Category: Film Review

Nothing was really expected with the 2012 release of “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” A minor British dramedy, the picture wasn’t destined to find much of an audience, issued during a month of movies that celebrated comic book heroes and super sequels. But word of mouth lifted the little film to surprising grosses. Not blockbuster returns by any means, but just enough coin to make the production company pay attention, making a dent with its Indian locations and cast of seasoned actors. And now a sequel has been made, laboring to find a story that could extend this newly minted franchise for another chapter while presenting its cast with enough fresh drama to keep all parties interested. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A vision of crisscrossing characters engaged in destructive behavior is nothing new, but “Human Capital” finds way to make the familiar fresh again. Director Paolo Virzi avoids the oppressive Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu route to find a vein of suspense that carries the viewing experience through four chapters of accidents, accusations, and panic, braided together with a fluid sense of community. It’s a dark picture, touching on volatile emotions and devastating mistakes, but it holds attention through Virzi’s storytelling skill and an excellent cast, who portray the often devastating turns of fate presented here with a welcome sense of restraint, allowing internalization to do most of the heavy lifting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Buzzard” is a difficult film to describe and a taxing movie to sit through. Taking on the angry young man genre, writer/director Joel Potrykus dries up the rage and keeps the unrest, electing for a darkly comic approach to troubling psychological behavior. It’s a strange effort that only reaches for modest goals in laughs and disturbing material. It’s more comfortable in stasis, with long stretches of the feature devoted to mind-numbing tasks. For some, the mummification of pace will take on a higher meaning, reflecting the slack-jawed state of working-class millennials. For everyone else, “Buzzard” might register as unforgivable tedium, missing the type of dramatic surges necessary to reward such concentration on nothingness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Two Men in Town” comes dangerously close to profundity. It’s a sharply acted drama about the past and its chokehold on life, providing characterizations that aren’t always complete and easy to classify. Director Rachid Bouchareb doesn’t follow through on a few promising subplots, but what lingers here remains powerfully realized, depicting the futility of self-control and the longevity of grudges. “Two Men in Town” eventually fails to live up to its initial promise, but as an overview of human frailty, it contains several powerful scenes that allow the cast room to articulate complex emotions in an honest manner. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As thrillers go, “October Gale” is mostly effective but strangely distant. Reuniting with her “Cairo Time” writer/director Ruba Nadda, actress Patricia Clarkson makes a plausible transition to home defender, wielding a gun and selling suspicion with co-star Scott Speedman. However, “October Gale” takes a substantial amount of time to get going, with those early moments filled with a far more interesting examination of grief, making the picture a rare event where action isn’t entirely welcome, distracting from a far more satisfying examination of a broken heart. Credit to Nadda for the change in expectation, allowing her feature to step away from formula and reach the viewer in a different way. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Throughout his career, actor Leland Orser hasn’t made much of an impression. He was hit with typecasting for a long time, always the go-to guy to play twitchy, screechy types on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He’s been wallpaper as well, playing one of the background characters in the “Taken” trilogy. “Faults” is the first truly substantial Leland Orser performance I’ve seen, asking more of the man that most other productions would, and he’s up for the challenge, providing a riveting depiction of frayed respectability and financial desperation colliding with professional responsibility. “Faults” is lucky to have such an unusual presence, as the rest of Riley Stearns’s directorial debut tends to deflate when he’s not around. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Most anthology films go out of their way to provide a reason for the sampler selection of stories. The Argentinean feature “Wild Tales” cuts out the middle man and delivers titular narratives of disaster, frustration, and love without explanation. It’s a mixed bag but the movie covers a lot of ground, attempting to disorient viewers with disparate perspectives on the humiliations of the world. Some of it is funny, most of it is puzzling, but when writer/director Damian Szifron locks into the weirdness of the moment, stacking coincidences and playing with puzzled reactions, “Wild Tales” finds a welcome shot of mischief. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

