Category: Film Review

To fully appreciate “Dealin’ with Idiots,” the viewer must have some
working knowledge of its writer/director/star Jeff Garlin. Or perhaps
patience is a more accurate description. The combative comedian who rose
to fame on the HBO program “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Garlin is an
acquired taste, repeatedly falling back on his skills of improvisation
and observation to help him crack wise, often punctuated with his
squealy, infectious laugh. The howl is sadly missing from Garlin’s
second helming stint (following up his 2006 movie, “I Want Someone to
Eat Cheese With”), but the rest of his loose sense of humor remains in
“Dealin’ with Idiots,” an impulsive character-driven effort that’s good
for a few laughs and some serious confusion.
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“R.I.P.D.” is a constipated picture. It’s easy to see what the
production had in mind when cameras originally rolled, but editorial
tinkering and general tonal indecision has coughed up a painless misfire
— a movie that could’ve been something sharper, sillier, and more
direct with its action sequences. What’s up on the screen is flawed and
noisy, trying to siphon “Men in Black” fuel without the imagination of
Barry Sonnenfeld in play, and while it doesn’t come together, there are a
few inspired moments to pick up the slack, and the presence of Jeff
Bridges has the ability to lighten any mood, gleefully stomping around
the effort like he owns it.
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This second wind in the directorial career of James Wan has been
fascinating to watch. Almost killing his career with dreadful pictures
such as “Death Sentence” and “Dead Silence,” Wan rebounded with the 2011
horror humdinger “Insidious,” which inched the helmer away from gore
and noise, challenging him in the art of the scare. With a sharp visual
sense and welcome patience for the haunted house subgenre, Wan found an
ideal match to his sensibilities, now returning to the deep dark with
“The Conjuring.” Again favoring tension over bedlam, Wan issues a
similar but successful follow-up to “Insidious” (as opposed to
“Insidious: Chapter 2,” also from Wan and due in September), finding
proper beats of fright and family to play in this throwback endeavor.
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The monster movie tradition receives a delightful Irish makeover in
“Grabbers,” a fast and funny horror comedy that finds a fresh angle to
play in a subgenre that’s always in need of a change of pace. Led by
marvelous performances from stars Richard Coyle and Ruth Bradley,
director Jon Wright locates a specific position of insanity to play and
commits in full, making the small-scale adventure feel significant while
securing a healthy number of laughs during the ride. It’s cheeky and
reverential, keeping the creature feature alive with a glass-clinking
tilt, trading Americanized mayhem for Irish wit, a few close encounters,
and plot that actually finds a way to celebrate binge drinking.
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2010’s “RED” was a disappointment. Gifted a premise with serious
action-comedy potential while surfing along an irresistible marketing
hook, the picture didn’t live up to expectations, losing its focus as
murky intrigue and overplotting gradually scooped the fun factor out of
the geriatric mayhem, rendering it strangely inert. “RED 2” is more of
the same mediocrity, though the antics are now emboldened by the
original’s promising box office performance. Out to dish up the same
watery stew of bullets and slapstick, the follow-up doesn’t achieve a
personality of its own as it madly dashes to cover the same terrain as
the earlier effort, only here the noise has been dialed up and co-star
John Malkovich has been instructed to go full ham. This is not progress.
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After scoring an unlikely success with 2011’s “Drive,” director Nicolas
Winding Refn and actor Ryan Gosling delve even deeper into the darkness
of cinema with “Only God Forgives,” an eye-crossingly violent mood piece
on the futility of revenge. Considering the relative mass appeal of
their previous work, “Only God Forgives” is decidedly specialized
filmmaking for adventurous audiences blessed with paint-drying patience.
It’s monumentally rough stuff with a glacial pace, though its surreal
execution grows quite interesting the longer Refn sticks to the unknown
and the absurd, making the effort more performance art in design than
aggressively genre-minded.
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Not that animated films should be held to a standard of realism, but
“Turbo” is quite bizarre, even for a cartoon. It’s a story about a snail
who finds himself soaked in nitrous oxide, endowing him with the
characteristics of a car. He glows and moves with lightning speed, yet
fringe characters don’t really seem shocked when confronted with such a
vision. The snail is also allowed to compete in the Indianapolis 500
with other cars, and nobody bats an eye. However, the fantasy draws a
line at communication, finding humans unable to hear the snails speak.
