Category: Film Review

It’s difficult to classify “Central Intelligence” as a good movie, but it makes a valiant effort to disrupt expectations, especially when it comes to leads Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson. An action-comedy from director Rawson Marshall Thurber (“We’re the Millers”), the picture is open to switching traditional roles for the talent, allowing Johnson to be the semi-loud weird guy while Hart does the straight-man routine. It may seem like a simple change in tone, but the idea keeps “Central Intelligence” involving and amusing, especially when it offers a sedate, reactionary Hart. Thurber isn’t built for big, violent set pieces, but the jokes keep coming in the film, showing a little more interest in entertaining ticket-buyers than expected. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 1982, fresh off the high they received after watching Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece, “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” Mississippi teenagers Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, and Jayson Lamb embarked on a perilous quest to meticulously reshoot the picture using locations, actors, and props available to them as adolescents. The moviemaking ordeal lasted seven years, during which friendships were forged and lost, lives were challenged, and obsessions were exhausted. The result was “Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation” (Read the Review), a thrilling celebration of big screen influence that, despite limited production polish, managed to thrill and chill with its Spielberg Jr. appeal. The boys eventually went their separate ways after production ended, but there was one scene left to complete, leaving “The Adaptation” missing a key part of the story. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Nils Gaup made a strong professional introduction decades ago with 1987’s “Pathfinder” and 1990’s “Shipwrecked,” a Disney picture that brought the helmer a more global audience. Gaup returns to duty with “The Last King,” which offers a frigid, action-minded take on Norwegian history, trying to butch up the details of civil war in a “Game of Thrones” era of swords, brawn, and scheming. “The Last King” is steeped in local culture and motivation, making it a complex sit for those not up on the minutiae of Norwegian conflict, but Gaup and screenwriter Ravn Lanesskog do their best to make sure the cinematic essentials are represented, delivering big action in a rarely explored setting, successfully transforming this slice of warfare into a compelling, wonderfully snowbound adventure. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Dominic Purcell has worked hard to become a big screen tough guy, surviving on a diet of B-movies that try to do something with his blank expression and bulky physicality, emphasizing his comfort with intimidation. He’s not an especially commanding screen presence, but, like most actors missing a defined personality, when used sparingly, his work is digestible. “Gridlocked” smartly downplays Purcell’s limited range, arming him with guns and giving him a co-star to stare at in this modest but violent mash-up of “The Hard Way” and “Die Hard.” “Gridlocked” is a fairly generic offering of action cinema, never developing conflicts to satisfaction, preferring gunfire to suspense, but it does periodically distract, finding a few stretches of inspired mayhem as it goes through the bullets and brawn routine. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A few years ago, director Mike Mendez pulled off the impossible. Armed with a tiny budget and a jokey premise, Mendez managed to make something agreeable out of “Big Ass Spider,” keeping rhythm tight and humor approachable as he set out to create a CGI-shellacked monster movie in a marketplace that’s filled with them. Mendez’s spunky vision isn’t as successful for “The Last Heist.” Instead of smartly reworking the obvious and doing something substantial with suspense beats, Mendez simply survives this no-budget chiller. Filmmaking finesse is missing from the effort, which takes a neat premise and proceeds to pad the picture with banal dialogue and tedious characterizations, leaving actual time for hellraising limited, never taking full advantage of the oddball plot. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A video game franchise that has endured since 1994, “Warcraft” finally makes it way to the big screen after years of development. Much like “The Angry Birds Movie,” perhaps the optimal time for a cinematic inspection of this sprawling material has passed, but co-writer/director Duncan Jones does an admirable job reviving the basics of combat between orcs and humans, emphasizing magic and troubled heroes with laudable sincerity, trying his best to respect the essentials of the brand name. Difficulty arrives with the ultimate digestion of such a complex universe, but the production isn’t making this picture for casual ticket-buyers. “Warcraft” plays strictly to the faithful, and if the opening five minutes of the movie feel exceptionally bewildering, the rest isn’t any easier to interpret. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2016 has welcomed a lot of strange, unnecessary sequels, but “Now You See Me 2” is perhaps the most superfluous of them all. The groundwork for a continuation was built into the original 2013 effort, and encouraging box office returns guaranteed a second round with these “magicians,” but now that the continuation is here, it really doesn’t have much to do besides reheat heist and thriller scenes that worked for select audiences before. “Now You See Me 2” is a better film than its predecessor, but that’s not much of a compliment. Director Jon M. Chu (“Jem and the Holograms,” “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never”) amplifies style and performances, but the core mixture of visual fluidity and smug trickery feels as empty as before, finding the production once again missing the point of magic and the value of suspense. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In a rather erratic career of hits and misses, director James Wan scored a major creative and box office victory with 2013’s “The Conjuring.” The summertime scary movie managed to unnerve audiences by repackaging old suspense tricks, while its foray into the case files of real-world paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren organically opened itself up to franchise possibilities, already explored to a slight degree in the 2014 spin-off, “Annabelle.” “The Conjuring 2” is a sequel with serious potential, but Wan isn’t comfortable with opportunity, eschewing the lean construction of the original film for a bloated, repetitive follow-up that’s certainly filled with frights, but lacks an engrossing story and variety of nightmare imagery. Much like his own “Insidious: Chapter 2,” Wan ruins a good thing by overthinking the obvious. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s no surprise that a documentary about disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner has arrived. What’s amazing is that the picture emerges with Weiner’s participation. A tale of lust and political ambition, of scandal and martial strain, “Weiner” has all the components of a riveting cinematic dissection, especially one where the controversial subject has permitted access to areas of his life that probably should’ve remained forbidden. Directors Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg have the story of a lifetime with “Weiner,” and it’s a doozy. While the feature doesn’t always cut as deep as it could, it still captures an alarming intimacy with Anthony and his family, measuring the abyssal depth of his narcissism and envious command of delusion. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

To describe “Urge” as a film is tricky, as it doesn’t carry itself like a traditional production. Bravely shedding key elements such as acting, story, logic, and suspense, director Aaron Kaufman tries to shape his debut feature into a sensorial swan dive, drenching the picture in style and noise, striving to make some kind of statement about the extremity of drug use. If the approach was intentional, “Urge” would be something to remember, but everything presented in the effort seems accidental and half-baked; the production tumbles through a brief run time with little awareness of what it wants to say and do. It’s a terrible movie, incoherent and absurd, with Kaufman completely incapable of inspiring anything besides a headache with what’s sure to be one of the worst films of 2016. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s difficult to know what YouTube is meant to be these days. Once home to odd videos and rampant copyright infringement, the site has evolved into a powerhouse of creative expression and rehearsed intimacy, turning everyday folk into celebrities in a faction-minded entertainment landscape. “Presenting Princess Shaw” isn’t a deep-sea dive into YouTube’s history, but it does summarize what the site is capable of achieving. While the documentary has moments of artificiality, “Presenting Princess Shaw” holds tight to sincerity, with director Ido Haar looking to understand the power of connection and creative liberation YouTube offers its users, while isolating a special story of personal expression that carries through music and across the world. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Two years ago, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” attempted to redefine the longstanding comic book creation for a new generation, retrying the live action realm with help from highly detailed motion capture work, bringing the heroes into a modern world, guided in part by the heavy hand of producer Michael Bay. It wasn’t a much of a creative achievement, but it found an audience big enough to inspire a sequel. “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows” is the follow-up, but it really more of a reboot. Aware that fans were somewhat displeased with the original movie, the production makes a concerted effort to give the faithful what they want, resulting in a more exciting, cartoonish feature that delivers the turtle power goods with real widescreen heft. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As approachable as “Me Before You” seems on the outside, there are actually two very distinct movies battling for screen time. On one side, there’s a polite romance developing between two people in need of companionship and a sense of stability, brought together through chemistry and kindness. On the other side is a study of assisted suicide and its practical use with those who can’t find a future for themselves due to physical agony. It’s an unexpected combination of moods, but screenwriter Jojo Moyes (adapting her own 2012 novel) manages to find a degree of dramatic care with “Me Before You,” with the production also aided by two strong lead performances from Emilia Clarke and Sam Claflin. