Category: Film Review

“Dolphin Tale” is a true story of sea creature survival handed a sticky Disney-esque treatment. It’s a script with tight hospital corners and cast with dimpled child actors, hoping to offer mildly inspiring entertainment to family audiences starved for something that isn’t animated. Take it at face value and it’s a perfectly pleasant matinee diversion, overflowing with easy solutions, animal antics, and approachable adversity. Any scrutiny underneath the sunny exterior will reveal some questionable editing, cushy screenwriting, and a few performances ready to burst due to overt earnestness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Perhaps hardcore anime and martial arts fanatics will find something to appreciate in the futuristic bruiser “Bunraku,” but there’s very little here for an outside audience to savor. A supremely labored, visually exhausting actioner, the picture is an overstylized, overwritten, overinflated jumble that doesn’t have a clue when to quit. It’s definitely colorful and eager to please, but a little of this convoluted mess goes a long way. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Stay Cool” is the latest effort from the Polish Brothers, the identical twins who’ve somehow managed to stay afloat in the industry after a decade of tedious esoteric efforts and box office bombs. Sure, the men have unearthed some exquisite screen poetry during their filmmaking years, but nothing profound, always lost in their own fog of indifference despite plots that encourage engorged passions. “Stay Cool” is their most grounded effort, attacking the formulaic discomfort and confusion of an impending high school reunion. It doesn’t always convince, but it’s the most approachable Polish production to date.

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The obvious question: Why remake a movie largely considered to be an aesthetically sound, culturally significant effort of raw filmmaking from 1971? Why attempt to rework what came so naturally to legendary director Sam Peckinpah? The feature that shocked the world is back in a slightly dopier form courtesy of helmer Rod Lurie, who doesn’t bother reorganizing or deviating from the original material. Instead, he’s lessened the impact of this violent saga, preferring to tell instead of show, straining to introduce a classic to a new generation of moviegoers better off renting the original. Despite its dated appearance and stiff storytelling, Peckinpah infused tremendous threat with minimal fuss. Lurie practically burns his film to the ground, yet can’t summon a single surprise or suspenseful interaction. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With “Bronson” and “Valhalla Rising,” Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn established himself as an uncompromising architect of esoteric European cinema, creating two taxing features of poetic structure, brutal violence, and dreamscape storytelling. “Drive” motors the filmmaker over to Hollywood, transferring his persnickety tastes to a heist-gone-bad tale of mobsters and loners and the cars they salivate over. It’s familiar ground, but electrifyingly projected through the director’s cracked prism. “Drive” is a sensational picture. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“I Don’t Know How She Does It” is an apt title for this dramedy since, by the time the end credits roll, there’s not a clarification on how the lead character, you know, does it. A spunky but disjointed rant on the severity of the business world and the nagging demands of motherhood, the feature doesn’t answer any questions, trying much too hard to come across likable and relatable when confronting rather provocative issues of self-loathing and extraordinary stress. To this film, there’s no head-squeezing dilemma of the heart and home a little slapstick can’t cure. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There is no anniversary to celebrate here, no special achievement that deserves an “exclusive” theatrical launch. In fact, “The Lion King,” Walt Disney Feature Animation’s crowning achievement, is being hustled back into theaters to highlight a 3D conversion, a gimmick employed to generate some eye-catching publicity a few weeks before the picture makes its long-awaited debut on Blu-ray. Hooray.

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After accepting an invitation to join the Adam Sandler Rodeo a few years back, obediently working a string of cameos and supporting roles for the superstar, comedian Nick Swardson graduates to leading man status with “Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star” (shot two years ago). After sitting through this dreadful, monumentally humorless picture, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this is going to be the last Nick Swardson starring role. He’s a fine stage comic (or at least was for a time in the mid-2000s), but his sleepy, sarcastic sense of humor has found considerable trouble translating successfully to television and film. In fact, considering how excruciating “Bucky Larson” is, I regret ever referring to it as a “sense of humor.” It’s now officially a lethal weapon. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It feels like every low-budget horror picture is looking for a way to kickstart a franchise, attempting to establish an iconic ghoul that could possibly carry on through various sequels and assorted marketing opportunities. The chiller “Creature” is no different, submitting its own contorted backwaters mythos in the form of Lockjaw, a half-gator/half-human beast keen to gobble twentysomethings and achieve 50/50, XXL horror t-shirt popularity. Too bad his starring debut is a shabby entry in the big screen monster mash, an earnest but far too predictable scary movie. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Contagion” is a scary movie where the villain is ourselves, the murder weapon our touch. It’s a thriller debuting 16 years after “Outbreak,” the last major virus extravaganza, only this latest effort has been updated to match today’s technological reach and governmental scrutiny, registering with a more subtle sense of fear than whipping around with wild hysterics. It’s a Steven Soderbergh film after all, so it’s going to maintain some equanimity. However, as reserved and procedural as it is, “Contagion” should have most audience members radically reassessing exactly what they touch during an average day. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