It’s a weird movie and thankfully one that’s filled with enough positive
energy and slick visuals to distract from its nonsense. Entertaining
and agreeably performed, “Turbo” is a pleasant diversion for younger
audiences. A little nutty, but friendly and colorful.
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Nobody disappoints quite like Pedro Almodovar. The famous, celebrated
writer/director returns to his roots with “I’m So Excited,” intending to
awaken his dormant sense of humor, last viewed in full bloom two
decades ago in “Kika.” Spending the interim crafting immaculate
melodramas and collecting awards for his work, Almodovar hopes to
restore a little spark to his oeuvre with this attempt at a
sex-and-midair-panic cinematic soufflé, only to come up frustratingly
short in the laugh department. Although admirably bizarre and forward
when it comes to the dance of the pants, “I’m So Excited” doesn’t work
itself into a proper lather, showing only intermittent flashes of
inspiration.
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The found footage subgenre doesn’t always explain itself in full. Rarely
is there a film that establishes why we’re watching the video
recordings of others, electing to use the screen chaos of hand-held
devices instead of motivating their presence. “Paranormal Activity”
selected a police evidence angle to ease audiences into a haunted
atmosphere, but “Chronicle” didn’t even bother to follow through on its
collection of security footage and home movies. “Evidence” is perhaps
the most securely reasoned found footage effort to date, creating a
story that logically requires cops to sift through hours of confessions
and interactions on the hunt for a killer. It’s a welcome respite from
careless storytelling, but this creative spark is smothered by an
exhaustively subpar picture.
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The quirk flies hard and heavy in “Girl Most Likely,” which often
resembles more of a failed sitcom pilot than a feature film. Directors
Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini show no sense of timing and
tenor when it comes to the deployment of eccentricity in this comedy,
but they do have a reassuring figure in star Kristen Wiig, who
proficiently manages any challenge tossed her way. She’s the lone
highlight of this soggy, overeager effort, coming to the rescue of a few
embarrassingly forced moments of oddity, while consistently supporting
the rest of this painfully self-aware picture with her innate screen
gifts.
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Director Wayne Kramer certainly doesn’t make it easy to enjoy his work.
Obsessed with the murky state of the human condition, viewed through a
darkly comic prism, the helmer often treats his characters as pinballs,
dreaming up an elaborate play field of sickness and violence to explore.
After failing to dissect the state of illegal immigration in 2009’s
“Crossing Over,” Kramer returns to his roots with “Pawn Shop
Chronicles,” a warped collection of lurid stories that play like a cross
between “Creepshow” and “Pulp Fiction.” It’s high-flying, wound-licking
stuff, strictly for those who found the moviemaker’s 2006’s effort
“Running Scared” an underrated masterpiece. Outsiders should seek their
ugly entertainment elsewhere.
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A decade ago, the pairing of John Travolta and Robert De Niro would’ve
been considered event cinema, watching two popular actors square off in a
physically challenging thriller. Today, it’s not such an extraordinary
viewing experience, especially when both talents openly guide their
career by paycheck opportunities, seldom invested in the details of the
work. “Killing Season” is typical of De Niro and Travolta’s recent
dramatic interests, placing the two in a dreary, one-note cat-and-mouse
effort that’s rarely exciting and geopolitically numb. Derivative and
bizarrely graphic, “Killing Season” is nothing more than another
forgettable entry in two ongoing filmographies that desperately need
more inspired professional choices.
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“Grown Ups 2” opens with a display of animal urination. After the main
titles, we spy Lenny (Adam Sandler) asleep inside his palatial suburban
home, awaking to the sight of a deer causally hanging out in his room.
Trying to rouse wife Roxanne (Salma Hayek), her screams of surprise
trigger the deer to rear back on its hind legs and pee all over Lenny’s
face. This event occurs in the first few minutes of the movie. The
picture closes with Lenny breaking wind while pawing at Roxanne during
sex. It’s been three years since the original “Grown Ups” broke all box
office records for a Sandler production, and this is how the audience is
repaid, offered bathroom humor bookends as reward. It might be hard to
believe, but the sequel actually gets worse as it drags its corpse-like
sense of humor around for what feels like an eternity.
