Category: Film Review

It’s difficult to decide what’s more horrific about the opening of “Bone Tomahawk”: that it displays a throat-slitting in close-up or introduces David Arquette in a major supporting role. Turns out, violence trumps all in this vivid production, which showcases all kinds of butchery as it explores the uneasy marriage between western and horror interests. Writer/director S. Craig Zahler makes a unique debut with this unpredictable picture, which alternates between extended conversations and aggression, with its raw, unblinking attitude toward the destruction of men sold with surprising authority for a helming debut. “Bone Tomahawk” is specialized work, requiring a special level of patience and endurance to embrace the nightmare Zahler has created. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

To keep himself busy between “Fast & Furious” sequels, star Vin Diesel has been on the prowl for a franchise to call his own lately. Turning “Pitch Black” into series didn’t quite work out as planned, overestimating the appeal of the glum lead character, Riddick. Now there’s “The Last Witch Hunter,” which is Diesel’s version of a Marvel Comics movie, merging exaggerated superhero antics with a darker tone of supernatural awakening. There are witches galore here, but very little excitement, as director Breck Eisner is too infatuated with his elaborate CGI designs to realize that the screenplay (credited to three writers) is nothing more than one long spewing of exposition. Sure, Diesel’s character wields a flaming sword, but it’s a visual better suited for a feature that knows how to appropriately exploit such delicious absurdity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Rock the Kasbah” is reminiscent of the horrible 2006 comedy, “American Dreamz,” which attempted to blend jazz-hands satire with profound Middle Eastern war zone woes, ending up shrill and disastrously unfunny. “Rock the Kasbah” isn’t as broad, but it shares a fruitless determination to turn a volatile region into big screen joy, trying to overcome real-world threat without actually thinking tonality through. It’s a mess of a movie, overlong and undercooked, almost entirely reliant on star Bill Murray to crank up his cocktail-hour charms and save the day while the production slumps from one scene to the next. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The life and times of social scientist Stanley Milgram are recounted in “Experimenter,” but not in direct way. Instead of taking the bio-pic route, writer/director Michael Almereyda cherry picks concepts and domestic struggles to form a larger portrait of iciness and commitment to curiosity. The helmer also selects an artful approach to the feature that makes it feel like a stage production, though the reason for such a specific visual choice is difficult to compute. “Experimenter” is a sterile viewing experience, but not an unpleasant one, with Milgram’s insatiable need to classify human response rubbing off on the effort, which displays more verve in observational mode than it does in domestic replication. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Harrowing is a singular way to describe “Beasts of No Nation,” which takes viewers into the folds of African unrest and the birth of the child soldier. The portrait of innocence lost is almost unbearable to watch at times, as writer/director Cary Joji Fukunaga presents an unflinching look at the horrors of war and the disease of men, detailing murder, rape, insanity, and despair without pause, but not without some degree of hope. Though it samples repetition to fill out an excessive run time (137 minutes), “Beasts of No Nation” is essential work, exploring an eye-opening subject matter with clear thinking and respect for the complexities of the psychological damage done.  Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The low-budget action market is saturated with titles these days, and they all tend to look and sound the same. “Momentum” is the latest endeavor to play the VOD sweepstakes, and the South African production has a compelling focal point in actress Olga Kurylenko, who graduates from supporting parts in other dismal actioners to topline her own snoozy effort. Female leads are rare in these productions, but director Stephen S. Campanelli isn’t interested in shaking up the formula, submitting yet another colorless, featureless stunt extravaganza that emphasizes physical feats and convoluted plotting, trying to razzle-dazzle audiences with visuals they’ve seen countless times before. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In the 1990s, R.L. Stine’s “Goosebumps” series of YA horror novels managed to playfully terrify an entire generation of readers. There were audio books, video games, and a television series to help expand Stine’s brand, but now the big screen receives its chance to frighten audiences with “Goosebumps.” While handed a self-aware plot to ease the translation to feature-length frights, the picture mostly plays it straightforward, mixing comedy and scares while a monumental amount of CGI works to create all creatures great and small. “Goosebumps” is a mixed bag when it comes to technical achievements and storytelling, but it does offer the most enthusiastic cast of 2015, watching the actors mug their way through a cinematic adventure that needs their complete thespian attention. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Completing his stoic, dry oatmeal trilogy of noble characters (which includes “War Horse” and “Lincoln”), director Steven Spielberg finally finds some sense of tempo again with the Cold War drama, “Bridge of Spies.” Moving forward on the talky but eventful tale of a prisoner exchange negotiation, the celebrated helmer works past his interest in pained reflection, trying to summon procedural snap to what’s otherwise a tale of men discussing other men in frigid locations. While it doesn’t always welcome suspense, “Bridge of Spies” is intelligent and paced, anchored by a sensational lead performance by Tom Hanks, who once again makes magic with Spielberg in this, their fourth collaboration. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2013, writer/director Guillermo del Toro went big with “Pacific Rim,” receiving a rare opportunity to make his own mega monster movie with an appropriately gigantic budget and global scale. For his latest, “Crimson Peak,” the helmer goes relatively small, setting the majority of the picture inside a crumbling mansion populated with only a few characters. Out to create his own version of a gothic Italian chiller from the 1960s, del Toro has all the right dramatic ingredients and pure technical mastery, but the story is lacking serious threat, often caught admiring itself instead of marching forward as a proper spine-tingler. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

We’ve been here before. In 2013, Ashton Kutcher suited up in bad beards and turtlenecks to portray Apple icon Steve Jobs in a dreadful bio-pic (“Jobs”), which trafficked in wheezy melodrama and suffered a blurring of intent as it attempted to manage the man’s myth without addressing reality. “Steve Jobs” isn’t a rehash of the earlier picture, taking a more theatrical route to explore the complexity of the subject and his corrosive ways with every human on Earth. Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin combine forces to deliver a slingshot ride around the Apple universe, emerging with more questions than answers. “Steve Jobs” doesn’t take in the enormity of a life, it merely cuts down a few biographical moments and studies the rings, working to distance itself from other artistic endeavors by disrupting a traditional timeline assessment of developing character. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Hitting a fairly obvious target for satire, “The Final Girls” pokes fun at the wonderland of gore, sex, and peer pressure that defined slasher cinema of the 1980s. However, instead of mounting another rehash/celebration, screenwriters M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller dream up an inventive way to explore the subgenre, blending “Scream” with “The Purple Rose of Cairo” as they take on and take down the horror formula from a comedic perspective. Director Todd Strauss-Schulson smothers the effort in excessive style, but “The Final Girls” is an unexpectedly amusing picture that has genuine fun with itself and the mechanics of B-movies. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The spooky season brings out the best in horror moviemakers, and an enduring love for the anthology film inspires “Tales of Halloween,” a holiday-specific overview of suburban terror, twists, and general dread. While on the goofy side to welcome a wider audience, the feature has its macabre appetites, showcasing fine technical achievements on a minimal budget, while setting a Halloween mood with fun-sized samplings of disaster. For genre fanatics, there’s something here for every taste, ornamented with industry cameos and supported by a few grim detours that keep the production on task as a satisfactory holiday chiller. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Victoria” is a gimmick film from director Sebastian Schipper, who, a long time ago, appeared in the German art-house hit, “Run Lola Run.” Perhaps looking for a way to update the formula, Schipper attempts to razzle-dazzle the audience with a single take, following the action through an unbroken shot that lasts a whopping 134 minutes. As a technical achievement, “Victoria” is impressive, working with loose choreography and precise planning to turn a casual night of drinking into a turbulent series of personal challenges. While it’s a neat idea, Schipper doesn’t have anything more to offer than the cinematographic stunt, taking such a long time to position characters into the heat of the moment, he forgets to add the moment. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Eli Roth doesn’t direct very often, but when he does he makes the same movie over and over again. The man loves his horror with a side of humor, playing up darkly comic adventures with hapless characters, trying to diffuse unspeakable acts of violence with jokes. It’s difficult to understand why Roth feels the need to undermine himself at every turn, but it’s his method, and he doesn’t apply it with any regularity. Last month saw the release of his long-delayed cannibal picture “The Green Inferno,” and now Roth takes on the home invasion thriller with “Knock Knock,” blending scenes of steamy seduction with torture-minded aggressions. What should be nail-chewing entertainment is rendered flaccid in Roth’s hands, who once again goes goofball with a sobering plot. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Joe Wright dented an otherwise inspiring filmmaking career with 2012’s “Anna Karenina,” a visually stunning but DOA adaption of Leo Tolstoy’s celebrated novel. Remaining in a literary mood, Wright (along with screenwriter Jason Fuchs) goes after J.M. Barrie’s world of fairies, lost boys, and pirates with “Pan,” which acts as prequel to “Peter Pan,” providing an origin story because there’s really nothing left to say about Neverland. Gifted an enormous budget, Wright suits up for the biggest feature of his career, and “Pan” certainly looks like a production that spent every penny on spectacle. Big, noisy, and luridly campy, the picture offers no boundaries for Wright’s vision, but the wide open space confuses the talented helmer. This isn’t a bad movie, it’s merely a punishingly permissive one. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Goodnight Mommy” arrives in the tradition of punishing Euro horror, where discomfort is king and torment is the battery that powers the production. Although it’s not as raw as pictures such as “Dogtooth” or “Nothing Bad Can Happen,” “Goodnight Mommy” has more than its share of skin-crawling moments, even while it mostly avoids overt terror scenarios. Writer/directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala have pieced together a riveting nightmare, using charmingly unraveled performances and sharp cinematographic style to construct a downward slide into madness. The feature is tricky and requires some patience, but the effort eventually settles into a hypnotic rhythm of behavioral disease. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Today, the National Lampoon is a brand name, and a tattered one at best. Tarnished over the years by dreadful movies (including “Dorm Daze,” “Transylmania,” and “RoboDoc”) and creative stagnancy, the label is largely responsible for padding Redbox line-ups, but there was once a time when National Lampoon ruled the comedy universe, using their subversive, take-no-prisoners wit to rock young minds and change the face of satire during an era when such dark humor was a necessity. “Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon” is a slick documentary, and a vital reminder of the power the magazine once held as it welcomed comedic geniuses and lovable miscreants to help create monthly doses of lethal mischief. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s difficult to avoid making comparisons between “Trash” and Fernando Meirelles’s 2002 breakthrough feature, “City of God.” They both examine the hardscrabble life for young people existing inside Rio’s impoverished areas, but “Trash” doesn’t share the same grit and awareness of the landscape. It’s the latest from director Stephen Daldry, who stepped on a career landmine with 2011’s “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” His new effort isn’t a return to form for the helmer of “The Hours” and “Billy Elliot,” but it certainly revives his interest in more natural human behavior. Filled with chases and characters, the picture creates a whirlwind of events, but it only rarely achieves authority, as Daldry has trouble balancing the endeavor’s restless cinematic interests and its sticky cultural pleas. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Big Stone Gap” is an offering of Southern comfort, infused with a community spirit vibe that’s pleasant enough to carry the effort until the plot gets in the way. The feature marks the directorial debut of Adriana Trigiani, who adapts her own novel for the screen, shooting on location in the actual Big Stone Gap, Virginia to capture small-town flavors and familiarity. There’s nothing particularly challenging about the picture, which invests in prickly, oddball behavior and a series of mild shocks. Trigiani doesn’t push the material into any energetic directions, but she does capture the sway of the town, better with atmosphere than dramatics. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Denis Villeneuve generally makes one type of movie. With “Prisoners,” “Enemy,” and “Incendies,” the helmer has displayed a fascination with the darkness of human behavior, exploring cruelties and lies with surgical precision, but also maintaining his distance from drama, which doesn’t always result in the most engrossing storytelling. “Sicario” doesn’t alter his modus operandi, with the director once again reaching into the void to observe the death of spirit. What “Sicario” has that separates it from the rest of Villeneuve’s work is a merciless script by Taylor Sheridan, which clears away most of the director’s interest in stasis, paying attention to thriller cinema basics before returning to long takes of silent contemplation. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com