Admittedly, marriage can be difficult. The comedy “Swinging with the Finkels” makes it look absolutely unpleasant. A half-baked ode to the challenges of sustaining marital sex, the picture makes all the wrong moves, somehow believing it’s forming some type of poignant comment on the complexity of commitment. Instead, it’s an occasionally loathsome sitcom starring two miscast leads doing their chipper best to make this malarkey profound.
“Brighton Rock” is an incredibly dramatic motion picture, positively loony at times. There are a few moments so heated, it feels as though the film itself is pointing a loaded gun to its temple, threatening to shoot. The manic energy isn’t a smooth blend with writer/director Rowan Joffe’s sizable effort of screen style, but the volcanic mood feels undeniably effective at times, funneled into a combustible story of gang warfare, criminals, and the women they secretly detest. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
“Main Street” represents the final cinematic contribution from the late playwright and screenwriter Horton Foote (“To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Tender Mercies”). His rich vocabulary and observance of southern life continues on in this motion picture, but it also holds the producers captive. Unable or unwilling to challenge the writing legend, “Main Street” unfolds with a myriad of problems in the areas of characterization and resolution. There’s something interesting here at the core of the conflict, but the story is offered so little room to breathe, coming across rushed and undercooked. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
“Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” is a remake of a 1973 television movie, a production beloved in cult circles, but it’s hard to believe the story didn’t originate in the murky ocean of ghoulish events that passes for co-writer/producer Guillermo del Toro’s imagination. Pervasive darkness, tiny goblins on the hunt to inflict pain, and a creepy old house of horror. This picture is right up the filmmaker’s alley. I’m shocked he didn’t direct it himself. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
We’ve seen multiple R-rated comedies this summer that’ve trafficked in vulgarity to make themselves heard, dependent on shock value to acquire box office attention. “Our Idiot Brother” is a swell change of pace from the obnoxious norm, rooting its shenanigans in a welcome feeling of familial reality, pulling laughs from a source of frustration viewers might be able to relate to. It’s a dumb comedy but never stupid, always good-natured and sharply performed. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
“The Smurfs” have enjoyed an extensive history of television and print achievements, charming audiences for decades now with their miniature adventures and lust for mischief. Their CG-animated/live-action film debut finally answers the question weighing heavily on the mind of every fan: do Smurfs fart? Turns out they do, with this and several other revelations just waiting to be discovered in this dreadful kiddie distraction. Franchise creator Peyo (who passed away in 1992) would be so proud. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
More entertaining than riotous, the dark comedy “The Guard” is best valued as a vehicle for actor Brendan Gleeson, the vastly talented performer who’s enjoyed accolades and awards for decades now, yet remains best known as Mad-Eye Moody from the “Harry Potter” pictures. Digging his teeth into a delightfully sour antihero role, Gleeson is perhaps the only true reason to sit through “The Guard,” a satisfactory yet oddly monotonous police adventure in dire need of the actor’s perfectly timed delivery. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
“The Family Tree” looks to expose the poisoned heart of suburbia, rendering the picture formulaic and a little on the moldy side. However, it’s determined, at least visually so, shoving the ensemble into action, expressing all the worry and wonder surrounding this myriad of subplots, often mashed together into a toxic whole. The feature isn’t especially humorous or enlightening, but it’s rarely boring.
When one thinks of a gut-churning, politically minded film about war, the name Renny Harlin doesn’t immediately spring to mind. The action maestro, who’s spent the last decade taking odd genre jobs to get his career back on track, attempts to crack the mystery of the message movie with “5 Days of War,” an unsettled mix of history and histrionics that benefits from Harlin’s special touch with large-scale action sequences.