To pull off a reasonable movie about con artists, a script has to offer some likability. I’m not suggesting sainthood or part-time dog-sitting, but there has to be a level of charm that makes inherent evil take a two hour vacation. “Focus” does not have an embraceable moment. It’s a style piece from the writer/directors of “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” who try to tart up a sleepy script of misdirection with sex appeal, only to cast two actors who are more credible as siblings. “Focus” has the raw materials to generate a thrilling combination of emotional gamesmanship and sticky-fingered fun, but it’s unwilling to pursue anything resembling excitement, thinking the mere presence of Will Smith is enough to razzle-dazzle the audience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

One of the better filmgoing surprises within the last decade has been the opportunity to watch Taika Waititi develop into one of the finest comedy directors around, displaying his gifts with timing and performance in hilarious efforts such as “Eagle vs. Shark” and “Boy.” “What We Do in the Shadows” is a slight change of pace for Waititi, turning away from a human element to mess around with the undead, sharing helming duties with co-star Jemaine Clement to mastermind a faux documentary about the life and times of New Zealand vampires. Hilarious, with refreshing attention to the gruesome possibilities of the premise, “What We Do in the Shadows” is a creative step forward for Waititi, taking interesting tonal risks while maintaining a steady flow of silly business. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Lazarus Effect” has the unenviable task of trying to assemble a full-blooded horror experience without a significant budget and varied locations. It’s yet another Blumhouse Productions cheapy, but instead of jazzing up the ordinary with some directorial finesse, David Gelb loses his plan of attack quickly, hanging on for dear life as the movie stumbles through junk science and PG-13-level nightmare imagery, with a faint “don’t mess with the beyond” message pinched from a dozen “Twilight Zone” episodes. It’s not eat-your-ticket-stub bad, but “The Lazarus Effect” doesn’t work at all, perhaps most successful at putting the audience to sleep. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Salvation” doesn’t mess around. Leave it to the Danes to make the best western in recent memory, utilizing gorgeous South African locations to make a most American story of revenge and tragedy. Director Kristian Levring (“The King is Alive”) takes extreme care of genre traditions, refusing distractions and superfluous dramatics to charge ahead as a steely saga of leathery men out to prove their dominance. While gracefully made, it’s raw, unflinching work, with simplicity that harkens back the genre’s prime years of darkness. If you enjoy your meat rare, booze gulped out of a dirty boot, and tingle at the sound of jangling spurs, “The Salvation” is the movie for you. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Returning to the times of The Troubles, screenwriter Gregory Burke avoids a history lesson filled with agonized participants and blurred lines of morality. Instead, he builds a visceral experience out of known elements, taking viewers into the heart of panic and paranoia with a unique take on community unrest. Squint and tilt your head to the side, and perhaps “‘71” could even be considered an homage to “The Warriors,” sharing a similar caught behind enemy lines premise. However, this is not flippant movie, but a grim inspection of loyalties and honor during a clouded period of national divide, with director Yann Demange capturing panic and fear with remarkable precision. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

