Category: Film Review

Just because he’s embarked on his first family film odyssey doesn’t mean Martin Scorsese is going to abandon his fascination with moviemaking. The maestro of cinema pulls away from his recent examinations of hoodlums and madness to craft a love letter to the origin of filmmaking with “Hugo,” a picture that pops a few blood vessels trying to maintain an impression of whimsy, yet remains hopelessly chained to a cinder block of solemnity even a master director can’t break free from. Heavens, this feature is gorgeous from top to bottom, with exquisite technical achievements that encourage a genuine sense of awe, yet it’s a production better valued for its ambition than execution, with Scorsese caught between his ease with gloom and his inexperience with warmth. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The “Twilight” films have always been strictly for fans of Stephenie Meyer’s novels, a truth never more evident than in “Breaking Dawn – Part 1,” the first half of a series finale that essentially sheds any comforting sense of pace, reason, and good taste to yank the extended narrative arc into entirely bizarre directions. The movie is seriously bonkers, but not in a campy way that might offer a tingle of amusement. No, director Bill Condon plays it all as serious as a heart attack, giving in to the gush of melodrama with total abandon, doing his best to maintain the bucking bronco-like plot turns of this relentlessly harebrained story. What began as puppy love with sparkly vampires has devolved into a freak show of bodily trauma, with a great gooey gob of pedophilia slapped on the end of this feature, which requires another visit to the multiplex in a year’s time to complete. I’ll make sure to update my shots beforehand. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Alexander Payne doesn’t make very many movies, but when he does find the energy to sculpt a screen story, it’s typically something of substance, loaded with powerful emotional truths and manic behavior befitting chaotic situations. “The Descendents” is Payne’s most composed study of a personal meltdown, with much of the volatility occurring within star George Clooney, delivering one of the finest performances of his career. It’s a poignant, contemplative picture, flawless in the still manner it approaches crippling encounters with grief and disgust, dryly expressing the necessary unraveling of a distracted man. “The Descendents” is simply terrific, profound yet understated. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2006’s “Happy Feet” was a jubilant, toe-tapping viewing experience…for about an hour. Its eventual slide into darker issues of animal captivity and environmental disaster was a laudable deviation but tore the pace apart, making the effort a bizarre, confused message movie featuring a cast of dancing penguins. With the cute factor off the charts, “Happy Feet” was a massive hit at the box office, which is why we’re faced with “Happy Feet Two.” Again, director George Miller looks to marry the Earth’s woe with the wiggly antics of flightless birds, but there’s really nowhere for this story to go after the conclusion of the original picture. There’s plenty of bopping, singing, and intense displays of global warming wreckage, yet the sequel is even more scattershot with these wildly disparate cinematic elements. If “Happy Feet” was tonally unsteady, “Happy Feet Two” is tone-deaf. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Is the horror genre so dried up that we now must face the wrath of calendar dates? “11-11-11” submits a story of demonic overthrow with a specific gimmick, counting down the terror of times and dates that tie into 11/11/11, a day that will bring indescribable misery to the planet and its inhabitants. “11-11-11” will also bring plenty of misery to moviegoers who choose to spend time with the latest from Darren Lynn Bousman, the underwhelming director who previously masterminded a handful of the “Saw” pictures. Straining unbelievably hard to manufacture a take on calendar apocalypse shenanigans, Bousman overcooks a simple premise, spending too much time on laborious exposition and not enough on dramatic elements, allowing wooden performances and a low-budget chill to paralyze the effort. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Immortals” is peeled from the mind of director Tarsem Singh, a visual stylist extraordinaire who previously gave birth to ornate epics such as “The Cell” and “The Fall.” He’s obscene with screen details, often cursed with a commitment to the movement of images, pulling influences from art and high fashion to shape imposing epics devoted to adventures of the mind. While stunning and extensively produced, Singh’s features never achieve a critical feel of humanity, always cold to the touch. They are museum pieces meant to be acknowledged, not necessarily enjoyed. “Immortals” is the director’s attempt to play ball with the blockbusters, marrying “Clash of the Titans” with a night at Studio 54, executing a violent epic in his own inimitable way. Once again, Singh comes up short, as his latest is decidedly mortal — an eye-catching drag through the heavens overloaded with hackneyed screenwriting and expressionless acting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

