Category: Film Review

It’s been eight years since directors Chris Kentis and Laura Lau made a splash with their aquatic chiller “Open Water,” a film festival fave that fizzled upon its theatrical release. Considering the hype that surrounded their shark attack movie, it’s odd that the duo has spent so much time away from the cameras, failing to build on their career momentum. “Silent House” returns the pair to low-budget gimmick filmmaking, rejuvenating their reputation as they attempt to convince audiences they’re watching 80 minutes of uninterrupted terror. The fantasy is convincingly executed, but wasted on banal haunted house formula punctuated with a baffling conclusion. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Stories from the Holocaust are numerous yet they rarely cease to astonish. “In Darkness” is a worthy addition to this mournful assembly of wartime perspectives, though its horrors are hushed and gradual, hidden below in a subterranean tomb. Bleakness and hope are married effectively in director Agnieszka Holland’s latest effort, supplying a fresh viewpoint on unlikely valor and the many forms it takes when positioned opposite the need for survival. It’s a strong, unflinching picture, and a vital educational tool when inspecting the surprises of the human spirit during such a tumultuous period of anguish. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Trying to position herself as a female Woody Allen, forever interested in the habits of Manhattanites and their raging neuroses, writer/star Jennifer Westfeldt has called in all of her favors to help beautify her directorial debut, “Friends with Kids.” Commencing with a plausible swirl of social paranoia, domestic demands, and parental entitlement, the picture eventually grows unreasonably contrived, leaving the intriguing discomfort of the titular combination behind to work stale romantic comedy moves that would cause even Kate Hudson to dry heave. Attempting to remain in her comfort zone, Westfeldt mistakes cliche for charm, turning the potential for a provocative look at the erosion of friendships into a tedious sitcom. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Just when you thought it was safe to put 2008 to bed, here comes “Game Change,” which dredges up all the controversy and electricity surrounding the decision to pair Governor Sarah Palin with presidential candidate John McCain. Forget Obama and his historic political run, forget Joe Biden and his path to the White House. “Game Change” is solely about Palin and the myriad of ways to portray the monumentally divisive figure in an unflattering light. After all, it’s a comedy, for at least 30% of its running time, leaving the rest a condensed, perplexing vision of Washington ambition and insistent ego, leaving the movie somewhere between a cartoon and a mean-spirited prank. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

If you ever come across anyone squawking about the lack of originality in today’s cinema landscape, immediately sit them down with the Swedish musical comedy, “Sound of Noise.” Although it sweats to fill up 90 minutes of screentime, the picture is an immensely charming and startling effort that manages to contort the art of musical performance into a terrorist agenda. Clever and highlighting a hypnotic arrangement of rhythmic assaults, the feature keeps viewers on their toes, wondering just where directors Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjarne Nilsson are going to take this wild adventure into instrumental invention and aural opposition next. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Producer Todd Phillips has orchestrated monster frat parties (“Old School) and made quite a mess of Las Vegas as well (“The Hangover”). “Project X” looks to generate the definitive teen get-together for the multiplex, turning to three screen stalwarts, chemical excess, nudity, and mass destruction, to take the title as the ultimate adolescent party movie. His intentions are pure, but “Project X” never supplies a reason to care about anything happening onscreen, laboring through conventional acts of misbehavior with a pronounced mean-spiritedness that makes the entire picture unsavory instead of cheerfully celebratory. It’s impossible to get excited for three young men who deserve genuine jail time for their banal adventures in juvenile delinquency. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As much as “Moneyball” wasn’t about baseball, “Goon” isn’t really about the game of hockey. There’s plenty of tense action on the ice to enjoy, but the picture is more fascinated with the elements of violence that permeate the sport, celebrating the bloodletting and glove-tossing escalation, forming a ballet of sorts with all of the punches and airborne teeth. Thankfully, “Goon” is a comedy, and a successfully exaggerated one at that, buffering the hurt with a considerable portion of laughs. Obviously, the feature is a must-see for any puck nut, as the script superbly observes the details of hockey life. Those will little interest in ice-based action may not be carried away by the experience, but the movie is silly enough to stand on its own. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Expanding the work of Dr. Seuss beyond his literary borders is a dangerous proposition, requiring a dense imagination and speed of thought to smoothly develop a small number of pages into a feature film. While 2008’s “Horton Hears a Who” found some success as an animated adaptation, “The Lorax” is a failure, straining to make a moviegoing event out of a modest fable. Brimming with musical numbers, car chases, and shrill celebrity voice work, “The Lorax” is a tuneless, lifeless creation that never seems to seize the environmental message Seuss was hoping to impart. A dire commentary on greed has been contorted into a potential blockbuster, overcrowding the necessary elements of disturbance required to bring whimsical shock value to the younger audience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With 2007’s “Eagle vs. Shark,” writer/director Taika Waititi established himself as a filmmaker with a profound interest in quirk, aided by a richly graphic and sly sense of humor. It was an impressive debut, and his gifts carry into the follow-up feature, “Boy,” released in its native New Zealand in 2010, finally making its way to America over the course of the next month. A charming story of impressionable adolescence, “Boy” dials down the overt insanity that made “Eagle vs. Shark” such a hoot, instead attempting to find a stable place of screen poetry, silly behaviors, and sensitive characters. It’s a lovely picture, solidifying Waititi’s position as one of the more satisfying filmmakers working today. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s been proven on numerous occasions that Madonna cannot act. It was proven in 2008 that Madonna couldn’t direct with the rambling “Filth and Wisdom.” “W.E.” is the pop legend’s attempt to be taken seriously as a film artist, selecting a sweeping love story of impossible refinement and sacrifice to study, with an intoxicating historical context to keep her on task. Alas, the big screen just isn’t the proper outlet for Madonna’s majesty, as “W.E.” is a hopelessly distanced museum piece attempting to pass itself as a heaving emotional event, finding the moviemaker in a wandering mood of exploration with a tale that all but demands the most enveloping moments of screen intimacy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There’s not much originality to the coming of age picture “Albatross,” covering similar dramatic terrain found in dozens of teen-centric scripts observing on the highs and lows of fractured adolescence. However, it’s a memorably acted piece with a breakout starring turn from Jessica Brown Findlay, perhaps best known for her stately work as Lady Sybil Crawley on the hit series “Downton Abbey.” While most audiences have grown comfortable seeing Findlay sustain a youthful dignity loosely clad in all manner of period garb, “Albatross” provides the young actress with an outlet to explore other, darker sides to her talent, matched well with a committed supporting cast who breathe needed life into a conventional story of personal growth. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Horror films can be made on the cheap, requiring little to no star power, so it’s understandable why so many novice moviemakers gravitate to the genre. However, “Playback” is yet another reminder that it takes a little more inspiration to truly scare an audience. Shellacked with stupidity, working with an insipid premise, the feature is a hopelessly shrill creation that doesn’t come together in the glorious manner writer/director Michael J. Nickels imagines. In fact, a great deal of the picture triggers unintentional laughs, which goes against the general atmosphere of ghoulish video possession and display of crummy slasher film cliches. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Gone” is a relentlessly bland mystery, playing much like a tepid CBS pilot, with pauses for commercial breaks and a conclusion that could realistically open itself up to a weekly series. It’s a not a cinematic creation, with one-dimensional characters displaying little to no common sense, while the thrills are regulated to Portland car chases and 10-minute-long cell phone conversations. At the middle of all this nonsense is Amanda Seyfried, who once again fails to enliven dreary material, showing little star power needed to bring a sense of urgency to such a persistently snoozy movie. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With his last three efforts devoted to sequels (“Why Did I Get Married Too?”), the curse of Madea (“Madea’s Big Happy Family”), and a stab at Oscar glory (“For Colored Girls”), it makes sense to find mogul Tyler Perry attempting to come back down to Earth. “Good Deeds” is the softest picture the filmmaker has attempted to date, constructing his own romantic drama for the month of love. While his habits get the best of him, Perry’s work here is surprisingly non-toxic, at least for extended periods of screentime. “Good Deeds” isn’t a well-built movie, but it’s by far the least repellent feature he’s put together, dialing down the screaming and seething long enough to reveal sensitivity about the icon that’s actually quite pleasant. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The “Call of Duty” video game franchise is a billion-dollar enterprise at this point, outgrossing even the most formidable Hollywood blockbusters in the time it takes to say “Call of Duty.” Movie producers, wanting a slice of that action, have cooked up “Act of Valor,” a “realistic” take on Navy SEAL procedures and camaraderie that’s about as geopolitically conscious as an episode of “The A-Team.” Draping itself in the American flag to counteract anticipated criticisms of its low-rent production values, “Act of Valor” is a disturbingly simplistic take on intensely complex matters of the heart and home, distilling the ferocious nature of combat down to heavily caffeinated gulp of jingoism, tarted up like a discount bin PS3 game purchase. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Wanderlust” isn’t perfect, perhaps a little too cruel for some viewers, but those who come to the movie in a relaxed state of mind might find themselves enjoying the modest pleasures of this comedy. His follow-up to the unexpected 2008 smash “Role Models,” co-writer/director David Wain assembles a rickety but pointed take on hippie contradictions and personal liberation, with plenty of sex and bathroom jokes to help disguise his satiric jabs. I laughed quite a bit while watching “Wanderlust,” but it’s a specialized viewing experience. Frankly, I could see a great number of people immensely disliking Wain’s more scattershot sense of humor this time around. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Kenneth Lonergan’s “Margaret” is a disaster, though one that contains its fair share of haunting moments and informed performances. Considering all the struggles the production has endured to even see a limited release, it’s amazing the feature is coherent at all. However, underneath the blindfolded editing, piercing performances, and wandering plot, there’s a great deal of substance to “Margaret” that’s either been completely disfigured or defanged, rendering the effort more of a fascinating curiosity than an ideally defined exploration of guilt and growing pains. It’s far from perfect, but hey, I’m just happy it’s finally available for viewing in some form. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The similarities between “Tomorrow, When the War Began” and 1984’s “Red Dawn” are numerous, perhaps litigiously so, yet the differences in execution are extreme. Adapted from the 1993 novel by John Marsden, the teen guerrilla concept has been comprehensively sugared up to appeal to today’s younger audiences, turning the stomach-churning prospect of WWIII into a daffy high school melodrama where the characters are more preoccupied with love interests than world-changing events. Junky, with an emphasis on theme park stunt show heroics, “Tomorrow, When the War Began” is undeniably entertaining, but also profoundly silly, making “Red Dawn” look like a documentary by comparison. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In the case of “Thin Ice,” comparisons to the Coen Brothers’ “Fargo” are inevitable. The two pictures inhabit the same space of Midwestern noir, keeping tabs on unsavory types doing their best to make life more difficult for themselves. It’s a brisk, entertaining feature with an unforgivable ending, making the viewing experience primarily about treasuring the filmmaking elements that do come together satisfactorily, from wily performances emerging from a gifted cast to the bitter winter chill of Wisconsin, which plays a critical support part, urging the devious events along with a growing seasonal impatience that fits the tale superbly. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Released to considerable fanfare in 2007, Mark Steven Johnson’s “Ghost Rider” rode in on a wave of blockbuster comic book adaptations, boasting a colorful lead character in Johnny Blaze and a juicy budget to bring his fiery tragedy to big screen life. Met with critical yawns and fanboy frustration, the feature didn’t ignite the box office quite like its funny book brethren, leaving star Nicolas Cage without a superhero franchise to call his own. In 2012, Sony looks to maintain their rights to the Marvel character, cooking up a lower-budgeted sequel with Cage to give the concept another try, this time eschewing a traditional studio take on dark valor, passing the keys to the franchise to “Crank” directors Brian Taylor and Mark Neveldine, allowing the spastic cult pranksters a shot at energizing a troublesome character. Sony would’ve been better off letting the rights lapse. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com