Category: Film Review

2007’s “300” was a massive box office hit, tempting moviegoers with a vision of historical fantasy that dripped with blood, screamed until hoarse, and was wallpapered with abs. Director Zack Snyder gleefully adapted Frank Miller’s graphic novel, digging into its pulpy roots as he fashioned an epic that teased regality as it welcomed absurdity. Seven years later, we have “300: Rise of an Empire,” a follow-up that’s more of a parallel story, trading the rhythmic march of soldiers for the high seas, adding a naval aspect to the ongoing war between the Greeks and Persians. Out to mimic Snyder’s vision, “Rise of an Empire” sheds its stasis quickly, achieving a thunderous tone of combat and sword-swinging screen stylistics that brings thrilling aggression to all this ridiculousness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The Mr. Peabody and Sherman shorts from producer Jay Ward were a highlight of “The Bullwinkle Show” and “Rocky and his Friends,” charming audiences of all ages in the 1960s with misadventures through “Peabody’s Improbable History.” Armed with wry wit and finger-snap timing, the animated segments were silly and swift, embracing the cartoon dog’s supergenius and his adoptive son’s goofy naiveté. Taking something meant to play out in full in five minutes and inflating it to 90 minutes creates quite a challenge for the producers of the CG-animated effort, “Mr. Peabody & Sherman.” Unable to replicate sublime brevity, they overload with exposition and characters, while exhaustively Seth MacFarlane-izing the jokes to a point where the big screen version barely resembles its small screen inspiration. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Acting is a difficult profession to be successful in, and I don’t begrudge anyone an opportunity to take a paycheck now and again. It’s this continued interest in money gigs that causes some concern. “The Bag Man” is a thriller co-written and directed by David Grovic, his debut as a helmer, and somehow, someway this tiny, bottom-shelf production managed to entice John Cusack to star, with Robert De Niro taking a supporting role. Why these two were drawn to such dismal material isn’t clear, but something tells me there were a certain number of zeros motivating their decision. Grovic is lucky to have the professionals around, as this shabby mystery has little to offer audiences besides unintentional laughs. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Appreciating “Awful Nice” means enduring “Awful Nice,” and that’s not always easy to do. A story of brotherhood, with an emphasis on combative behavior, the feature isolates a verbose, wandering vibe of communication, and while this chatterbox behavior fulfills a dramatic purpose, it generates a challenge for the viewer, forced to endure actors feeling around for the moment instead of directly connecting to the meat of the scene. In return for such patience, “Awful Nice” delivers a steady stream of laughs and an accurate depiction of sibling rivalry, contributing to a funny, freewheeling effort that’s missing focus, but finds an unusual personality of its own. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Godfrey Reggio has built a career out of the observation of our world. In “Koyaanisqatsi,” “Powaqqatsi,” and “Naqoyqatsi,” Reggio created rhythmic hymns to the hustle and bustle of Earth, isolating its movement, grace, and oddity while critiquing humanity’s capacity for hostility and destruction. He turned experimental filmmaking into event movie excitement, mastering a specialized perspective that awes and concerns, scored with aplomb by Philip Glass. With “Visitors,” Reggio returns to his cinematic perch, only instead of absorbing the enormity of life, he focuses on the nuances of emotion and industrial texture, assembling a black and white odyssey across faces and places, soaking up every last detail his subjects are willing to share. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There’s much to admire about the Israeli drama “Bethlehem,” which contains powerful emotions and charged situations concerning Middle East politics and behavioral influences. It’s the work of director Yuval Adler, making his feature-length debut, and his inexperience shows often during the film. An effective statement of trust and abandonment, “Bethlehem” remains a compelling picture with laudable performances. A few missteps here and there don’t derail the viewing experience, only hindering enough to rob the movie of its consistency and potent elements of anxiety, keeping the work grounded at the very moment it begins to take off. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Someone Marry Barry” demands an extraordinary amount of patience from its audience. It’s a lewd comedy that openly abuses rom-com clichés to create a sense of comfort while it details obnoxious behavior via cringingly broad performances. Writer/director Rob Pearlstein only seems interested in the basics of sophomoric humor and grand theft movie, while developing a lead character who’s not just loveable trouble, but a genuine menace, openly destroying lives to feed his own needs. A picture like “Someone Marry Barry” requires approachable personalities and conflicts able to be conquered by endearing people. Pearlstein sketches out shockingly detestable individuals who appear to enjoy the havoc they generate. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s always interesting when a filmmaker decides to return to the source of a great success. Released last December to strong box office and reasonable audience approval, “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” fulfilled a promise made a decade earlier, finally bringing a sequel forward to satisfy those who were dangerously close to exhausting their fandom. Sensing a premium opportunity to squeeze out additional coin from the faithful and the curious, director Adam McKay has gone back to the movie, swapping out jokes and extending scenes to create the “Super-Sized R-Rated Version” of the feature, stripping PG-13 shackles off the work to fashion a more impish take on the “Anchorman” follow-up. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Wind Rises” marks the final film for director Hayao Miyazaki, who recently announced his retirement. The legendary animator, creator of such pictures as “Ponyo,” “Spirited Away,” and “Princess Mononoke,” has enjoyed an illustrious career of critical acclaim and hefty box office returns, manufacturing beloved characters and expansive fantasy realms that have filled the hearts and minds of fans for nearly three decades. With “The Wind Rises,” Miyazaki focuses on a different flight of fancy, turning attention to historic matters from a controversial era in Japanese history. While dramatically short-sheeted, the movie retains visual beauty and respect for intelligence, striving to find a comfortable middle ground between the foreboding details of the past and a hope to find humanity in the midst of memories. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

At the age of 61, Liam Neeson has developed into one of the screen’s great action heroes. However, in this quest to remain a superman, the actor has shown questionable judgment in scripts and directors. “Non-Stop” reteams Neeson with helmer Jaume Collet-Serra, with the pair previously collaborating on the dismal 2011 thriller, “Unknown.” Despite a crackerjack premise and a decent first hour of suspense, “Non-Stop” abandons the art of surprise to magnify its menace, losing the promise of clandestine evildoing to play up Neeson’s knighthood. Instead of unleashing a proper thrill ride, the picture eventually clings to predictability and irrationality, ignoring the sinister potential of the material to go through the motions. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Stephen Sommers makes a specific type of feature, even when he’s trying to broaden his horizons. The helmer behind the first two “Mummy” extravaganzas, “G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra,” and “Van Helsing,” Sommers is an architect of noise and speed, bringing his interests to the delicate story of “Odd Thomas,” adapting the popular book by Dean Koontz. Although it plays swiftly, the picture doesn’t unleash excitement, with the demands of exposition and the moviemaker’s insistence on explosions and swirling visual effects diluting the pleasingly weirdo vibe. As a television pilot, “Odd Thomas” is agreeably small-scale and wide open for episodic exploration. As a film, it’s unnecessary overkill, either explaining things or destroying things as it inspects the titular character’s powers. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

If America can have Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbor,” why can’t the Russians too? “Stalingrad” sets out to tell the story of a major turning point in World War II, but from a Russian perspective, adding some dimension to a cinematic tapestry of combat pictures. However, instead of grit, there’s gloss, with the production electing the Bay route of slo-mo spectacle to tell a story of monumental loss and developing insanity. It’s familiar terrain but historically motivated, allowing “Stalingrad” to be sporadically entertaining and illuminating while it walks in established directorial footprints. At the very least, the bigness of the movie is diverting, showing the world that Russia can create just as much noise at the multiplex as its competition can. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Chlorine” is a throwback to the mid-1990s, where independent film flourished via young directors and hungry distributors. It’s such a retro feature, I had to check the date of production after a viewing, just to make sure the effort wasn’t actually from two decades ago. Turns out, there’s some age to the movie, which was shot in 2010 and is only now receiving release, with studios understandably wary of spending money on a picture that doesn’t have an identity or even secure tech credits. Derivative and unresponsive, “Chlorine” tanks every idea it submits, incapable of achieving the pathos it sets out for itself, lost to filmmaking limitation and thematic inertia. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There was once a time when director Andrew Fleming made fantastic films. It was the 1990s, with the trifecta of “Threesome,” “The Craft,” and “Dick” showcasing the helmer’s ease with genre-hopping and his skill with a punchline, tapping into the youth experience with entertaining results. His career has stumbled in ensuing years with misfires such as “The In-Laws” and “Hamlet 2,” but “Barefoot” is where Fleming hits rock bottom. A borderline tasteless romantic comedy featuring seriously disturbed characters, the picture is without consequences and appeal, carrying along as an unfortunate road movie and commentary on the fragility of love. And there’s not a single scene of humor that works. There are a host of bad decisions competing for screen time in “Barefoot,” keeping Fleming juggling tone as the story runs into a brick wall. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s all about the hair. Sporting a poofy, unruly hairdo, the tangled bush that resides on top of star Alex Wolff’s head in the unofficial star of “HairBrained,” often showing more expression and interest in the plot than its co-stars. A routine underdog story, the movie endeavors to be a quirky, spunky take concerning the troubles of being a kid genius, but the whimsy is so strained, it fatigues the entire film. Unable to launch jokes and form engaging characters, director Billy Kent (last seen in action with 2006’s “The Oh in Ohio”) relies on cutesiness to help lackluster elements congeal, muting whatever charm manages to reveal itself during the course of the picture. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

We just did this a few months ago. Late last year, Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer unleashed “The Starving Games,” a wretched attempt to further their interests in parody cinema. Granted, “The Hunger Games” is ripe for pantsing, but not from those guys. “The Hungover Games” is the second entry in what’s become a lampoon sweepstakes, and while I’m comfortable labeling the picture as an improvement, laughs remain nonexistent and pure laziness passes for writing. Director Josh Stolberg takes a more old-fashioned direction with this razzing of the last decade’s blockbuster movie releases, a laudable choice, but an enterprise like this is measured by the strength of its funny bone, and “The Hungover Games” is a total dud. In other words, Jamie Kennedy takes a co-story credit and plays three characters. It’s that unfunny. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Kurt Russell doesn’t make many movies these days. It’s an unfortunate development, with the charismatic, gifted actor content to walk away from his career, with only seven major screen appearances spread out over the last decade. Russell’s starring turn in “The Art of the Steal” is a good reason to seek out the picture, as the actor gives a funky comedic turn in this bizarre cross between “Ocean’s 11” and a Guy Ritchie film. Surprises are intended but rarely matter in the long run, as writer/director Jonathan Sobol finds the rhythm of the piece in its set-up, watching rumpled characters plan out their bad behavior with the aid of tart banter and slick editing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Luc Besson’s EuropaCorp production company has been responsible for many of the mid-range actioners that have hit screens over the last decade. Fueling releases with screenplays and Parisian locations, Besson has introduced a European flavor to a Hollywood genre, yet the quality of these pictures has been frustratingly erratic. For every “Transporter” and “Taken,” there’s been a “Columbiana” and “From Paris with Love.” “3 Days to Kill” brings director McG and star Kevin Costner into the Besson stable, and the pair seems a little lost with this tale of fatherhood and assassination. Desperate to be something, “3 Days to Kill” chooses to be everything, resulting in an extraordinarily confused feature that’s all over the map in terms of tone and execution. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When one thinks of history, of powerful screen romance, of epic cinema, the name Paul W.S. Anderson doesn’t immediately spring to mind. The director of “Death Race,” “Aliens vs. Predator,” “The Three Musketeers,” and numerous other disappointing pictures, Anderson swings for the fences with “Pompeii,” his take on a “Titanic”-style spectacle. Typical of his work, this doomsday romance flounders from the get-go, unable to make a sizable imprint on the heart with its cast of dullards, while volcanic bedlam is reduced to a cameo as the screenplay clings to matters of gladiatorial bonding and political corruption. Because when one buys a ticket to a movie called “Pompeii,” one expects a prominent subplot about a jittery horse and stale banter between two slaves. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Although sexual awakening and ownership remains a hot topic in 2014, “Date and Switch” feels like a relic from the mid-1990s, playing shallow with difficult questions of self-awareness. Writer Alan Yang and director Chris Nelson (“Ass Backwards”) appear appropriately motivated to create something of value, addressing anxieties surrounding the act of outing, but good intentions do not hold this shabby, unfunny comedy together. In place of authentic emotion and searing personal communication, there’s cliché and passivity, plasticizing the kindly nature of the picture to a point where all the tension begins to resemble a bad sitcom, down to its programmed happy ending. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com