Category: Film Review

“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

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