndrome, but Castrone isn’t prepared for the bigger battle, instead creating a pleasant, periodically hilarious feature that pokes fun at twentysomethings facing the pains of arrested development. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Now here’s a film that’s about children, but values intelligence and sophisticated feelings and fears. It’s set in Africa, and while it depicts poverty and hardships, it’s not swallowed whole by scenes of brutal violence, treasuring culture. And it’s about chess, but feels as nail-chewingly suspenseful as any sports drama. “Queen of Katwe” is exceptional work from director Mira Nair, who finds a very special rhythm of life to support the feature’s formula, consistently finding surprises with character and situations that dodge predictability, even when the picture finds itself on familiar terrain. “Queen of Katwe” largely avoids exaggeration to make a grander point of hope and brilliance coming together in one unique girl, and it’s a must-see for those tired of the blockbuster and genre routine, with its human touch powerful and achingly sincere. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In their continuing quest to find stories of American heroism and physical endurance to dramatize after scoring a major hit with 2013’s “Lone Survivor,” director Peter Berg and actor Mark Wahlberg reunite for “Deepwater Horizon,” which recreates the 2010 drilling rig explosion that created the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Stripped of guns and military hardness, the pairing goes blue collar to successfully oversee a replication of the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe, dialing down the tiresome theatrics of “Lone Survivor” to play the new picture as respectfully as possible. Explosions are common and the American flag is positioned carefully in frame, but Berg actually manages to smother his battering-ram storytelling skills for a change, keeping “Deepwater Horizon” lean and meaningful, though his predilection towards cartoon filmmaking isn’t completely abandoned. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While a remake of “The Magnificent Seven” rumbles through theaters, “The Dressmaker” proves itself to be a superior western in western in every way. It’s a clever picture (an adaptation of a Rosalie Ham novel) that imagines small town hostilities as genre entanglements, with Kate Winslet starring as most unusual gunslinger, wielding thread and fabric instead of cold steel. While “The Dressmaker” contains a restless, borderline crazed Australian energy, director Jocelyn Moorhouse manages the insanity with skill, conjuring a beguiling mystery with rich characterization, dark humor, and a cheeky love for Leone-esque theatrics while sorting through domestic problems. It’s a strange film, but memorably so. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“A Man Called Ove” threatens to be smothered by a case of the cutes, tracking the growth of a curmudgeon learning to enjoy life once again after the loss of his wife. It has all the ingredients for a flat, benign charmer, but the Swedish production retains enough dark humor to become something else, digging deeper into the titular character to find something more than just episodic mischief. “A Man Called Ove” has its crowd-pleasing moments, but it preserves enough sincerity to capture hearts, with writer/director Hannes Holm (adapting a best-selling novel by Fredrik Backman) balancing tone and incident with confidence, making the picture more of an odyssey into a personal awakening than a sitcom. It’s a strange effort, but often in the best way possible. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When “Masterminds” opens with a “Based on a True Story” card, it feels like a “Fargo”-esque prank. There’s simply no way any of this nonsense could be based on an actual armored car heist, but, indeed, it’s true, with the production taking inspiration from a 1997 robbery that occurred in North Carolina. Instead of assembling a true crime tale, director Jared Hess (“Napoleon Dynamite,” “Nacho Libre”) bends reality as far as it can go with “Masterminds,” which emphasizes slapstick over suspense, trying to transform a federal offense into a wild farce populated with a cast of comedians. It’s not a great movie, but it’s not without laughs, finding Hess laboring to find an anarchic tone for the picture that delivers mainstream silliness while sticking closely to big screen idiosyncrasy that’s been a staple of his career. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Last Film Festival” is selling itself as the final starring appearance for legendary actor Dennis Hopper, which is really something to celebrate considering the man died in 2010. It’s been a long road to release for the film, and stress shows throughout the effort, which arrives with good intentions but seems unfinished and unfocused. The feature aims to be a satire of the festival experience, taking in the diverse personalities and temperaments of those who participate in such public celebrations of cinema. It’s a topic worthy of an extensive pantsing, playing up anxiety felt by creative forces and snobbery shared by attendees. “The Last Film Festival” doesn’t have the precision to successfully slap around the setting, but it does have Hopper, who’s part of an ensemble trying their best to make sure co-writer/director Linda Yellen has something to work with. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

This Halloween season welcomes not one, but two movies centered on the idea of killer clowns hunting innocent people through empty buildings for sport. Rob Zombie’s “31” is scrappy and sicko, playing to the helmer’s tastes in demented characters and ugly violence, presented with a lovingly low-budget style. Tom Nagel’s “ClownTown” is definitely…in focus. A seasonal chiller that’s more of a tribute to slasher cinema than its own creation, the feature falls apart when compared to “31,” but on its own, it serves as something of a directorial exercise for Nagel, who uses the creative opportunity to mastermind stalking sequences and experiment with tone. “ClownTown” isn’t fresh or ghoulishly inviting, easily making it the second best option for those in need of a homicidal clown extravaganza this spooky season. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When one thinks of animated family entertainment featuring a cast of kind, cuddly creatures, director Nicholas Stoller isn’t the first name that comes to mind. The helmer of “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “The Five-Year Engagement,” and “Neighbors” (and its sequel), Stoller has built a career on crude humor and acts of humiliation, making him an unlikely mastermind behind a comical tale of birds in charge of distributing newborns to the world. Sharing a newfound interest in the PG crowd, Stoller goes full cartoon with “Storks,” but often seems confused about what he really wants from the picture, unable to decide if he’s creating something heartwarming or something obnoxious. He’s good with big and bright, but Stoller’s sense of humor is too slack to trigger laughs, which there are precious few of in this routine effort. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com