Category: Film Review

With the element of surprise now a distant memory, the “Sherlock Holmes” franchise elects a threatening route of sleuthing to entice fans back into multiplexes. Although never grim, “A Game of Shadows” dials down the mischievousness that defined the 2009 blockbuster, an impish quality that did an amazing job clearing away the cobwebs, nudging the Holmes brand back into pop culture consciousness. While it runs a little harsh at times, the sequel remains a sturdy vehicle for Robert Downey, Jr. to weave about with playful concentration, while director Guy Ritchie extends his period recreation further, establishing a pronounced European vibe to the adventure. As follow-ups go, “A Game of Shadows” is most certainly a part two in posture and scowl, but it’s impossible to snuff out the smirking spirit of this wildly entertaining material. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Carnage” is a film of pure acid, spraying across the screen like the gush of vomit unleashed from the churning stomach of one of the lead characters (more on that later). It’s a harsh sit, watching four perfectly reasonable people slowly reveal their fractured self over 75 minutes of screen time, thrashing and bickering as a peaceful New York City apartment summit explodes into a revelation of true natures and brazen opinion. “Carnage” is uncomfortable to watch, but that’s part of the fun, observing a complete breakdown of courtesy performed by four top actors having a ball gnawing away on such meaty material. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After two highly successful “Alvin and the Chipmunks” movies, it makes perfect sense that a third installment would be here in a hurry. However, I wasn’t expecting the producers to make such a shoddy, insistently mild follow-up, padded with unenthusiastic plotting and lame, moldy jokes. Even the prized musical performances have been dialed back some, making room for iffy CG-animated creatures to scurry around a desert island adventure, while the actors unlucky enough to appear in human form attempt to sell the chirpy fantasy, each cast member wearing a pronounced paycheck face. “Chipwrecked” assumes a DTV stance for this unimaginative sequel, dishing up the bare minimum to keep cashing in on the brand name. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Literary best-sellers are a funny thing. Sometimes they involve delicate tales about picturesque bridges in a place called Madison County, delighting the nation with a gentleness of spirit and fixation on rural sway, lulling fans into comfort with its anodyne dependability. Or, in the case of Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” the entire world finds itself wrapped up in a story that graphically details the particulars of torture, murder, invasions of privacy, and anal rape. Go figure. Because the author’s “Millennium Series” is so ragingly popular, moviegoers are now faced with an all-new cinematic take on “Dragon Tattoo,” a year after a Swedish production made a domestic box office dent worth noticing. While the European take on this guttural European tale was quite marvelous with its performances and frosty execution, the Swedes didn’t have David Fincher. With its isolation, rage, and penetrative possibilities, the celebrated director was practically born to helm this graphic murder mystery. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Shame” is a film that crawls under your skin, isolating a specific velocity of obsession that’s unbearable to watch, yet it’s impossible to look away. Co-writer/director Steve McQueen takes a look at the ravages of sex addiction with this uninviting motion picture, plunging star Michael Fassbender into a murky world of urges and conquests, using 100 minutes of screen time to paint perhaps the most cleanly defined portrait of an overlooked compulsion, making viewers feel the euphoria and toxicity of such volcanic sexual pursuits. “Shame” has even been allowed the prestige of an NC-17 rating, allowing it the full intensity it deserves, rare in this age of soft-peddled adult dramas. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” is an immaculately crafted picture, shellacked with a sickly brown coating of English indifference, used to communicate a 1970s world of spies and paranoia, originally conceived by author John le Carre nearly four decades ago. The movie is simply amazing to study. Digesting the staring contests and tangle of last names is another story, at least for those not privy to traditional le Carre mechanics. This is an icy picture, perhaps best appreciated by those who enjoy challenges of memory and patience, who don’t require a substantial influence of personality to feel around a knotted scheme of espionage and memories, communicated in the most detached manner imaginable. Dramatically dry as toast, “Tinker Tailor” remains a potent, heroically detailed visual experience, worth a look just to linger on the background details while the characters gradually slip into comas. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With “Juno” and “Jennifer’s Body,” screenwriter Diablo Cody made a name for herself playing with paper dolls, dreaming up puckered dialogue for cartoon characters, hitting the industry with a pungent gimmick in serious need of refining. With “Young Adult,” Cody reveals astonishing maturation, unbuckling her belt of cutesy behaviors to sculpt a rough ode to the cocoon of extended adolescence, embodied to sheer perfection by a disheveled, Diet Coke-swilling Charlize Theron. “Young Adult” is a dark comedy with a few bellylaughs, but it clicks beautifully as an examination of a diseased thirtysomething mind enabled to a point of no return, fearlessly returning to her roots with a plan to sort out her idea of unfinished business. The writing is frighteningly spotless and the direction is refreshingly low-wattage, creating a tonally risky picture that’s deliciously mean yet crookedly insightful in a peculiar Codyesque way. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