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Perhaps after his attempt to make “The Hobbit” was shut down by studio
financial woes, director Guillermo del Toro was aching to kick out the
jams. It’s been five years since his last moviemaking assignment, the
fantastically bizarre “Hellboy II: The Golden Army,” which is probably
why his latest, “Pacific Rim,” feels more like a visionary flexing
atrophying muscles than a bold creative step forward in a most colorful
career. Gone are the quirk, crunch, and magical dealings of del Toro’s
past work, replaced here with a heaping helping of noise and scraping
metal, which for 80 minutes would be an irresistible proposition. 100
minutes would be quite entertaining. Unfortunately, “Pacific Rim” runs
130 minutes, and its repetitive action and cornball dialogue eventually
sands off the senses, lessening the matinee euphoria del Toro aims to
conjure. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Way, Way Back” is an endearing effort about the alienation of
youth, making it instantly relatable and, at times, lovable. What’s less
enchanting about the picture is how routine it is, rarely coloring
outside the lines with its coming of age and neglectful parenting
plotlines. It’s an enjoyable film but seldom notable despite a few
focused performances and a lived-in setting that lends the feature much
needed personality. However, if one can hurdle the familiarity of it
all, “The Way, Way Back” should manage to beguile with its knowing take
on the beating heart and whirring mind of the teenage outsider.
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Timing on the release of the documentary “Terms and Conditions May
Apply” couldn’t be better. After all, with the case of Edward Snowden
and his decision to inform the world about a massive U.S. surveillance
program, the subject of data accumulation and interpretation is a
particularly sensitive subject. Perhaps director Cullen Hoback is
kicking himself over the late development, yet “Terms and Conditions May
Apply” still provides a proper foundation to a larger discussion of
privacy and how it’s being stripped away from regular folk one click at a
time. Insightful and swiftly edited, this is eye-opening work, even
without a proper crescendo to leave viewers enraged and freshly
paranoid.
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“The Hot Flashes” is exactly the film one would expect from such a
title. It’s a specific movie made for a specific audience, and while
there’s nothing inherently wrong with a softball pitch, it feels a
little strange to be so far removed from the point of view director
Susan Seidelman is working to illuminate. Thankfully, there’s a little
more to the feature than a stream of menopause jokes, with “The Hot
Flashes” more of a sporting comedy than a lament for the loss of
menstrual cycles. While its predictability is a foregone conclusion,
Seidelman manages to keep the picture approachable and occasionally
amusing, smartly utilizing the varied gifts of the cast, who often look
stunned to be starring in a basketball comedy.
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In 1999, the peer-to-peer file sharing service Napster made its debut,
and nobody could explain exactly what the intent was for such a radical
service. In 2013, the mystery of Napster’s final destination is still in
question. Director Alex Winter (helmer of “Freaked” and co-star of the
“Bill & Ted” pictures) attempts to summarize the rise and fall of
Napster in “Downloaded,” a documentary with a specific aim to dissect
the service using interviews with important figures in its winding
history. Winter arrives with good intentions, a ripping pace, and smart
editorial control, but he doesn’t provide a fresh angle on old news,
reheating file footage and assembling unenlightening interviews when
this particular event in the ongoing internet revolution deserves a more
profound understanding of motivation and influence.
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“Under the Bed” has a terrific premise, making the universal childhood
fear of monsters lurking in the blackness of a bedroom a very real and
terrifying concern. That it manages to do very little with the plot
comes as a tremendous disappointment, especially since the feature
appears to have an itch to cause a Sam Raimi-style commotion with its
horror elements. Drab and pokey, “Under the Bed” is strictly for patient
genre enthusiasts, especially those able to manage the stasis of Steven
C. Miller’s direction as he hunts for ways to cover for the film’s lack
of budgetary might.
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“More Than Honey” might register as something of a shock to those raised
on traditional nature documentaries. It’s surprisingly leisurely,
almost serene. Considering how it details the possible end of the human
race, this casual approach is unexpected. However, pulling a finger off
the panic button lends the picture a distinct personality, and instead
of a dry read of facts and figures, there’s a true observational quality
to the effort that makes for fascinating cinema. Think you know
everything about the world of bees? “More Than Honey” might have
something fresh to share, presenting an agreeably cinematic take on a
natural disaster.
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