Category: Film Review

It’s been 12 years since the last proper “Barbershop” sequel was released (a spin-off, “Beauty Shop,” disappointed at the box office in 2005), and nothing much has changed in this cinematic world of gossip, one-liners, and extended debate. And that’s just the way producer/star Ice Cube likes it, keeping to core franchise elements to replicate successes from the last decade. Taking on street violence and family strife, “Barbershop: The Next Cut” is an easily digestible dramedy, though it’s never really all that funny and never as profound as it could be. Still, the formula is successful in stretches, with an ensemble working diligently to revive a dusty atmosphere of camaraderie, giving fans exactly what they want. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Criminal” wants to be a great number of movies, but it never gets anything quite right. Director Ariel Vromen clings tightly to cliché and screen aggression to capture audience attention, masterminding a surprisingly ugly thriller that barely contains any thrills. “Criminal” is a frustrating picture before it transforms into a forgettable one, watching bad actors flounder and good actors wrestle with a terrible screenplay by Douglas Cook and David Weisberg, which merges sci-fi make-em-ups with a missing identity plot, and there are touches of terrorism to act as smelling salts for a flatlining production. It’s a big mess of ideas, but Vromen doesn’t know how to line them up properly, finding every new revelation worse than the last. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Disney has returned to Rudyard Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” a few times. Of course, there’s the 1967 animated classic, which contorted Kipling to create a swinging musical, leading with the hit tune, “The Bare Necessities.” There was a 2002 sequel, and in 1994, the company attempted a live-action version starring Jason Scott Lee as Mowgli, which failed to perform at the box office despite positive reviews. Kipling’s 1894 collection of stories has actually inspired many film and television productions, but none have been as a massive as Disney’s return to the wild with the CGI/live-action take on “The Jungle Book.” Director Jon Favreau utilizes technology, not nature, to inspire this reworking of the ’67 picture, delivering realistic animal interactions and digital environments, laboring to manufacture a world for Mowgli’s mischief instead of finding one on Earth. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“April and the Extraordinary World” is a French production pulled from the imagination of graphic novel artist Jacques Tardi, who hung around to participate in the creation of the film’s look. It’s an oddball animated picture, but often wonderfully so, taking a journey through the decades and visiting different environments, while maintaining an engaging steampunk visual presence that’s vividly communicated. Perhaps it lacks the refinement a large budget provides, but “April and the Extraordinary World” is very good with the unexpected, from plot points to character design. Directors Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci are faced with an adaptation challenge, but they manage to keep the spirit of the source alive, blending in bits of action, humor, and alternate universe invention. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Instead of forging ahead with a bio-pic on the life and times of jazz legend Miles Davis, co-writer/director Don Cheadle takes a small sliver of the musician’s life to explore in “Miles Ahead,” which doesn’t broadcast any type of biographical reality. Instead of a linear dissection of Davis and his rise to fame, the production assumes the shape of jazz, sampling bits of behavior, personal ruin, and music business dealings to put together an idea of Miles Davis. This concept eventually wears out its welcome, but “Miles Ahead” gets surprisingly far on the scattered approach, thanks in great part to Cheadle’s visual ambition with the low-budget effort and his lead performance as Davis, slipping on the skin of a reckless man who also possessed stunning musical vision. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Documentaries about fashion and industry mysteries are all the rage these days, recently explored in films such as “Valentino,” “The September Issue,” and “Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s.” “The First Monday in May” continues the journey, but for this round of appreciation, director Andrew Rossi tries to find a way into the artistic process, endeavoring to spotlight the struggles and anxiety that come with the recent consideration of fashion as high art, and not just decoration. “The First Monday in May” isn’t the most focused feature around, but it does manage to grab a peek behind the curtain, observing the herculean effort required to pull off the Met Gala every year. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Working through his interest in playing tortured artists, actor/producer James Franco adds “The Adderall Diaries” to his growing list of mediocre releases featuring characters just a bit beyond his thespian range. Based on the memoir by Stephen Elliott, the feature is a mess of subplots and personalities that demand more screen time than what’s offered by writer/director Pamela Romanowsky (“The Color of Time”), who tries to work in all the themes and kinky detours of the source material without caring for overall narrative flow. It’s disjointed work, cold to the touch, but there’s a supporting cast to keep “The Adderall Diaries” semi-interesting at times, holding up the effort while Franco works through a series of pained poses. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s difficult to understand why co-writer/director Florian Gallenberger felt the need to bring the horror of Chile’s Colonia Dignidad to the screen. A place of unimaginable suffering, home to torture, rape, and murder during a time of national cruelty, dissection of the Colonia Dignidad requires a special filmmaking talent, skilled in the art of suggestion and sensitivity to the real-world nightmare the compound became. Gallenberger doesn’t possess such a respectful vision, going the grindhouse route with this thriller. “Colonia” mistakes identification for sympathy, pushing towards tastelessness as it lingers on brutality facing the characters, looking to build shock value instead of exposing the haunting reality of the Colonia Dignidad in a manner that’s respectful to victims and mindful of history. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Music is the spirit and theme of “One More Time,” yet the film has difficulty staying in tune. Writer/director Robert Edwards has a conversational vision for the feature, which dissects familial relationships and generational divide, keeping his characters loquacious as they manage their insecurities and troubled histories. This leads to interesting performances, but the movie also makes room for a musical mood, exploring the industry through the efforts of one aging singer trying to remain relevant. It should be a more emotionally engaging picture, but “One More Time” only reaches periodic clarity, struggling to find the borders of its vast psychological examination. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s nearly impossible to enjoy Melissa McCarthy on the big screen these days. After building back some goodwill with last summer’s “Spy,” the comedian returns to her comfort zone of grotesque characterization and feeble screenwriting with “The Boss,” which joins “Tammy” and “Identity Thief” to form a painful trilogy of unfunny business executed by an enormously talented actress. Unfortunately, McCarthy does it to herself, co-scripting the effort with husband Ben Falcone, who also directs. “The Boss” offers a promising premise that’s sure to make the most of McCarthy’s special brand of insanity, but what actually ends up on screen is shockingly pedestrian, barely inspiring a chuckle as the movie crawls to the finish line. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Hardcore Henry” isn’t groundbreaking cinema, but it’s one of the first films to fully acknowledge its video game inspiration, embracing the format’s chaos and visual flexibility. Director Ilya Naishuller (making his helming debut) pieces together a first-person actioner, explored from the perspective of a cyborg who enjoys killing, permitting the production ample opportunity to raise hell in a distinct way. “Hardcore Henry” lives up to its title, with Naishuller soaking the picture in violence, destroying bodies in every possible way. But 90 minutes of this POV chase? Weirdly, it’s not the visuals that end up souring the viewing experience, but the lack of story, terrible performances, and a tuneless soundtrack, making the titular brute’s periodic wargasms the highlight of the effort. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Jeff Nichols developed a following with “Take Shelter” and “Mud,” two meditative, psychological screenplays that invested completely in character, allowing audiences to understand dramatics emerging from three-dimensional personalities. “Midnight Special” continues the helmer’s journey into layered storytelling, but this time the potential for a gimmicky focal point tests Nichols and his patient filmmaking way. Exploring an alien encounter, “Midnight Special” reaches back to John Carpenter’s 1984 masterpiece, “Starman,” for inspiration, developing a similar sense of wonder and feeling while retaining Nichols’s customary distance, making viewers part of the journey as it slowly but satisfyingly unfolds. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Karyn Kusama made an industry splash with 2000’s “Girlfight,” a spirited indie that found some pop culture traction, establishing the helmer as one to watch. She followed up her initial success with a pair of duds, “Aeon Flux” and “Jennifer’s Body,” biting off more than she could chew with tonally muddled genre pictures. Returning to the essentials of volatile human emotions, Kusama issues “The Invitation,” a dark psychological thriller that takes its time to get going, but once it locks into its big reveals, it transforms into a grimly irresistible chiller. Successfully reestablishing interest in Kusama’s career, “The Invitation” is worth the wait. