Category: Film Review

To start off the movie on a particularly nauseating note, “The DUFF” opens with a reference to “The Breakfast Club,” because, for reasons unknown, nearly every feature aimed at a teenage audience but made by thirtysomething filmmakers is required to attach itself in some way to the legacy of tremendous adolescent cinema. It’s a bad idea, especially when “The DUFF” reveals itself to be a shallow, witless, and bizarrely cast endeavor, always eager to preach about the value of self-acceptance, but just as ready to indulge shallow behavior as a method of empowerment. Perhaps less time aping Hughes and more time building a consistent script should’ve been the priority for this irksome dramedy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There couldn’t be a better release period for the documentary “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry.” With online types spending substantial amounts of time debating the purity of feminism and its many forms, while such fear of empowerment has led to real world horrors, director Mary Dore returns to the beginning of the movement, restoring needed perspective when it comes to the deconstruction of gender politics, oppression, and liberation. Spilling over with news footage, charismatic interviewees, and enlightening information, “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry” is an appropriately sobering reminder of progress and sacrifice as a nation of women rose up to claim their voice during a politically volatile time. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The swirling angst of teenagedom receives a glossy treatment in “All the Wilderness.” Writer/director Michael Johnson has his heart in the right place, searching out a way to communicate the inner life of his characters, questing to find a John Hughes-style sincerity for a generation that’s forged in cynicism. Johnson is also after a slick visual presentation that showcases his abilities as a stylist, and one that can dream up cinematic wonderlands with a limited budget. Sadly, “All the Wilderness” ends up more of a demo reel than a complete picture, watching the helmer forgo a plot to perfect his lighting, plasticizing the rise of adolescent awareness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Disliking “The Last Five Years” feels like kicking a puppy. A screen adaptation of Jason Robert Brown’s Off-Broadway musical, written and directed by Richard LaGravenese, the picture is packed with earnest behavior and big-lunged sentiment, out to capture the ups and downs of a specific relationship while keeping the singing constant. It’s impossible to fully fault lead performances from Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan, and LaGravenese obviously has great admiration for Brown’s work. However, spirit is missing from “The Last Five Years,” at least a cinematic one, finding much of the movie working diligently to keep away from becoming just another stage-bound reproduction, only to find itself handcuffed by visual limitation and overly emphatic acting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A literary phenomenon, one of the most widely read books of the last 25 years, finally makes its way to the big screen. “Fifty Shades of Grey,” the hush-hush best seller that introduced a large audience to the ways of BDSM, isn’t material that easily translates into stunning cinema, with the novel’s foundation poured within the imagination of the reader, encouraging the audience to make up their own visuals concerning bondage and romantic ache. As a movie, “Fifty Shades of Grey” is an Ambien pill, unable to snap out of its thick fog and truly capture the essence of submission or even love. Instead of dissecting obsession, the feature carries on as a bloodless creation, mixing melodrama and vacant performances as it handles all the greatest hits found in author E.L. James’s original material. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Matthew Vaughn loves comic books, a fact evidenced in his filmography, which largely consists of adaptations including “X-Men: First Class” and the graphic novel “Stardust.” Vaughn also has an affinity for the work of Mark Millar, author of “Kick-Ass” and “Kick-Ass 2.” Their reunion is “Kingsman: The Secret Service,” a big screen imagining of Millar’s comic series (co-authored by Dave Gibbons), which intends to celebrate the spirit of classic James Bond spy movies while indulging in CGI-laden ultraviolence. It’s a hurricane of a picture, authoritative and downright fun…for about an hour. The second half of “Kingsman” is a wipe-out of epic proportions, with Vaughn and Millar losing their sense of structure to whip up a painfully familiar frenzy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In a continuing effort to shake up her career, Katherine Heigl storms into “Home Sweet Hell” with the proper attitude, adding a touch of spunk and dead-eyed menace to a picture that needs all the help it can find. A pitch-black comedy about the price of infidelity and the physical exertion of murder, “Home Sweet Hell” has the right idea, but no secure grasp on madness. However, before it eventually loses its nerve, there’s a certain snap to the material that promises horror and a few chuckles along the blood-soaked journey, while stars Heigl and Patrick Wilson do their best to salvage a sinking ship, putting in fine performances that embrace ghoulishness director Anthony Burns eventually turns away from. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A legendary actor of stage and screen, Patrick Stewart rarely gives a flawed performance, and yes, I’ve seen “Masterminds.” Always the best thing in everything he appears in, Stewart manages to top himself in “Match,” which does offer the thespian an opportunity to play something other than a captain or a professor. Pulling Stewart out of typecasting, writer/director Stephen Belber (“Management”) captures a graceful performance of masked intention and deep-seated guilt. Not that co-stars Carla Gugino and Matthew Lillard are subpar, but Stewart has a way of taking the viewer on a specific dramatic journey, gifting “Match” a sense of surprise and buried pain that’s always riveting to watch. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A great exploitation movie will encourage audience participation, triggering cheers and gasps as the material works through copious amounts of unsavory action, often in the bloodiest way possible. “Everly” is not a great exploitation movie. In fact, it’s not much of a movie at all. Screenwriter Yale Hannon and director Joe Lynch have a master plan of low-budget carnage, using a single location to its fullest potential as we watch the titular character slice and shoot her way through an army of baddies. It’s not rocket science, but “Everly” is unusually angry, showing tremendous hostility to its characters and the audience, making the bullet-and-sword show more about suffering than escapism, confusing the production’s ultimate entertainment goal. Unless Lynch and Hannon intentionally want ticket-buyers to immediately Silkwood shower off the ick this effort oozes, I believe they’ve blown a prime opportunity to celebrate cinematic carnage. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Labeled in marketing materials as bio-pic of German poet Friedrich Schiller, “Beloved Sisters” is actually more of a sampling of his history, lacking a birth-to-death arc common to the subgenre. Instead of tracking the origin story of an aspiring intellectual, the feature concentrates on his unusual relationship with two sisters who’ve fallen for him. The uneasy love triangle is perhaps the most enticing development in “Beloved Sisters,” which is best executed with churning emotions and period-specific cruelties, offering director Dominik Graf something to work his fingers through instead of passively recounting Schiller’s admittedly flavorful existence. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Elizabeth Banks doesn’t receive the opportunity to act in dramas nearly enough. Her gifts are usually put to use in comedies, where she frequently shines, showcasing a bubbly personality and skill with timing. “Little Accidents” offers no such distractions, offering a bleak view of humanity with its exploration of a coal mine accident and its toxic aftermath. Banks is a highlight, along with a secure cast of downtrodden types, allowing writer/director Sara Colangelo passage into troubling areas of communication situated around a black hole of guilt. “Little Accidents” doesn’t provide a comprehensive dissection of woes, but it chooses its moments carefully and often successfully. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When writer/director Marc Lawrence makes a movie, he always does so with Hugh Grant in the lead role. It’s like a modern day Scorsese and De Niro-style run of collaborations, only instead of churning out classics, Lawrence and Grant are addicted to mediocrity, stumbling through “Two Weeks Notice” and “Music and Lyrics,” and nearly committing career suicide with their last effort, “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” Never one to break tradition, Lawrence return to nothingness with “The Rewrite,” a cutesy inside-Hollywood, fish-out-of-water comedy that depends entirely on Grant’s way with a mumbled punchline. A solid supporting cast walks through the picture almost undetected, and the production shows surprising restraint with romantic comedy inclinations. While harmless, “The Rewrite” is ineffective, putting pressure on Lawrence to deliver a warm mood he’s already proven incapable of delivering. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I pity the poor marketing lackey put in charge of selling “The Voices” to the public. It’s strange enough to watch the pitch-black comedy, but to gift wrap it in a way that would encourage ticket sales is an impossible challenge. Thankfully, there’s a quality film here that’s worth a look, especially for audiences in the mood for grim events and strange behaviors as the screenplay blends a love story with a serial killer origin tale. Director Marjane Satrapi (“Persepolis”) pulls off an impressive tonal tightrope walk with “The Voices,” and while it isn’t always steady on its feet, the effort is strange enough to connect, creating spaces of comedy and genuine horror that keep viewers interested in this depiction of developing mental illness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Matt LeBlanc has proven himself to be a fairly popular television actor, joining the pop culture legend ranks as Joey Tribbiani on “Friends” and recently showcasing his comedic skills on “Episodes.” Big screen acceptance has eluded the performer, with “Lost in Space” unable to secure him a franchise, and there’s 1996’s “Ed,” which is the only time I’ve ever seen children walk out of a screening. “Lovesick” adds to LeBlanc’s leading man woes, once again attaching his amiable charms to a DOA project, fighting for oxygen while the production introduces all kinds of sitcom formula to generate a sufficiently madcap tone. “Lovesick” lives up to its title, as it’s hard to feel anything but nausea after sitting through it. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Lana and Andy Wachowski have endured a bumpy career since the completion of their “Matrix” trilogy in 2003. Efforts such as “Speed Racer” and “Cloud Atlas” have shown customary visual and narrative ambition, but remained unrewarded at the box office, proving to be too esoteric or nutty for the general audience, leaving them in a position of dwindling big studio faith. “Jupiter Ascending” is the Wachowskis most direct attempt to re-enter the “Matrix” mindset, constructing a big-budget fantasy fireworks display that’s primarily devoted to the explanation of the plot. Somewhere between “wow!” and “huh?” resides “Jupiter Ascending,” a nifty looking but ultimately joyless thrill ride that solidifies the siblings as the king and queen of overthinking sure things. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In Hollywood time, it’s been about a thousand years since the release of “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie,” which introduced the volatile Nickelodeon creation to the big screen. While it wasn’t a smash hit, the picture still managed to do encouraging business. That it took 11 years for a sequel to arrive is a bit of a surprise, but “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water” is worth the wait, refreshing the source material’s freakish energy and dedication to silliness for another round of madcap adventuring, with the gimmick for this outing being the opportunity to see beloved characters captured with CG-animation, expanding creator Stephen Hillenburg’s cartoon universe. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Seventh Son” endured some difficulties as it made its way to the masses, missing a few release dates and changing studios. Finally seeing the light of day, the picture arrives late to the party, unleashing a torrent of visual effects and fantasy touches as it attempts to play the kid-lit lottery, adapting a 2004 book by Joseph Delaney. While never boring, “Seventh Son” is shellacked with excess, emerging as a particularly noisy extravaganza, not an imaginative one. Co-stars Julianne Moore and Jeff Bridges are amusing to watch, but the movie doesn’t offer excitement, finding ways to make swooping dragons, magical creatures, and heroic destinies quite dull. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I’ll admit, when it comes to the filmography of writer/director Eric Schaeffer, I tapped out a long time ago. The “If Lucy Fell” and “Never Again” helmer was fairly skilled at testing patience with flimsy comedies and self-serving dramas, slipping into seriously indie movie mode over the last 15 years to keep his career on the move. Perhaps time apart has softened my Schaeffer sensitivity, because it’s a pleasure to report that his latest, “Boy Meets Girl,” also happens to be his best. A compassionate and mercifully restrained drama, the picture does an exceptional job teasing viewers with punishing cliché, only to subvert expectations whenever possible. It’s a lovely feature, sweet and real, highlighting Schaeffer’s maturity as a filmmaker and his appreciation for softer moments of heartfelt confession. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s easy to poke fun at the current state of Nicolas Cage’s career, but the actor has certainly tried to entertain himself while collecting paycheck after paycheck. 2014 found Cage as an honorable but flawed southerner, a vengeance-minded criminal, an airplane pilot confronted with the rapture, and a testy CIA agent heading out on his final mission. Kicking off the new year, Cage transforms into 15th century crusader who eventually hides out in the Far East, adopting a local outfit and hairstyle. “Outcast” isn’t explicitly a Nicolas Cage movie (it’s more of a supporting role), but he’s the highlight of this overdirected blur of action sequences, spicing up a dull viewing experience with his habitual oddity and unbridled enunciation. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Surprises are few and far between in “Love, Rosie,” which coasts entirely on the appeal of its stars, Lily Collins and Sam Claflin. The pair commits to the material with every fiber of their being, but passable chemistry and a few effective moments of introspection can’t scrub off the scent of recycling, as much of the movie plays like a “Bridget Jones” sequel. The talent is likable, but few scenes connect as profoundly as director Christian Ditter envisions, rendering the effort heavy with quirk and an abuse of coincidence, and light with urgent matters of the heart. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com