Category: Film Review

They don’t make movies like “Nightcrawler” much these days. A feature about evil in multiple forms, the picture is more interested in sinister moves, not overtly violent ones. It gets under the skin with its depiction of a sociopath, yet never loses its sense of humor and appreciation for its home city of Los Angeles. Think early Michael Mann crossed with a heavily sedated Oliver Stone endeavor, and that’s the hazy moral area “Nightcrawler” resides in. Credit writer/director Dan Gilroy for taking a shot with an unpleasant lead character and his business of pure ugliness, pulling off an amazing filmmaking achievement with this devious but hypnotic effort. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The experiment is simple: hand the alphabet over to 26 moviemakers, each tasked with cooking up a short film celebrating their assigned letter. There are no rules, just a project goal to create brief blasts of horror using panic, gore, and, in many cases, the most depraved sense of artistic expression imaginable. The original 2012 feature was pretty much a disaster, failing to do anything of interest with a potentially Wonderland-esque visit into the bowels of filmmaking freedom. Around the time “F is for Fart” arrived, all hope was lost. The good news is that “The ABCs of Death 2” is a noticeable improvement over the previous anthology effort, spinning new tales of disaster and irony with greater concentration and imagination. The bad news is that old habits die hard, with a handful of the segments more interested in tepid shock value than weaving wicked magic with their fleeting amount of screen time. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Lynn Shelton’s career has offered intimate comedies founded on uncomfortable events. She’s good with neuroses and terrific with actors, making potentially awkward pictures such as “Humpday” and “Your Sister’s Sister” meaningful with her attention to character, making sure to dial down the cute. “Laggies” isn’t a significant change of pace for the helmer, but it does represent a slow side step toward mainstream acceptance for the once steadfastly independent filmmaker, who makes her version of a romantic comedy with the feature, albeit one that identifies with crippling anxiety and celebrates the rotten layers that form bad decisions. Frequently humorous and sharply observed, “Laggies” may not have the grit typically associated with Shelton’s work, but it preserves a sweet spot of complex behavior and retains a whole lot of charm. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Art and Craft” explores the strange world of Mark Landis, a master of art forgery who lives a cluttered life with mental health issues, yet is capable of producing astonishing replicas of a wide range of famous pieces. The twist here is that Landis isn’t doing this for money. He’s not a part of some multi-national criminal empire looking to squeeze collectors for easy coin. Instead, he’s a frail man who lives in a fantasy of philanthropy, gifting museums his creations, taking pleasure from the act of acceptance. Directed by Sam Cullman, Jennifer Grausman, and Mark Becker, “Art and Craft” has it easy in terms of documentary subjects, as Landis is ready for his close-up, eager to share a distorted idea of himself with viewers. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While October is widely regarded as a month to celebrate horror, it seems the concept of marriage is the real terror being put under the microscope this year. With David Fincher’s “Gone Girl,” audiences were treated to a theatrical display of pent-up matrimonial resentment and harrowing psychological gamesmanship. Sweden’s “Force Majeure” takes a more realistic and intimate look at the cracks in companionship, pitting its characters against instinct, commitment, and themselves, weaving dark thoughts and nagging insecurities through a heavenly, and appropriately forbidding, ski resort location. Patient and incisive, “Force Majeure” takes its time to get where it’s going, but the raw feelings unearthed by writer/director Ruben Ostlund are frightening in their accuracy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Apparently, 2014 is the year Nicole Kidman and Colin Firth can’t quit each other. Last spring, the pair co-starred in “The Railway Man,” a stark POW drama that demanded the most out of Firth, while Kidman played support. In “Before I Go to Sleep,” the roles are reversed, with Kidman taking on the majority of screentime, put through the emotional wringer while Firth stands back and waits for his moment. Considering their combined talent and commitment to the cause, it’s a shame “Before I Go to Sleep” is such a snooze, barely putting in the effort to be a proper nail-biter before it reveals that it was never about suspense anyway. It somehow bores and disappoints in the same instant. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With a shapeless jazzy score, incendiary material, and pronounced performances, there’s no doubt that “Dear White People” is meant to emulate the work of Spike Lee during his most creatively fertile period. It also targets the bravery Lee once exhibited, marching forward with a provocative take on race relations and self-serving interests in the realm of exploitation, submitting a biting but windy screenplay that’s out to emphasize its thematic reach with every available moment. While not particularly inventive, “Dear White People” has a certain underdeveloped moxie that might’ve resulted in a braver effort, interested in telling a solid story and ruffling feathers. Instead, the movie only makes to the halfway point before it exhausts itself, biting off way more than it can chew. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s rare to come across an action film that isn’t bloated these days. In recent weeks, features like “The Equalizer” and “Fury” have taken an eternity to explore simple themes, offering violence that’s more about anger than escapism. And now comes “John Wick,” which runs just over 90 minutes and values economical storytelling, acting as a breath of fresh air in suffocating marketplace. Roughhouse and genuinely thrilling, “John Wick” sprints with its B-movie premise, delivering exceptional stunt work and engaging theatrics, while star Keanu Reeves returns to his impressive “Matrix” physicality, taking the form of a human steamroller in this deliriously entertaining, enjoyably brutal revenge picture. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Whiplash” displays originality by taking audiences into the world of jazz drumming, observing the lead character as he receives the education of a lifetime at the hands of a mentally unhinged teacher. It’s a thunderous movie, following its percussive lead with booming outbursts and aching physical strain, with performances by Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons displaying authority both actors have rarely shared before. “Whiplash” is a cinematic adrenaline shot with a sharp jazz tempo, and while nagging questions of genuine reaction to the malice at hand remain, it’s a dynamic piece of work, always on the verge of explosion as it surveys an unusually punishing creative skill. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Maintaining his reputation as a sophisticated filmmaker fostering an obsession with human suffering, co-writer/director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu unleashes another torrent of self-loathing and psychological flight with “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance),” presenting himself with a firm technical challenge to match the screenplay’s exhaustive reach into the banalities and pressure points of an actor on the edge. The picture is certainly an achievement, with winding cinematography and a captivating, face-rubbing performance from star Michael Keaton, but it’s also showy work, persistent in its effort to remind the audience that they’re watching intricate craftsmanship, not necessarily an intimate study of a mental breakdown. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A few years ago, Universal Pictures lost a lot of money trying to bring the board game “Battleship” to the big screen. It was loud, explosive, and slick, but at the end of the day, it was a film based on a board game. The studio returns to the scene of the crime with “Ouija,” only now the budget has been miniaturized and the genre has switched over to horror and its notoriously forgiving fanbase. The true power of fright that drives the Ouija board experience remains up to the viewer, but as a feature, the dark distraction makes for a sleepy time at the movies. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Gregg Araki loves young people. Or, more specifically, the young people from his own coming-of-age period. He’s made several films chronicling the misadventures of reckless youth, and a few more about the pain of this lonely existence, leaving his latest, “White Bird in a Blizzard,” at a disadvantage, with its to-do list of dysfunction already worked through by the helmer. Helping to define the new feature are mystery elements concerning a disappearance, and there’s Eva Green in a self-destructive mother role, creating some fresh elements to survey while Araki works out a way to make “White Bird in a Blizzard” feel fresh to all interested parties. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Suffering for decades with a reputation as a house of schlock, there’s been a resurgence of interest in Cannon Films lately, mixing nostalgia and ironic appreciation. Founded by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, Cannon Films was a magic store of low expectations, striving to sustain a run of B-pictures throughout the 1980s, with plans to transform into an A-list moviemaking force that Hollywood couldn’t deny. Along the way, they made crap. A lot of crap. But also the occasional gem, and a slew of beguiling efforts that reveled in their tackiness and rickety sense of spectacle. “Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films” isn’t satisfying journalism, yet the opportunity to sit down for 105 minutes and hear war stories from the Golan-Globus trenches is irresistible. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Some consider 1996’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau” to be one of the worst movies of all time. I wouldn’t go that far, but clearly something was amiss during principal photography, with stars Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer off making their own film, while director John Frankenheimer bursts a few blood vessels trying to hold it all together, failing to make much sense out of the narrative puzzle. It seems there was a reason for such a fragmented feature, with the documentary “Lost Soul” working to transform hushed rumor into fact, tracking the development of the project under its original creator, Richard Stanley. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Joe Carnahan loves to make movies that push levels of intensity into the red zone. He’s built a filmography on surges of adrenaline, with “Smokin’ Aces, “The Grey,” and “The A-Team” all delivering big thrills with light dusting of sarcasm. “Stretch” brings Carnahan into a low-budget playground, forced to come up with fresh ways to build up momentum now that large piles of money aren’t available. While frugality keeps the helmer on a leash, “Stretch” remains incredible amounts of fun, with a ferocious sense of humor and attention to pace and character connection that maintains a smooth, silly viewing experience with the occasional acid splash to identify it as a Carnahan picture. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Jai Courtney has been a difficult actor to pin down. Hollywood scooped him up a few years back, pushing him into bad action movies where he delivered bad performances, sleepwalking through dreck like “A Good Day to Die Hard” and “I, Frankenstein.” He’s never been able to show off any chops, making a small but searing effort like “Felony” all the more valuable. Courtney isn’t the star of the film, but he makes a positive impression for a change, adding subtle support to a wrenching drama directed by Matthew Saville. At the very least, “Felony” provides hope that Courtney will take greater care of his career and select better material such as this. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Fury” is an attempt to mount a throwback war film like they used to make in the 1940s and ‘50s. The kind where themes of innocence lost were deafening, while hero shots of Americans in battle were submitted to extend post-war national pride. “Fury” has its modern touches, but it’s also teeming with chewy characters and loaded with tank attack sequences. Unlike the bygone era, writer/director David Ayer asks the audience to sit through a lot of this effort, which run 135 minutes, and every second of it is felt. There are astonishing images of combat and terrifying passages of death, but this is repetitive work, periodically lost in its own chaos to satisfy those craving visceral thrills. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Feel-good filmmaking and Bill Murray rarely occupy the same space. It’s a rare event when the comedy icon can embrace sincerity while retaining his droll persona, and if there’s anyone who’s absolutely mastered the challenge, it’s Wes Anderson, Murray’s frequent collaborator. Although “St. Vincent” tries to sample Anderson’s style here and there, writer/director Theodore Melfi doesn’t have the vision to merge broad antics and emotional wreckage, with the feature gasping for air between a few genuinely successful scenes. Scattershot and artificial, “St. Vincent” is kept alive by Murray, who’s game to go where the script leads, adding his own spin to characterization when necessary, backed by an agreeable supporting cast. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A Nicholas Sparks film adaptation has become a yearly event, with “The Best of Me” out to trigger swoon and tears as it works through the author’s habitual storytelling interests. It’s a movie that’s almost likable, with a then-and-now plot device that’s adequately managed by director Michael Hoffman for the first half of the feature. That it takes an hour before “The Best of Me” becomes insufferably ridiculous is something of a record for a Sparks production, but unfortunately, the picture eventually grinds down to pure stupidity. Highlights remains, but this is not a competent effort, with clear signs leading to dramatic disaster that are intentionally ignored to remain tight with the writer’s loopy sense of threat. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s been an interesting year for writer/director Jason Reitman. In January, the helmer issued “Labor Day,” his take on romantic fixation and coming-of-age perspective. While the feature didn’t receive much attention at the box office, it was a welcome boost in maturity for Reitman, continuing compelling work that began with 2011’s “Young Adult.” “Men, Women & Children” is another effort that’s unexpected, but ultimately fails under the weight of its own ambition. There are ideas on our wi-fi culture contained within that deserve exploration, yet “Men, Women & Children” is an overwrought movie that refuses to express itself in a measured, reflective manner. After an hour of provocative ideas, the material slips out of Reitman’s control, unable to secure its parting messages. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com