What a challenging and unusual motion picture this is. “Higher Ground” marks the directorial debut of actress Vera Farmiga, one of the most astute performers in Hollywood today, and she reaches big for her first cinematic offering. A story of salvation and awakening, about religion and spirituality, “Higher Ground” is an exquisitely measured, fair-minded assessment of faith. It’s never mean or condescending. It’s honest and richly imagined, drilling to the heart of commitment and life. It’s difficult material from which to launch a filmmaking career, yet this is a splendidly confident, unexpected movie. One of the best of 2011. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Warrior” is “Rocky” for the mixed martial arts generation, a fact the film itself acknowledges. It’s pure formula from start to finish, yet there’s a wellspring of sincerity here that softens the clichés, at least for the first half of the picture. It’s wholly predictable (Lionsgate marketing has done their part to give away the ending) and occasionally ridiculous, but the passions in play are convincing, often rousing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s been over a decade since John Landis last directed a feature-length comedy, spending the last 10 years working on various documentaries, perhaps waiting for the right material to come into view. “Burke and Hare” certainly plays to his sensibilities, combining slapstick comedy, English wit, and macabre occurrences into a sprightly picture that encourages more amused reactions than laughs. Landis is comfortable here, fluid and frisky, but the material just doesn’t have much snap to it. At least outside of all the broken limbs. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Apollo 18” is the latest entry in the growing “found footage” genre, popularized in recent years by the blockbuster “Paranormal Activity” films. Instead of rehashing eerie domestic terror, “Apollo 18” blasts into outer space, playing around with history and horror to manufacture a slightly different take on the game of fabricated realism. NASA nuts and conspiracy freaks might find something to embrace here, but the average viewer is likely to be bored stiff by this overlong, underwhelming chiller. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

About this time last year, “Piranha 3D” was released into theaters. Instead of a predicted monstrosity, the picture turned out to be an enjoyable, mercilessly gory romp, retaining ideal exploitation instincts and a marvelous sense of humor. This year’s fish-based horror offering is “Shark Night 3D,” which is about as polar opposite a viewing experience from “Piranha 3D” as possible. Labored, idiotic, and tightly restricted when it comes to violence, the feature is a fiasco on every level of execution, aiming to be some type of camp classic yet cursed with moronic direction that renders the whole thing useless. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With “Red State,” writer/director Kevin Smith seeks a darker path of storytelling, directly contrasting a career made up of profane comedies and barbed but cuddly relationship dramas. Part chiller, part lecture, “Red State” is a jumble of ideas and characterizations tossed haphazardly into an unnervingly disconnected motion picture, which often feels unfinished and calculated instead of winningly feral. Yes, “Red State” is unlike anything Kevin Smith has made before, but it’s also the least effective feature of his career. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Promising a bawdy time with a slippery slapstick edge, “A Good Old Fashioned Orgy” instead plays it fairly safe, pulling a tired RRR routine (raunch, riff, and reference) while remaining about as enchantingly explicit as PBS daytime programming. It’s a moldy film (shot three years ago), uninspired and predictably performed. All it really has is its titular event, an extended sequence of pure pulled punchery that’s going to leave many viewers disappointed. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The Christian golf drama “Seven Days in Utopia” is truly a mixed blessing. Competently acted and gorgeously shot, the film is often unbearably corny at times, assuming the guise of an inspirational tool when it’s far more compelling as an intimate story of personal struggle. It’s perfectly digestible and refreshingly G-rated, but it’s often so confused, looking to make salient points on godly goodness when its best attributes are found on the fairway. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

A remake of a 2007 Israeli film, “The Debt” has all the components of a richly observed, fingernail-chewing spy thriller, yet the dramatic elements are anything but taut. Heavy with marvelous, ideally impassioned performances, the picture suffers from an unevenness that robs the material of the excitement it effortlessly generates in the electrifying opening half. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Miranda July has a way of making 90 minutes of incessant quirk feel like 30 years on a chain gang.

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