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With “Wild” and “Dallas Buyers Club,” director Jean-Marc Vallee has showcased ability to communicate the inner thoughts of his characters, focusing on emotional issues and medical disruptions to find what people are truly made of. He’s effective with smaller, introspective moments, but “Demolition,” which continues this visual and thematic journey, doesn’t come together as easily as before. Screenwriter Bryan Sipe crafts a story that highlights the range of grief, reaction, and redemption, but the collaboration doesn’t provide a particularly illuminating viewing experience, finding “Demolition” powerful, but only in fragments, spending too much time on trivial matters while the rest of the feature slowly grows confused and, ultimately, pointless. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Grosse Pointe Blank” is one of the best films of the last twenty years, and it’s heartening to see that screenwriter Max Landis agrees with me. Instead of forging ahead with a remake, Landis take his adulation for the 1997 release and reworks it slightly to create his own variation on the central idea of a killer in love in “Mr. Right,” an action-comedy that’s big on fight scenes and casual interplay between stars Sam Rockwell and Anna Kendrick. Big on energy, for at least the opening hour, “Mr. Right” eventually runs out of steam in a major way, but for those itching for “Blank”-style thrills, the feature finds periodic inspiration as it goes from love to war. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2010, writer/director Deon Taylor created “Chain Letter,” an updated take on slasher formula that utilized cell phones as the harbinger of doom. It was an awful film, one of the worst of the year, but Taylor played it straight, working to whip up some sizable scares while the rest of the effort died a slow, painful death. Taylor returns to the genre with “Meet the Blacks,” but he’s no longer interested in frights, attempting to wring laughs out of murder with this painfully inept semi-parody of “The Purge.” Released too soon after Marlon Wayans dropped a box office bomb with January’s “50 Shades of Black,” “Meet the Blacks” covers basically the same ground, spending too much time on vulgarity and racial hostility, and not enough on wit. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The reasons behind the production of “Frank and Cindy” aren’t especially clear. The story of Frank Garcia and Cynthia Brown was originally explored in a 2007 documentary, directed by their son, G.J. Echternkamp, who decided to introduce some overdue family therapy by turning the camera on his dysfunctional parents, allowing them a chance to share their illnesses with the world. Nine years later, Echternkamp returns to the tale, this time dramatizing the doc, hiring Rene Russo and Oliver Platt to play his trouble guardians. Granted, the opportunity to portray such fallible people doesn’t come around every day, and the leads are up for the challenge, delivering vulnerable, memorable performances. However, little else sticks during the viewing experience, which comes across self-serving at times, with Echternkamp making himself the lead character. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The end of the world is transformed into a first-person shooter in “Pandemic,” the first of two movies this month that stage unspeakable acts of violence from a chaotic perspective (the other, “Hardcore Harry,” is due out next week). Combining ferocious visions of murder and self-preservation with tender missions of familial protection, the feature, directed by John Suits, strives to be a more meaningful horror story, working to establish humanity behind every irrational decision. Unless you happen to be a major fan of extended sequences set in dark hallways, there’s nothing overtly impressive about “Pandemic,” but its working parts are engaging, watching Suits build his own doomsday with a limited budget and an extended visual gimmick. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

One day, a filmmaker is going to come along and mastermind a music bio-pic that’s about a passably functional human being, concentrating on the artist and their achievements, refusing to obsess over their abyssal flaws. Until that day arrives, we’re stuck with “I Saw the Light,” a particularly dismal exploration of the life and times of country singer Hank Williams. Instead of inspecting the performer’s creative drive, writer/director Marc Abraham (“Flash of Genius”) focuses almost exclusively on Williams and his troubling behavior with women, almost forgetting at times that the subject was a widely adored musician. “I Saw the Light” is tedious and roughly designed, though a star turn from Tom Hiddleston is the only truly committed aspect of the production, nailing a tricky performance while working with a frightfully vague script. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Girl in the Photographs” is credited as a final picture in the career of executive producer Wes Craven, who passed away in 2015. It seems fitting that the helmer would have interest in this production, as it periodically plays like a “Scream” knockoff, only instead of challenging genre formula, it dissects the world of fashion and art photography, trying to come up with a fresh take on aged slasher ingredients. “The Girl in the Photographs” is tremendously gory and aggressive, hoping to scare through acts of blunt trauma, but co-writer/director Nick Simon elects the meditative route with pedestrian material, generating more yawn than shrieks with this monumentally tedious feature. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com