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Comedy trio The Lonely Island was last seen hunting for big screen success with 2007’s “Hot Rod.” An amusingly strange effort, “Hot Rod” failed to attract much attention, returning members Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer, and Andy Samberg to album releases and Digital Short supremacy on “Saturday Night Live.” Almost a decade later, the gang returns to multiplexes with “Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping,” a semi-parody of Justin Bieber’s whitewashed 2011 documentary, “Never Say Never.” The Lonely Island is a little late to the anti-Bieber party, but “Popstar” largely remains its own creation, having a ball making fun of enormous egos, the music industry, and the foibles of friendships. It’s a broad take on obvious targets, but the feature is absolutely hilarious and somewhat gentle with its pantsing, pursuing an arc of sincerity instead of simply banging away with cheap jokes. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Terence Davies doesn’t make movies very often, but when he does find time to pursue his cinematic vision, it’s usually a special event. Following up the domestic drama “The Deep Blue Sea” with another take on household intimacies, Davies brings Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s novel “Sunset Song” to the screen, which provides a special adaptation challenge as it details prolonged tragedy and hushed introspection, supported by a thrilling widescreen filmmaking event. Sensitive and true to the human experience, “Sunset Song” is best reserved for those who enjoy getting lost in a literary-inspired world, populated with defined characters and a vivid sense of location. The picture is evocative and beautiful, but also richly pained, with Davies finding a way to execute a simple tale of growth with sophisticated emotions. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director David Farr goes the Roman Polanski route with “The Ones Below,” and it’s an ideal match of filmmaking appetites. Filled with tension and unease, the feature shows surprising edge with its depiction of new parent paranoia, delivering darkness with special care from Farr, who preserves the psychological abyss the screenplay develops throughout the movie without slipping into mean-spirited violence. Supremely chilling and effectively slow-burn, “The Ones Below” isn’t about monsters or mayhem, but the creaky moments of blurred reality and suspicion, with Farr extracting superb suspense out of what’s really a minimal exercise in screen agitation. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

For his directorial debut, Scot Armstrong decided to keep it simple. The co-screenwriter of hits such as “Old School” and “The Hangover: Part II,” Armstrong pays tribute to his periodic partner Todd Phillips with “Search Party,” which basically replicates most of his filmography. It’s slow-pitch softball for Armstrong, who doesn’t do anything new with the picture’s working parts, preferring to play it safe with a semi-raunchy tale of panic and problematic retrieval, trying to satisfy the audience with the basics in broheim comedy. “Search Party” isn’t completely without laughs, but a toxic cloud of sameness hangs over the feature, which wheezes from incident to incident, failing to build momentum through limp shock value. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

To tell the life story of musician Duff McKagan, “It’s So Easy and Other Lies” tries very hard to avoid resembling a traditional documentary, dealing exclusively in talking heads and a rigid storytelling arc of redemption. The picture is actually more of a book reading that incorporates musical moods, permitting McKagan to explore his ups and downs in a more theatrical manner, sharing his pain with the camera and a live audience. “It’s So Easy and Other Lies” has a lot of ground to cover when dealing with one of the founding members of Guns N’ Roses, but the production, while creative in its approach, isn’t interested in a true biographical examination, electing to cherry pick seminal McKagan moments, not identify the nuance of a life lived at top speed. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Thanks to last autumn’s “The Martian,” which ruled the box office and became a critical darling, the Red Planet is all the rage again. “Approaching the Unknown” is a very different film than the Ridley Scott blockbuster, but the movies share an interest in verisimilitude, trying to return the science into science fiction. While “The Martian” was big entertainment with a sense of humor to go along with its nail-biting sequences of survival, “Approaching the Unknown” takes a more introspective route, remaining inside the lead character’s head for 90 minutes as he contemplates life and death, facing discovery and failure. Writer/director Mark Elijah Rosenberg has the right idea with the feature, but there’s almost no attention to pace. The helmer forces the audience to drift through space with a determined but distant astronaut, making the effort something to acknowledge but rarely enjoy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Do-Over” is the latest Adam Sandler production, and it’s a return to more traditional mid-budget goofballery after last winter’s western, “The Ridiculous Six.” Reviving his “every movie is a paid vacation” edict, Sandler brings this action comedy to tropical locations such as Puerto Rico, bathing the picture in sun and sand, while pal David Spade joins in on the fun, returning the star to his prized comfort zone. And yet, despite simplistic elements, “The Do-Over” works very hard to provide a complicated viewing experience, trying to blur expectations through screenwriting that offers elaborate plotting and a plethora of names to manage. Along with popcorn and soda, viewers may also want to consider a dry erase board to help track a story that provides potty humor and frat boy pranks, but also pokes fun at Alzheimer’s disease, explores the pain of mortality, and involves a hunt for a cancer cure. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com