I’m not even sure this qualifies as a real movie. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

140 minutes is a long time to devote to a bio-pic, only to learn absolutely nothing momentous about the subject. Perhaps that’s the way J. Edgar Hoover would’ve preferred his life story to be told, but as cinema, the caginess creates an interminable viewing experience. Handsomely mounted but otherwise devoid of passion and insight, “J. Edgar” is a bizarre attempt to catch a shadow, providing the audience with spicy bedroom details when the very basics of everyday motivation and behavior would be more welcome. Director Clint Eastwood shows too much leniency with Dustin Lance Black’s screenplay, dutifully following a flawed blueprint, ending up with a dismal, unenlightening motion picture, at times bordering on character assassination, even for a man as controversial as J. Edgar Hoover. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

One doesn’t buy a ticket for “London Boulevard” expecting a vigorous display of originality, reshaping the con-goes-clean subgenre with an inspiring display of invention. No, material like this needs to be served with a certain sense of familiarity, hitting low notes of brutality and intimidation in a manner that’s both exhilarating and horrifying. It’s far from a perfect film, yet “London Boulevard” carries itself quite successfully for much of its running time, spinning a familiar story with panache and attention to the needs of trembling introspection. Flawed but impressively executed, the movie has a distinct reverberation that holds the formula together, making the mean business of unlawful behavior convincing in the face of absolute predictability. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With 2005’s “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints” and 2009’s “Fighting,” writer/director Dito Montiel showed interest in detailing the seedy underbelly of life in New York City, soaking up the heart and soul of a violent metropolis. Unfortunately, he’s constructed two decidedly underwhelming pictures, each falling well short of their poetic intentions. A third effort, the cop drama “The Son of No One,” joins the group, forming a trilogy of mediocrity, finding Montiel swinging wildly to capture an elusive tonality of vulnerability, which always slides into excessive melodrama. The toxic textures of the city are firmly in place, but the rest of this movie flounders, focused too intently on heavy thespian articulation and a central mystery that’s solved by the start of the second act.

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Writer/director Pedro Almodovar has always been drawn to the dark reaches of human behavior, though he usually surveys areas of pain and jealousy with a cheeky sense of humor and a heavy sense of compassion. “The Skin I Live In” is a chilling effort from the Spanish filmmaker, taking matters of revenge and obsession to extreme ends. As with any Almodovar picture, it’s a long, winding road to Hell, populated with grotesque encounters and a perverse sensuality, blended into a fascinating, gorgeously crafted tragedy with intense horror highlights. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s amazing that anyone in Hollywood could find enough material to fill one movie featuring lovable(?) stoners Harold and Kumar, but here we are facing a second sequel. The baked boys are back with a seasonal romp, and outside of a few holiday tunes on the soundtrack and a cameo by Santa, it’s pretty much the same old salty stuff. Fans of the series will undoubtedly gobble up the latest round of marijuana-cloud antics, especially with the movie’s pronounced 3D presentation, permitting the characters a chance to blow bong hits into the audience, giving the party ambiance that extra dimension. Outsiders should head elsewhere to satisfy their entertainment needs, for this continuation is all about repetition, only with a slightly duller edge than before. After all, predictable stoner mischief is less cute when it features men in their late-30s. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It appears director Brett Ratner wanted a version of “Ocean’s Eleven” to toy with, so he picked up its screenwriter (Ted Griffin) and one of the stars (Casey Affleck) and built his own heist comedy. “Tower Heist” is being marketed as an endless stream of criminal antics and bellylaughs with an all-star cast, but it’s not an exceedingly silly movie. In fact, long stretches of the picture are devoted to the motivation and execution of the central crime, with laughs stuffed into the pockets of the screenplay as it unfolds. Regardless of its erratic comedic velocity, the feature is satisfying presentation of matinee entertainment, providing basic elements of suspense and financial crash wish fulfillment with an efficient filmmaking snap. It’s hardly original, but “Tower Heist” is appealing, even when it arrives wearing more of a scowl than a smile. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Chalet Girl” is fluff best served to young teenage girls dreaming of exotic locales and unattainable men, a fantasy set to blaring pop music and decorated with a heavy splattering of sarcasm. It has its charms, mostly provided by the cast, but it doesn’t add up to anything memorable, best appreciated as a lighthearted distraction for sleepover parties, handed unique life through its European locations and lovely snowscapes, lending the frame a refreshing white glow to counteract all the mundane particulars of the script. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

