Category: Film Review

Despite obvious limitations, 2005’s “The Protector” was a pleasingly weirdo action fest from Thailand that chased every impulse it could get away with, from elephant adoration to a transsexual villain. Featuring thrilling fight choreography, the film was a stepping-stone in the once thrilling career of star Tony Jaa, who was building a powerful brand name at the time, using “The Protector” to inch his way into the global marketplace. Nearly a decade later, and there’s now a sequel, which arrives years after Jaa’s momentum cooled, hoping to trigger fond memories of the hero’s abilities by returning to one of his most popular characters. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Skeleton Twins” is going to attract a lot of media attention for its casting of comedy stars Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig in an edgy, indie drama. Mercifully, the movie isn’t a steady display of severity, but a strongly imagined screen depiction of desperation and clinical depression, with welcome breathers of levity and warm sensitivity. It’s a beautiful picture that understands the tenuous bonds of family and pressures of self-delusion, winningly explored with an emotionally consistent, graceful screenplay and assured direction from Craig Johnson. While it appears foreboding, and perhaps that’s the most tantalizing direction for all marketing efforts, “The Skeleton Twins” is approachable and meaningful, confronting an impossible darkness with a generous flow of humanity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When a movie wants to communicate the passage of time, it typically takes tricks in casting or make-up to sell the illusion of the years floating by. Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” attempts something different. Production actually commenced in 2002, with short segments of the helmer’s script filmed over a 12 year period, allowing the stars to age naturally, with emphasis on its youngest characters, who naturally work through adolescence as the feature progresses. It’s a fascinating experiment but a surprisingly relaxed effort. Linklater eschews the poignancy of time passage with this ode to growing up, instead highlighting the development of personality, interests, and defense mechanisms as he observes the world around him. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Quiet Ones” had potential. A creepshow co-produced by Hammer Films, the feature has the right ingredients to at least reach a comfortable plateau of scares and demonic happenings, boasting a creepy doll, unexplained telekinetic events, and a remote location. Disappointingly, director John Pogue doesn’t trust the essentials, trying his best to amplify every single creak and slam to goose the audience, never allowing them to slowly slip into the foreboding atmosphere. Although it’s well-acted, “The Quiet Ones” whiffs on true terror, caught between a habitual need to artificially jolt the viewer and a languid pace, unable to increase pressure in a manner that would benefit the chilling intentions of this misfire. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Jim Jarmusch always makes interesting pictures, but it’s been a while since he’s made a great one. “Only Lovers Left Alive” toys with the waning trend of vampire stories, only instead of plastic passions and teen angst, there’s conversation, history, and a heaping helping of ennui. Shellacked with Jarmusch-branded wit and coolness, the feature is kept in play through near-perfect casting, with stars Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton carrying the effort’s mystery and understandable concentration on fatigue with wonderful timing and physical presence. Eased with pockets of humor, “Only Lovers Left Alive” is comfortable in its own skin, permitting disparate moods room to breathe as the helmer searches for an angle that might make vampirism fascinating again. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s interesting timing to welcome “The Machine” into theaters a week after the release of “Transcendence.” Both pictures share an interest in the possibility of A.I. and human experimentation, but the Johnny Depp movie is a big-budget slog of half-baked ideas, while “The Machine” is a low-budget effort with a stellar visual presence, competent performances, and a tighter grasp on its message of humanity withstanding an artificial form. Although constructed with bits and pieces from other sci-fi films, “The Machine” retains a dynamic presence, with interesting futureworld ideas sharply realized by writer/director Caradog W. James, who submits quite a cinematic vision for next to no production money. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Young & Beautiful” is the latest effort from writer/director Francois Ozon, and it features his interests in behavioral anomalies and troubling domestic developments. It’s a coming-of-age story with a steep learning curve for its lead character, but there is a sense of understanding that permeates the picture, even when it inspects some rather unsavory bedroom business. Distanced but attentive, “Young & Beautiful” remains an intriguing look at a life derailed, though whether or not all this disturbance is intentional remains a question left up to the viewer, with Ozon providing the pieces of a fracture psyche, not the instruction booklet to put it all together. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I’m not exactly sure what audience “The Other Woman” is for. There’s an enormous amount of bathroom humor, a comedic crutch typically aimed at young males, and director Nick Cassavetes loves to ogle the exposed skin of his stars, making it difficult to comprehend its intention to appeal to a female audience. There’s a graphic conversation about pubic hair and scenes of bloodshed, vomiting, and defecation, and the leading man ends up assaulting a woman in the final moments of the movie. There are so many unappealing ingredients to “The Other Woman,” it’s difficult to remember what exactly works in the picture. Thankfully, that list is short, but the film feels very long. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The Luc Besson-created “District 13” and its sequel, “District 13: Ultimatum,” were interesting riffs on the “Escape from New York” template. Boasting a distinct French style and appropriately curt lead performances from David Belle and Cyril Raffaelli, the features also had a hand in bringing the evasion discipline of parkour to the masses, employing fleet-footed antics to jazz up the norm. The films were awfully fun, dusted with that Besson magic that makes mediocrity highly engaging. “Brick Mansions” is the Americanized remake, and Besson (who returns as co-screenwriter) is all out of sorcery. Dismal, appallingly shot and edited, and cast with the least interesting actors around, it’s clear that this carnival ride of flips, jumps, and gentrification should’ve remained a distant European memory. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I like Nick Frost. Who doesn’t like Nick Frost? But I’m not sure what the actor is trying to accomplish with “Cuban Fury,” his English take on the American underdog genre. Ostensibly a movie that celebrates the art of salsa dancing, it’s filled with all sorts of clichéd screenwriting that barely makes sense. There’s a terrific cast here ready to play with Frost, a few of them more jubilant than the leading man, but “Cuban Fury” doesn’t have a personality of its own, in dire need of a more robust collection of laughs and a few less painfully contrived subplots. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A hit in its native Australia, 2005’s “Wolf Creek” failed to find much of an audience in the U.S. Compounding the pain of its cold box office dismissal, the effort is one of a handful of movies to receive a grade of F from the audience-polling firm, Cinemascore (a dubious company, but the distinction remains), suggesting that those who saw the picture hated it. Glacial and needlessly sadistic, “Wolf Creek” wasn’t the type of horror experience than lends itself to a franchise expansion, but don’t ever doubt the conviction of a struggling filmmaking. Director Greg Mclean returns to duty with “Wolf Creek 2,” a did-anyone-ask-for-this? sequel that manages to improve on its predecessor, but I’m not entirely sure that could be classified as a positive reaction. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There’s a specific fantasy tied to the idea of abandoning society for the wild, where such solitude and self-governing promises a richer life, far away from the poisons of the world. “The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Paradise” details such ambition, with the documentary exploring the events surrounding Friedrich Ritter and Dore Strauch, two Germans who left their homeland in the late 1920s to oversee their own island kingdom in the Pacific Ocean, hoping to expand their minds with unencumbered thinking and daily labor. Instead, the pair endured a troubling existence that welcomed new arrivals to their private lives, triggering tensions and eventually suspicious disappearances. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

While 2013’s “A Haunted House” was a disastrous, lazy spoof of horror films, its minor box office success was the most disheartening aspect of the release, with audiences rewarding screenwriter/star Marlon Wayans for essentially screaming into the camera for 80 minutes. Empowered and energized with a fresh assault of sophomoric humor, Wayans and his bulging face returns with “A Haunted House 2,” a quickie sequel released just over a year after the original. It’s abysmal work from a genuinely unpleasant actor who’s ready and willing to pander to the lowest common denominator with this hostile assembly of sex and anus-centric jokes. Wayans sets comedy and possibly his race back at least 50 years with “A Haunted House 2.” Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Fading Gigolo” isn’t the film you want it to be. Writer/director/star John Turturro isn’t interested in making a broad comedy, and while he’s persuaded Woody Allen to return to the screen as a supporting player, he’s crafted a picture that seems also dismissive of comedic situations. Electing to survey the flow of the life surrounding an older male escort and his adventures with women, Turturro selects a jazzy, NYC mood of interactions. There are appealing elements to “Fading Gigolo,” but the production doesn’t appear to be in any hurry to arrive at a satisfying dramatic destination, keeping the effort in stasis as the helmer figures out what he wants from the movie. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Wally Pfister has worked as a cinematographer on the majority of Christopher Nolan’s filmography, dating back to 2000’s “Memento.” “Transcendence” is his debut as a director, and to preserve the box office odds of this maiden voyage, he’s selected material that closely mirrors the Nolan aesthetic, blending sci-fi, action, and scientific study into a thought-provoking movie that’s out to stir debate and summon a few thrills. Sadly, Pfister has a long way to go before he matches Nolan’s command of pace and visual invention, as “Transcendence,” while provocative, is a glacially paced endeavor that’s miscast and mopey, abandoning intriguing ideas on the suction of omnipresent technology to conjure a pedestrian love story that features the occasional blip of suspense. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

At least “Dom Hemingway” never tries to hide what type of movie it is. Opening with an extended shot of the title character receiving oral sex while growling through a monologue about the majesty of his own penis, the feature announces straight away that it’s not for the faint of heart. Writer/director Richard Shepard’s “Dom Hemingway” is a take-no-prisoners character study that’s steeped in profanity and vile behavior, yet somehow emerges on the other side a semi-successful story of redemption in its most bruised and battered form. Riding the material like a rodeo cowboy, Jude Law’s starring performance is a true sight, often saving the picture from cliche with his magnificent impression of a human wrecking ball. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Railway Man” is a difficult film, both in subject matter and cinematic execution. Taking on the scars of war and the ravages of PTSD behavior, the story is divided into two time frames of misery, missing an overall design of psychological clarity that could create a singular narrative of immense emotional power. It’s a fragmented effort, missing some pieces of the puzzle, but there’s strength in the performances, which lend the picture a profound sense of impact the screenplay doesn’t always communicate to satisfaction. Acting as another exploration of post-war anguish, “The Railway Man” has valuable insight into the process of forgiveness, making it a worthy sit, even when it feels incomplete. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After the 2012 release of “Chimpanzee” failed stir up much interest at the box office, Disneynature took a year off to regroup, returning this Earth Day with “Bears,” trying to once again stimulate young minds with images of nature in motion. Their finest release so far, “Bears” brings out the best of the Disneynature approach, detailing behaviors and quests for survival out in the wild. The documentary also manages to make its less savory aspects more appealing, thanks to friendly narration from John C. Reilly, who brings warm personality that aids the considerable storytelling manipulation. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The mysteries of the afterlife are given the once-over in “Heaven is for Real,” which isn’t your typical faith-based feature emerging from unproven filmmakers. At the helm here is Randall Wallace, the screenwriter of “Braveheart” and the director of “We Were Soldiers” and “Secretariat.” The credit gives “Heaven Is for Real” a boost in credibility, but the final product doesn’t show the type of storytelling confidence expected from Wallace. Vague and gauzy, the effort posits a few interesting questions on the reach of belief, but doesn’t scratch below the surface, more consumed with extracting tears than challenging the unknown. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Ten years from now, it’ll be interesting to look back at the career of Kristen Wiig, especially during the years following her monster success with 2011’s “Bridesmaids.” She’s been involved in some goofy movies (including last year’s “Anchorman 2”), yet Wiig has largely avoided the supernova spotlight of another comedic starring vehicle, electing to sample indie cinema through an array of softer roles that permit access to range. “Hateship Loveship” is her latest attempt to upset outside expectations, participating in a loosely defined story of obsession and fallibility that utilizes her dramatic skills in a largely observational role. The picture doesn’t quite add up to anything in the end, but parts work as intended, with Wiig’s subtle performance a great asset to director Liza Johnson. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com