David Cronenberg is a tremendous director, with a filmography filled with ghoulish delights, piercing psychological studies, and classic “body horror” endeavors. The man behind “Scanners,” “The Fly,” and “A History of Violence” isn’t used to stumbling, but Cronenberg hit rock bottom with 2012’s “Cosmopolis,” cooking up a frightfully tone-deaf and miscast effort. “Maps to the Stars” restores a little spring to the helmer’s step, returning interests to the undoing of humanity through the snap of satire. While it lacks outright Cronenbergian pleasures, “Maps to the Stars” repeatedly connects as a dark comedy and insidious display of rancid human behavior. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Out of the Dark” is never going to be celebrated for its originality. In genre dominated by creepy events occurring in shadowed corners, this horror effort generally follows the same routine, offering a ghost story with a South American setting. However, it’s effective work from director Lluis Quilez, who guides an ambitious screenplay through the bob and weave of a fright film while maintaining character through an eco-disaster subplot, allowing some real-world terror to seep into the system. While limited in armrest-gripping suspense, “Out of the Dark” is handsomely made, with an interest in investigating cultural exploitation that elevates it away from the average mouthbreathing endeavor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Trying to create an original alien encounter movie is a difficult challenge, with scores of productions working out ways to depict the horror, fantasy, and, at times, wonder of such a meeting. Unfortunately, “Ejecta” elects to use the found footage aesthetic for at least part of its journey. A highly charged sound and light show, “Ejecta” doesn’t offer much besides screen chaos, laboring to whip up enough torture and terror to cover for its limited budget and strangely one-note script, which tends to recycle the same scenes repeatedly. A few crisp encounters retain pleasing intimidation, but directors Chad Archibald and Matt Wiele are too busy making a visual effects demo reel to care much about the dramatic value of their feature. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“McFarland, U.S.A.” is a very kind and gentle film. It doesn’t offer a single surprise, but it has feeling, courtesy of director Niki Caro, who made a name for herself with 2002’s “Whale Rider,” and then promptly lost her mojo with the muddled “North Country,” from 2005. Returning to semi-stable dramatic ground with an underdog sports movie, Caro crafts an emotional picture, aided by wonderful performances from the entire cast. “McFarland” isn’t always consistent, and shows strain in the editing department, but when it finds a cozy spot of empowerment and community generosity, it charms in a big way. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Released in 2010, “Hot Tub Time Machine” was a nice surprise. While dramatically unsteady, the picture led confidently with silliness, combining a love affair with nostalgia with an absurd premise it committed to wholeheartedly, resulting in an overlong but frequently hilarious effort. Its box office wasn’t stellar, but audiences generally enjoyed the movie, with “Hot Tub Time Machine 2” finally here to pick up where the characters left off. Sadly, the considerable amount of time between installments wasn’t spent perfecting the screenplay. Weirdly stale and unpolished, “Hot Tub Time Machine 2” doesn’t live up to the original’s sense of mischief, going low-budget and crude to squeeze out a few laughs. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Zombies are all the rage these days, inspiring countless B-movies and perhaps the most popular television program around (“The Walking Dead”). The possibilities for slow-crawl, brain-munching horror seem exhausted at this point, but then “Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead” comes around to restore faith in an undead uprising. Messy and heroically violent, this Australian production doesn’t have much of a budget to help realize ambition, but it does have a spunky filmmaking duo in Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner, who whip up a frightfully appealing doomsday, filled with tortured participants, inventive turns of plot, and necessary pit stops of humor. “Wyrmwood” is an original vision worth paying attention to, even when it threatens to spiral out of control. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Accidental Love” began life in 2008 under the title “Nailed.” It was intended to be director David O. Russell’s follow-up to “I Heart Huckabees,” but the production experienced several cash-flow problems during the shoot, causing multiple shutdowns and, eventually, abandonment before the effort could be finished. Seven years later, the picture has finally found its way to theaters, only without Russell’s participation, selecting the pseudonym “Stephen Greene” to mask his involvement in the movie. “Accidental Love” certainly isn’t quality work, best appreciated as an industry curiosity, returning viewers to a time before Russell became a respectable Academy Awards magnet, back when the helmer crafted scattershot endeavors with select moments of enlightenment. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

According to director Adam Green, director Adam Green has quite a large, passionate fanbase who’ve slavishly followed his work through films such as “Hatchet” and “Frozen,” while supporting his cult television series, “Holliston.” “Digging Up the Marrow” is the helmer’s attempt to create a faux documentary, giving horror a slight change in direction while it works through its found footage phase. Green has a great idea that’s not serviced to satisfaction here, with much of “Digging Up the Marrow” devoted to circular conversations and iffy “realism” instead of launching a terrifying viewing experience. Perhaps Green’s admirers will embrace his lead performance and insistence on boo scares, but the rest of this limp outing reeks of a missed opportunity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com