Category: Film Review

Space movies appear to be all the rage these days, with the one-two punch of “Gravity” and “Interstellar” making it safe for features about exploration and survival to compete with superhero adventures. “The Martian” is a fine addition to the trend, forging its own path of suspense, science, and humor to grasp the extremes of isolation and the fever of NASA brainstorming. A kissing cousin to “Apollo 13,” “The Martian” comes alive thanks to director Ridley Scott, who wisely steps out of the picture’s way and allows the pressurized environment of Andy Weir’s best-selling novel to take command, assembling a technically marvelous and emotionally gripping tale of a special rescue mission that demands years of planning and execution. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Any active moviegoer in recent years may have already heard of “Man on Wire,” a documentary dedicated to Philippe Petit’s 1974’s high-wire walk across the tops of the Twin Towers in New York City. Such a specialized but high-profile release (winning an Oscar for Best Documentary) easily threatens the elements of surprise in “The Walk,” director Robert Zemeckis’s dramatization of the daredevil event. However, leave it to the man behind “Back to the Future,” “Forrest Gump,” and “The Polar Express” to sustain suspense, taking a known experience and making it feel like front page news again, helped in great part by stunning visual effects that put the viewer on the wire with Petit, taking in the expanse of the city. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Horror and heavy metal are natural companions, with their shared interest in demonic events lending itself to perverse genre interests. The New Zealand production “Deathgasm” takes a more comedic route to blood-soaked events, but it manages to stay respectful of the wilds of extreme music and the wonders of cinematic hellraising. A Cannibal Corpse album cover come to life, “Deathgasm” is a wily creation from writer/director Jason Lei Howden (a visual effects artist making his helming debut) that’s teeming with humor and gore, generating a sufficient ordeal of Satanic bedlam while tending to the nuances of life as a metalhead. It’s extreme, but the movie is undeniably fun — absolute cat nip for those who demand their dark adventures cover the limb-tearing basics. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“This Is Happening” takes on a substantial amount of confused emotions while it maintains life as a stoner comedy. It’s an odd bouillabaisse of feelings and tonal shifts, overseen by writer/director Ryan Jaffe, who makes his helming debut with the effort. “This Is Happening” takes some bizarre detours, and perhaps the overall psychological thickness proves a bit too difficult for the script to manage, but the feature finds clarity more often than not. It’s bright work from Jaffe, who oversees a lively cast and an authentic rendering of a combative sibling relationship, while dumping in dollops of pathos and slapstick to keep the road trip offered here as unexpected as possible. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

 Joining the big screen celebration of Halloween is “Gravy,” a bizarre picture that doesn’t exactly top off the tank with nightmare fuel. A horror-comedy that plays unsettlingly broad, the film marks the feature-length directorial debut for actor James Roday, who also co-scripts this attempt to outdo recent cannibal movies, submitting a grotesque effort that’s slathered in gore and mindful of one-liners, while keeping a low-budget aesthetic that contains the brutality to a single location. Much too self-consciously zany to be funny, “Gravy” is best approached as a celebration of make-up achievements, with gushy guts and mutilated bodies emerging as the highlights of this wheezy Looney Tunes-style take on savagery and foodie culture. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Just in time for Halloween comes an anthology film about Christmas? “A Christmas Horror Story” combines the two best holidays to dig up nightmarish qualities about the season of joy, working with four different narratives to explore the wrath of demons, the terror of changelings, the mystery of ghosts, and a viral plague. Directors Grant Harvey, Steven Hoban, and Brett Sullivan put in an impressive low-budget effort with “A Christmas Horror Story,” and while not all the tales come alive, more hit than miss, bringing gore and menace in October, but reveling in the iconography of December. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Jamie Babbit made her debut with 1999’s “But I’m a Cheerleader,” a sharp, funny exploration of sexual oppression that launched a promising career. Subsequent efforts failed to match the invention of her first film, with Babbit turning to television to hone her chops. She returns to screens with “Addicted to Fresno,” though the true intent of this painful misfire isn’t exactly clear, with much of the movie playing like Babbit’s impression of a Farrelly Brothers production. Crude and poorly written by Karey Dornetto, “Addicted to Fresno” flails wildly to set a subversive tone, only to end up about as dangerous as a Fox sitcom. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Endeavoring to bring a world of monsters to the CGI-animated realm, 2012’s “Hotel Transylvania” conjured a horror-comedy atmosphere of slapstick, scares, and overall tomfoolery. And there was plenty of bathroom humor to keep younger audiences engaged. Instead of trusting the inherent madness of the plot, director Genndy Tartakovsky elected to keep things crude, souring an otherwise promising Halloween-season adventure with classic ghouls. “Hotel Transylvania 2” is the inevitable sequel, and while it suffers from major structural problems, the effort has dialed down the poo-poo, pee-pee gags, trying to engage audiences with a tale of grandfatherly love, trading fart jokes for cute kids and more manic monster shenanigans. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Nancy Meyers makes comfort food cinema. It’s a particular skill few share in the industry, but she’s forged a career blending domestic fantasy with tender emotions, guiding efforts such as “It’s Complicated,” “The Holiday,” and “Something’s Gotta Give.” She does one thing and she does it relatively well, always at her best when character comes before contrivance. “The Intern” enjoys a rough tonality of high comedy and grim drama, but Meyers steadies the picture with an enjoyable script that’s most interesting when playful, while lead performances from Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway are lively and open for inspection. “The Intern” gets a little strange at times, but it’s a sturdy creation that carries a little more personality than many might be expecting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Mississippi Grind” is a story about gambling, but it’s careful not to glamorize the potentially destructive pastime. Instead of taking in the thrill of horse racing and casino action, the feature carries an ominous tone of self-destruction, essentially updating James Toback’s 1974 screenplay for “The Gambler.” Directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck keep their effort low to the ground, picking up on behaviors and “tells” as they explore the corrosive nature of addiction, taking a long journey with two wayward characters as they experience the thrilling highs and desperate lows of gambling. Whatever “Mississippi Grind” lacks in efficiency, it makes up for it in pure observation. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The director of “Independence Day,” “2012,” and “White House Down” is trying to grow up. Roland Emmerich made an attempt for art-house legitimacy with 2011’s “Anonymous,” hoping some intrigue surrounding Shakespeare’s creative origins might stimulate a career detour into more respectable projects featuring real characters, not just cartoon creations battling heavy CGI. It failed to attract much attention, inspiring Emmerich to capture the zeitgeist with “Stonewall,” a tale of gay rights wrapped up in an historical event that triggered a revolution of pride. Well-intentioned but frighteningly tone deaf, “Stonewall” (already the subject of numerous documentaries and books) doesn’t inspire hope and awareness, it simply pushes dreary formula and torturous melodrama, with Emmerich failing to create a single moment of humanity as cliché and stereotype run rampant. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After restoring his professional reputation with 2008’s “The Wrestler,” star Mickey Rourke encountered difficulty maintaining the momentum, following up his award-winning work with forgettable B-movies such as “The Courier,” “Java Heat,” and “Black November.” “Ashby” brings Rourke back to the realm of thespian possibility, once again playing a vulnerable old soul in a leathered profession, required to display intricate feelings as the screenplay mixes in some tough guy antics as well. He’s low-key but effective in the picture, which periodically struggles to make sense of itself, showing more skill with comedy than penetrating drama as it attempts to manage a quirky plot with a degree of emotional authenticity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

To flavor his unpredictable filmography, Nicolas Cage heads toward horror with “Pay the Ghost.” While initial moments suggest a kidnapping drama featuring a determined dad, the movie eventually reveals a supernatural side, trying for frights instead of thrills. A mix of “The Wicker Man” (not the Cage version) and “Mama,” “Pay the Ghost” only connects through its star, who gives a passably haunted performance to help boost the lackluster screenplay. The picture is absurd and low-budget, but Cage holds up his end of the bargain, making sure turns of plot find their intended emotion, while helping to sell the urgency of the unfolding ghost story. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The search for love drives the direction of the documentary “Meet the Patels,” but the feature is truly about the influence of family when negotiating any outside relationships. Starring and co-directed by actor Ravi Patel, the effort is a charming, agreeably unsettled look at the quest for a mate, viewed through the prism of the Indian matchmaking machine — a system of data and personal judgment that’s eye-opening to watch come to life. “Meet the Patels” has the potential to lose itself in cutesy shenanigans, but Ravi, along with co-star/co-director and sister Geeta, secures a necessary level of honesty about the odyssey as they explore the steps to domestic contentment. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The soullessness of war is examined in “The Keeping Room,” a Civil War-set thriller that’s gorgeously photographed, sturdily acted, and fiercely concentrated, but lacks any substantial chills. Scripted by Julia Hart and directed by Daniel Barber (“Harry Brown”), “The Keeping Room” is aimed at viewers in a meditative mood, taking in the pitiless extremes of human behavior during an era of remorseless violence. It’s out to shock, but the feature is missing raw nerve appeal, often caught up in ponderous monologuing as a way to beef up sparse plotting, though when push comes to shove, Barber knows how to properly manipulate with this askew take on a home invasion nail-biter. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Cut” can be approached several different ways. For some audiences, the film paints a portrait of the Armenian Genocide, focusing on the agony of detainment and separation during an especially grim stretch of world history. Director Fatih Akin also concocts a mournful but motivated adventure story, with western influences driving a plot that finds a father looking to reunite with his twin daughters, crossing the world one step at a time. Simplicity is the picture’s best friend, with Akin wisely electing more visceral events to help encourage audience interest, all the while trying to add some morsels of education to the mix. However, “The Cut” is primarily driven by emotion and suspense, putting cinematic interests first. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Francois Ozon specializes in dreamy, cheeky, unusual cinema, but rarely has he made a movie as human as “The New Girlfriend.” Tapping into the zeitgeist to explore the evolution of a transgender character gradually revealing herself to the world, Ozon (adapting a short story by Ruth Rendell) constructs a gentle mystery of gender, grief, and friendship, tapping into intimate thoughts and troubled lives with a plan to explore personalities, not just reinforce external appearances. It’s an oddly sweet film, gentle and genuine, but it’s also aware of murky psychological spaces, pushing focus on clearing confusion, not sensationalizing the obvious. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Zombie cinema gets especially dark with “Cooties,” which is best described as “Dawn of the Dead” set inside an elementary school. Little kids are pure evil in the picture, with screenwriters Leigh Whannell and Ian Brennan attempting to disrupt expectations by taking on a taboo subject. The good news is that “Cooties” isn’t offensive, managing to support its special brand of insanity with generous helpings of silly business, always out to score laughs. While the feature doesn’t always land its jokes, it remains spirited work from directors Jonathan Milott and Cary Murnion, who make their helming debut with this impish, incredibly gory romp through a realm filled with the prepubescent undead. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Last year, “The Maze Runner” managed to break away from the grind of YA adaptations, emerging as an energetic take on post-apocalyptic scheming and survival, boosted by impressive visuals and breathless performances. Now there’s “Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials,” a quickie sequel that’s looking to maintain franchise momentum after the previous picture concluded with a significant cliffhanger. What was semi-fresh and inviting about the original film is mostly gone from the follow-up, with returning director Wes Ball forgoing the construction of an enticing tale to stage repetitive chase sequences and encourage overacting, while the screenplay by T.S. Nowlin is weirdly determined to avoid any similarities to the source material. For all the running that goes on in “The Scorch Trials,” the continuation is strangely inert. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Captive” is a movie without suspense and clearly defined meaning. It’s a faith-based feature that doesn’t really share much about God, but it’s also a psychological thriller of sorts, with intensity communicated through long stares. It’s based on a true story, giving it room to explore the intricacies of the moment, watching two characters feel each other out during a uniquely emotional morning. “Captive” has something to share about belief and the troubles of man, but when it comes time to sharpen itself into a fine point of soulful release, the material is nowhere to be found, primarily infatuated with panicked, quivering reactions, not substantive interactions. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com