Category: Film Review

I doubt anyone who saw “Dolphin Tale” back in 2011 could’ve imagined such a story was ripe for a sequel. Not only was Winter the dolphin a powerful source of inspiration for visitors to her Florida rehabilitation aquarium, but she proved surprising muscle at the box office, allowing producers an opportunity to continue the drama with “Dolphin Tale 2,” a pleasant follow-up that’s more meaningful than its predecessor, touching on a few choice adolescent dilemmas before it plunges back into Disney Channel-esque habits that are harsh on the senses. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The “Leprechaun” series is not precious. Conceived as satiric dig at the unstoppable killing machine craze of the 1980s and ‘90s, the original film merged silliness and shock with some degree of care, launching a franchise that carried on for five increasingly ridiculous sequels, making star Warwick Davis a cult icon and his agent very happy. 2003’s “Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood” was the swan song for the tiny monster, but a decade of dormancy hasn’t been as educational as one would hope. “Leprechaun: Origins” is the inevitable reboot, reworking the goofy premise into an R-rated chiller with a radically redesigned foe. Unfortunately, the production asks the audience to take the whole effort with the utmost seriousness, which somehow makes it even more absurd. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The admirable aspect of “At the Devil’s Door” is how careful it works to disrupt predictability. The horror genre has basically seen it all in terms of plots, tricks, and scares, with most filmmakers beating the same routines into submission, content to recycle to play into profitable trends. Writer/director Nicholas McCarthy doesn’t necessarily introduce new ideas with his picture, but the helmer is determined to keep viewers on edge with twists and blunt transitions, striving to advance a mystery that’s impossible to deduce from the opening act. However, in his attempt to pull “At the Devil’s Door” inside out, McCarthy has forgotten to retain a gripping consistency to the work, rendering the effort distanced when it should snowball into something menacing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There has been no shortage of Elmore Leonard adaptations over the last 30 years, with efforts such as Quentin Tarantino’s “Jackie Brown,” Steven Soderbergh’s “Out of Sight,” and Barry Sonnenfeld’s “Get Shorty” representing the cinematic highlights, while forgettable features such as “Killshot” and “Touch” populate the other side of the creative spectrum. “Life of Crime” isn’t a particularly urgent slice of Leonard, but this take on “The Switch” is appealing enough to pass, with writer/director Daniel Schechter locating a casual rhythm to a pressurized situation, relying on the writer’s way with characters and twists to feed into well-acted adventures with criminals and the hostages who love them. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I wouldn’t advise a trip to the concessions counter before a showing of the German film “Wetlands.” It’s not a movie made to stoke appetites, it’s a creation hoping to repulse in a myriad of ways. Based on a novel by Charlotte Roche, “Wetlands” sets out to the capture the head rush of a broken adolescence, with all its impulses, curiosities, and emotional unrest, and the feature is certainly vivid enough to reach a few high points of experience that are rarely explored on-screen. However, its visual intensity is tiring and incessant shock value tends to weaken emotionality present later in the picture. This is certainly unforgettable work, but often for the wrong reasons. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

James Rolfe has a built a brand name with “The Angry Video Game Nerd,” a popular video game review show that covers the worst the industry has to offer. It’s no polite rundown of faults, but a program constructed with sketches, game play, and cursing. So much cursing. Rolfe’s foul-mouthed routine has turned him into a cult star with gamers, building a fan base interested in terrible product dissected with extreme silliness. Excessive profanity aside, Rolfe’s videos are very entertaining, but is the man who’s built an empire in his basement, screaming into a single camera, ready for a trip to the big screen? “Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie” is determined to turn the bespectacled, pocketing-protecting, beer-swilling, joystick-bending boob into a cinematic legend. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Love is Strange” doesn’t emphasize its use of gay marriage to fulfill any political agenda, instead treating the celebration of love as a moment of unity that strengthens bonds and deepens emotions. The film proceeds to display how that connection is tested in unexpectedly subtle ways, focusing on characters facing a seismic lifestyle change while trying to preserve stability to the best of their ability. It’s a tale of tenderness and partnership, with co-writer/director Ira Sachs working to keep melodrama out of the material, preferring to approach the conflicts contained within as ongoing life, remaining observational and respectful with this lovely, mournful picture. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There’s influence and then there’s theft. “The Longest Week” lands somewhere between the two extremes, with writer/director Peter Glanz making sure the world understands that he loves the work of Woody Allen and Wes Anderson. It’s difficult to understand why Glanz submits totally to his tributes, as his own work loses its identity along the way, suffocated by an onslaught of memorable filmmaking originally articulated by better filmmakers. I’m all for a celebration of the movies we love, but “The Longest Week” quickly becomes mimicry, losing any emotional pull as it strives to preserve the hospital corners of other, better helmers. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Last of Robin Hood” is dedicated to Beverly Aadland, the underage girl who took part in a sexual relationship with 50-year-old Errol Flynn over the last two years of his life. Perhaps this is why the production takes it so easy on the young woman, electing to transfer motivation to others while romanticizing a union that’s already impossible to rationalize. In a stronger film, this provocative approach might conjure a riveting display of passion and violation, but in the hands of writer/directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (“Quinceanera”), “The Last of Robin Hood” is transformed into a melodrama, and one that’s suspiciously careful with the sordid details of the plot. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Ever since he won an Academy Award for directing “The Silence of the Lambs,” Jonathan Demme has attempted to derail expectations by selecting material that feeds his moviemaking soul, mostly avoiding industry temptations to recycle his winning formula. His idiosyncrasy has remained in full bloom, with the last decade of his career spent making concert documentaries with Neil Young and testing out the elasticity of digital cinema with efforts such as “Rachel Getting Married.” “A Master Builder” merges the two aesthetics in a manner that’s sure to polarize audiences, asking viewers to be patient with this adaptation of a 19th century play by Henrik Ibsen, which never leaves its single setting, remaining stagey, breathless, and unavoidably static when it isn’t absolutely riveting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In the hostile, coldly metallic realm of the prison picture, “Starred Up” carries a special intensity. While it maintains a fierce concentration on procedure and pecking order behind bars, the story emerges out of the darkness as one of a father and son getting to know each other for the very first time. “Starred Up” is brutal and intense (effectively emphasizing its hellish setting), but also unexpectedly sincere, approaching the weary routine of inmate life with a barbed but expressive human perspective that’s exceptionally communicated by screenwriter Jonathan Asser and director David Mackenzie, who combine forces to deliver character instead of chaos. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Japanese animation rarely finds its way to American screens in any significant way, making the release of “A Letter to Momo” all the more special. Mercifully, the picture earns such attention, submitting a mournful and sometimes silly fantasy that’s Studio Ghibli-esque in design, but carries its own personality with style and sensitivity. Although it doesn’t thunder forward with much originality, “A Letter to Momo” gets far on feelings, offering audiences a helping of magic that seasoned with slapstick and a direct hit of regret, which encourages a few tears to go with the laughs and wonder. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Moviemakers John Erick Dowdle and Drew Dowdle have made four studio pictures, and three of them have incorporated found footage events in some form. “As Above, So Below” is their latest foray into shaky-cams and exaggerated acting, and I think it’s about time the brothers move on to a genre other than horror. Much like “The Poughkeepsie Tapes” (their 2007 feature, which finally found release back in July), “Quarantine,” and “Devil,” the Dowdles have a strange way of watering down potential terror in their fright films, with “As Above, So Below” teasing a fascinating premise, only to slog through conventional beats of suspense, blending elements from “The Da Vinci Code,” “The Goonies,” and “Event Horizon” into a criminally inert, repetitive effort. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The serial killer subgenre has seen its fair share of variation, reaching a point of complete exhaustion as productions hunt for new ways to frighten audiences with unusual murders and creepy suspects. “The Calling” doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it offers a certain amount of patience and simplicity when it comes to the horrifying routine, placing emphasis on the crime, not necessarily the criminal. Director Jason Stone orchestrates an appealingly gloomy picture, extracting some fine performances and a welcome momentum to the story. Originality isn’t a priority with “The Calling,” but the little changes in execution and motivation allow the movie a chance to breathe, preserving interest in the ongoing slaughter. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The idea of Pierce Brosnan in another spy franchise holds promise, even if it’s been over a decade since the actor last portrayed James Bond. Hoping to return some firepower to a lethargic filmography, Brosnan loads up on pained machismo for “The November Man,” the launch of a fresh series of actioners based on the character Peter Devereaux, an ex-CIA brute conceived by author Bill Granger. The star is quite literally the only highlight in this stunningly brain dead thriller, working his tight-faced routine to the best of his ability as director Roger Donaldson bungles even the most basic of chase sequences and spy game antagonism. As enjoyable an actor as Brosnan is, sometimes his taste in screenplays boggles the mind. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As brain-bleeders go, “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears” doesn’t really care if the audience is involved in this surreal journey of murder and madness. It’s an art piece that’s meant to be admired, not enjoyed, with directors Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani creating the picture for themselves, building a hallucinatory world one fluttering edit and suggestive image at a time. “The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears” is only appreciable as pure cinematic craftsmanship, and it’s a gorgeous movie, teeming with inventive compositions and wild lighting. As a mystery, there’s no tractor beam pull to the enigmatic happenings, leaving the effort all about form. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Although it deals with troubling areas of mental illness, “Frank” provides a distracting visual with its titular character. A masked singer in a rock band, Frank doesn’t pull off his oversized disguise for anyone, supporting the promise that co-star Michael Fassbender is never going to show his face to the camera, content to hide himself as part of his character. It’s an effective tool to trigger ticket-buyer curiosity, and the gimmick does get “Frank” surprisingly far. It’s the film’s understanding of depression that leaves much to be desired, unsure if it wants to be a funny movie or a moving one, with director Lenny Abrahamson creating a diverting but vaguely penetrative picture that’s so concerned with idiosyncrasy, it’s missing consistency. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Paycheck roles for Hollywood stars is nothing new, but director Brian A. Miller appears to be building an empire with his access to once mighty marquee players. “The Prince” is the latest in a long line of forgettable actioners, with big bucks enticing John Cusack and Bruce Willis to drop by for a few scenes while Jason Patric does his best to carry the effort, which is little more than a flimsy “Taken” knockoff. Aggressive but hopelessly thin, “The Prince” hopes to dazzle viewers with famous faces, which act as a rodeo clown while the rest of the picture trots out snoozy underworld and revenge clichés in a most uninspired script. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2005’s “Sin City” was a fascinating cinematic experiment. A slavish, stylish expansion of Frank Miller’s graphic novel, the feature enjoyed an element of surprise, stunning audiences with its particular approach to a literary adaptation. Instead of reimagining the book, co-directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller used the tome as an altar for worship, preserving the visual intensity of the original work and its taste for the unsavory. A hit with audiences, a sequel was all but guaranteed. However, that it took nearly a decade to revive this sleazy world is shocking, with the abyssal gap in years between installments hurting the aspiring series. Instead of fanning the franchise flames, “Sin City: A Dame to Kill For” tosses a wet blanket on the fun, stumbling with a plodding follow-up that’s missing the insanity and most of the grim highlights that made the original so memorable. It’s as though Rodriguez and Miller forgot how to make a “Sin City” movie. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Spoilers are a tricky thing. Some readers get upset when the name of a lead character is shared in a review, while others prefer to understand as much about a movie as possible before deciding to buy a ticket. It’s a tightrope walk that’s never fun to attempt, but with some features, it’s impossible to discuss the particulars at all without some explanation of plot. “The One I Love” is a particular challenge because the entire picture is built on a secret. Not an explosive one, but just revealing enough to make any critique a mine field of potential problems. I will do my best to avoid ruining this wonderful film, but to be safe, if you’re committed to going in cold, stop reading here. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com