That sound you hear is “Adventures in Babysitting” breathing a sigh of relief, now confident in the knowledge that it still holds the crown as the top babysitting movie of all time. “The Sitter” doesn’t even come close, marking the second 2011 comedic disaster for director David Gordon Green, last seen in theaters blowing millions on the fantasy stoner extravaganza, “Your Highness.” Returning to his low-budget roots, Green appears lost with this material, stitching together customary R-rated monkey business with peculiar stabs at After School Special melodrama, constructing a comedy that’s neither funny nor sincere. It could very well be Green’s career low-point, though after this year’s disastrous efforts, I’m afraid to see what the filmmaker has in store for 2012. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

What kind of film is “New Year’s Eve?” Over a shot of cooing babies, freshly born in 2012, Louis Armstrong’s abused anthem of hope, “What a Wonderful World,” soars on the soundtrack. That’s right, director Garry Marshall has returned with a pseudo-sequel to 2010’s unexpected smash “Valentine’s Day,” once again cracking open a holiday to inspect the broken hearts and soiled dreams of troubled souls competing for happiness. What worked before will likely work again, with little of the formula changed to bring audiences a slightly more advanced viewing experience. However, the cast shines a little brighter and the festivities are much less obnoxious, but there’s little sorcery capable of loosening Marshall’s directorial death grip, which always manages to squeeze intriguing emotional disturbances and crucial acts of longing into a glop of unflavored cinematic pudding. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“I Melt with You” is more of a sensorial carpet bombing than a motion picture. Although cast with name actors and detailing significant emotions, the film is lost in its own swirl of pretention and indulgent HD cinematography. It’s a mess, but that’s exactly how director Mark Pellington intends it to be, dragging unlucky viewers through a military training field of sickly colors and harsh textures, loud music and obnoxious entitlement. “I Melt with You” is a rough sit, always distracted and synthetic, and while I’m sure a tolerant few will find smears of art buried somewhere beneath the relentless excess, I feel most who approach the feature will walk away with bloodshot eyes, tinnitus, and a urgent feeling to never sit through another Mark Pellington movie. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The heavy hearts of Angelenos are once again united in sorrow in “Answers to Nothing,” a determined multi-character downer that aims to make its audience feel horrible about life and all of its challenges. Perhaps I’m being as overdramatic as the film, but it’s difficult to not feel overwhelmed by director Matthew Leutwyler’s effort, which is such a persistently melancholy creation, slowly foiling up the windows as it beats tepid subplots into the ground over the course of its indulgent 120-minute run time. Some impassioned performances ease the flow of gloom, but it’s a long, steady walk to the noose for a picture in dire need of Prozac and some fresh air. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Takeshi Kitano is a sublime Japanese comedic performer and poetic screen stylist, but one would never get that impression over here in the United States. His forays into violent cinema typically receive the widest international distribution, obviously due to their easily marketable content, but also because they’re often extraordinarily crafted. His latest, “Outrage,” continues Kitano’s exploration of vicious criminal behavior, yet this picture endeavors to be a knotty, cyclical viewing experience, an Eastern “Godfather” event, with numerous characters running various schemes to attain power, dividing families and destroying allegiances. A calculated bullet train of deception and aggression, “Outrage” is an outstanding genre exercise from an exceptional filmmaker, returning to the blood-soaked territory that helped to solidify Kitano’s reputation as an unflinching master of the thousand-yard stare. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Sleeping Beauty” is a grueling interpretive experience where writer/director Julia Leigh only gives her audience fragments of information and behavior to work with. For some, the inscrutable moviegoing experience will be bliss, a rare opportunity to piece together an unsavory puzzle of twentysomething recklessness and sexual immaturity. For others, viewing “Sleeping Beauty” will carry all the suspense and sexual fury of bread baking. A tepid series of vaguely salacious encounters mixed with mummified emotions, Leigh’s feature is a provocative idea in serious need of some actual perversion. Hoping to mimic the likes of Stanley Kubrick and Lars Von Trier with a challenging piece of painterly misery, all Leigh achieves here is a trivial slog featuring lots of cold naked bodies and nary a heartbeat. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Here’s a film that leaves a host of unanswered questions and uncontested behavior behind. A deliberately opaque psychological drama, “Martha Marcy May Marlene” is a frustrating picture to watch, and it’s not because of its gut-churning portrayal of survival and surrender. Writer/director Sean Durkin aims to produce a mood of escalating disease, watching the title character succumb to her demons, fighting to grasp an enormous amount of trauma incurred by enigmatic seducers and antagonistic types. There’s plenty of meaningful staring and teary acts of mental distortion, but insight? Not in this remote art-house effort, a feature that prefers to exhibit pain instead of understanding it. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After years playing superheroes and cads, “Puncture” brings actor Chris Evans to the realm of the prestige production. It’s a noble cause for the performer, who’s flirted with dramatics before in messy features (“The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond”), but it’s another effort wasted on a terribly clichéd picture, an unlikely mix of “Requiem for a Dream” and “Erin Brockovich.” It’s a glorified television movie with its heart in the right place, only lacking any sharp cinematic curveballs that could elevate the material beyond the norm. Evans is good here, revealing an intensity of thought he’s rarely displayed before, but it just isn’t enough to pull “Puncture” out of neutral. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s entirely appropriate that after decades of making movies that have flirted with the erosion of reality, director David Cronenberg would stumble upon material that actively probes the abyssal mysteries of the mind. Based on the play “The Talking Cure,” “A Dangerous Method” turns to the father of psychoanalysis to help pour a little disturbing cocktail of jealousy and dissolving self-control, using sex as a spoiler in a world of educated men, their well-researched theories, and a disturbed woman carrying a power even she doesn’t understand. Playing to Cronenberg’s tastes but lacking his usual visual serration, the picture is a reserved yet engrossing depiction of an inhibited man unraveling as he accepts the limits of his education, turning on those he loves and admires to hunt the ultimate prize of self. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Love is serious business. “Like Crazy” investigates the churning pit of romance with a soggy approach, finding director Drake Doremus putting his two leads through emotional hell as they express the ravages of attraction and the trials of commitment. It’s a movie for those in an interpretive mood, monitoring euphoric highs and tear-stained lows, yet the effort never uncovers the authenticity it’s desperate to achieve. “Like Crazy” is a plastic game of love, craving displays of affected behavior over an honest deconstruction of devotion. The film is never genuine, feeling like an improvisation class project that lucked into a theatrical release. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

For the purposes of this production, The Muppets have been basically dead since 1984. In reality, this isn’t the case, with numerous television specials, three feature films, viral videos, and a constant presence at Disney theme parks keeping the brand alert, if not entirely fresh. However, according to screenwriters Jason Segel and Nicolas Stoller, Jim Henson’s manic playthings lost their pop culture position in the 1980s, trapped in amber, never to be seen again. The premise is a bit of a stretch, but the goal of the material is to revive Kermit and the gang, offering their antics to a generation unaware of how wonderful The Muppets truly are, encouraging the development of a new fanbase to keep the comic critters beloved for decades to come. Thankfully, Segel and Stoller arrive fully armed with intensive franchise knowledge and respect for its early history, fashioning an immensely entertaining, brightly decorated valentine to the Henson dominion — a picture so fixated on resuscitating The Muppets it practically bleeds felt. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Marilyn Monroe has been the subject of numerous bio-pics and documentaries, leaving the filmmakers behind “My Week with Marilyn” at a tremendous disadvantage. However, this production has something extraordinary to assist in their characterization: intimacy. Adapting Colin Clark’s experiences working on the 1957 comedy “The Prince and the Showgirl,” the feature offers a lightweight but knowing look at the excitement, seduction, and caution that followed Monroe wherever she went. Eschewing a rigid, extensive recollection of personality for some melancholy fluff, “My Week with Marilyn” hits all the required beats of allure and misery, adding yet another compelling chapter to the ongoing deconstruction of a silver screen legend. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The 2011 holiday season receives an appealing boost of yuletide power with “Arthur Christmas,” a CG-animated effort from Aardman Animation, best known for their “Wallace and Gromit” productions. While overstuffed with domestic concerns, this tale of Santa’s family and their feverish need to carry out Christmas duties in full is an enjoyable matinee diversion, loaded with seasonal splendor and dry Brit wit, while offering spirited voicework from a gifted cast, who all display a firm grip on the tone of the piece, with its interest in slapstick comedy and snow-dusted sentiment. It’s not the tightest picture, but the primary elements are well cared for, providing a reasonable green-and-red rush of festive fun. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com