As a thriller, “The Double” is ridiculously convoluted, spending more time trying to explain motivations and clarify names than it does serving up legitimate armrest-tearing thrills. I’m sure the filmmakers are quite proud of their cat’s cradle of a movie, but what’s lacking is a mounting sense of unrest, a tense acceleration of reveals and attacks, permitting the monkey business collected here a sense of speed to help overcome its unnecessary density. Instead, the feature labors over details as though the C.I.A. is going to use this as a training tool for new recruits, taking a very silly, logic-leaping effort with the utmost seriousness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In 2002, Lucky McKee made his writing/directing debut with “May,” a sinister little horror gem that created quite a stir with genre fans, all but guaranteeing the helmer a long, celebrated career and the adoration of gorehounds everywhere. The follow-up, 2006’s “The Woods,” was a dispiriting effort, tangled and ineffective despite evocative embellishments. “The Woman” suggests that perhaps “May” was merely a fluke. A bafflingly angry, ugly demonstration of dehumanization, the feature is a glacial, low-rent addition to the suffering subgenre, requiring the audience to not only sit through aggressive acts of bodily trauma, but long stretches of clumsy filmmaking as well. If there’s a larger societal point to this cinematic mess, it’s lost somewhere between the unsightly use of wide-angle lenses and an atrocious soundtrack that’s guaranteed to make theater speakers bleed. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Introduced to the world in 2004’s “Shrek 2,” the character of Puss in Boots went on to steal the movie away from the neurotic green ogre, blending common feline instincts with a feisty vocal performance from Antonio Banderas. The furry clown would go on to become the highlights of “Shrek the Third” and “Shrek Forever After,” leaving Dreamworks with no choice but to gift the frisky kitty his own starring vehicle. “Puss in Boots” isn’t exactly the freewheeling adventure the cat deserves, weighed down by a leaden script, but isolated antics remain as amusing as ever, demanding Banderas rear back and let loose with a full-body performance that carries the film heroically through some pointlessly heavy plotting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

If movies were judged solely on ambition, “In Time” would be one of the best pictures of the year. Alas, it’s actually on the lower end of 2011 releases, making a mess out of a nifty premise. Writer/director Andrew Niccol (“S1m0ne,” “Lord of War”) seems to think he’s creating a stylish, pointed social commentary with this futuristic Bonnie and Clyde tale, but he’s ruined the beguiling sci-fi effect through banal dialogue and wooden performances. It’s a stillborn feature, wasting its promise on emptiness when all Niccol had to do was sit back and enjoy the world he created, investigating its rituals and peculiar response. Instead, he’s elected to make an action movie, without any real practice with the genre and its demanding need for propulsive plotting. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Everyone’s favorite pirate, Johnny Depp, strolls giddily into the gravity pull of Hunter S. Thompson’s madness once again with “The Rum Diary,” a feature film adaptation of a 1998 novel from the legendary writer (who died in 2005). Avoiding the thick of bat country, Depp generates a slightly suave take on Thompson’s youth, pushing away the gobs of drugs found in Terry Gilliam’s 1998 scattergun, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” to guzzle gallons of booze, dancing around another tale of oddballs and hangovers, with the emphasis here on personal transformation, acting a prequel story of sorts for Thompson. It’s a muddled movie in dire need of a cleaner edit, but there are moments of tremendous clarity that bring out some amusingly crooked behavior, articulated with a tight Thompson shuffle by Depp. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Circumstance” is an imperfect film with stunning components. Part cultural drama, part lesbian love story, the picture endeavors to explore the urges of personal freedom inside Iran, observing the bonds of family and religion, focusing on two young women faced with a dire future of subservience, forced to choose between stifling tradition and the need for rebellion, which soon melts into primal elements of desire. It’s a potent picture cursed with fractured storytelling, displaying lively imagery that registers more powerfully than its drama. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com