When “Spy Kids” debuted in 2001, it was a breath of fresh air from writer/director/everything-elser Robert Rodriguez, the R-rated rebel who spent the 1990s manufacturing violent entertainment for adult audiences. Post “Spy Kids,” the filmmaker has immersed himself in kiddie distractions, preferring to celebrate the miracle of nosepicking to acts of bloodletting. What was imaginative and cheerful a decade ago has grown formulaic and sophomoric today, with “Spy Kids: All the Time in the World” a coarse, obnoxious reboot of the franchise, highlighting Rodriguez’s desire to keep his cash machine series alive with a brand new cast. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
I was honestly baffled by every moment of “One Day.” Allegedly some type of romantic experience flecked with exquisite offerings of comedy and tragedy, the picture spins itself dizzy, struggling to make two completely unlikable people into a couple to cheer for. A failure on practically every level of execution, “One Day” is a ghastly representation of longing and screen chemistry. It couldn’t make the nuances of attraction more unpleasant if it tried. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
To retain some sense of sanity, it’s best to consider the new “Conan the Barbarian” as a reworking of the classic Robert E. Howard character and not a remake of the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger/John Milius motion picture. The mental block will help to digest the latest round of sword and (light) sorcery, which features geysers of blood, rippling pectoral muscles, wicked villains, but surprisingly little lamentation of da women. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
One of the great elements about 1985’s “Fright Night” was its love of movies, specifically a hunger to mimic the mood and blood-spurting symphonies of the old Hammer horror pictures. It was a tongue-in-cheek monster party, and while crippled by a few troublesome ideas, the majority of the feature displayed a plump personality and delightful ‘80’s attitude toward teen sex. The 2011 remake doesn’t share the same appetite for widescreen amusement, slimming down the vampire antics to fit today’s glossy CGI appetites, creating a slick, needless, and only somewhat inspired update. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com
While watching “The Help,” there was never a moment where I felt a secure, deeply felt story was being told. Instead, the film is a highlight reel of exaggerated emotions and social concern, struggling to find its voice while incomplete scripting and overly emphatic performances keep the feature’s bloated intentions blurred. Spending more time tugging on heartstrings than exhaustively studying the characters, “The Help” can’t avoid feeling wholly insincere.
The last sequel was titled “The Final Destination,” but clearly New Line Cinema is run by a bunch of sneaky little liars. Thanks to a 3D boost at the box office and renewed interest in the slaughter of no-name actors, the franchise has been pulled out of retirement, revving up again with an all-new multi-dimensional gore show. While the thrill was officially snuffed out once the end credits rolled on the first “Final Destination,” that hasn’t stopped the producers from mounting a surprisingly snoozy fourth sequel.
The hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest has been lauded for decades now, blessed with encouraging record sales and a consistent vibration of love emanating from the rap community. However, they’ve rarely been explored in full, leaving actor Michael Rapaport to step behind the camera and investigate the inner workings of this musical union with his thumpy, riveting documentary, “Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest.”
Brevity is a good friend to the mediocre comedy “30 Minutes or Less.” Running roughly 75 minutes long, the film is tidily arranged by director Rueben Fleischer, who has enough sense to hit his slapstick bullet points and bail. I just wish he had better material, at least something substantial that would prevent the picture from becoming yet another R-rated comedy cursed with crummy improvisation-addicted actors and their distracting potty mouths.
Full disclosure: I’ve never seen a single episode of the Fox television smash “Glee.” I know frighteningly little about the series; however, after viewing “Glee: The 3D Concert Movie,” I’m now extremely curious about the program. At the very least, I’d like to see how the show continues on now that Charlie Sheen has been fired.
I want a varied landscape of cinema as much as the next person, but did the world truly need a movie based on the depravity of Uday Hussein, son of Saddam? It’s difficult to ascertain exactly why the story behind “The Devil’s Double” required a feature film treatment, a quibble inflated to flat-out disgust by the end of the picture. Unsophisticated and unnecessarily ugly, the movie seems to favor Uday’s sadism instead of condemning it, making its ultimate purpose too fogged for comfort.
If “The Tree of Life” is a full-course dinner of philosophy and emotional reflection, the sci-fi snoozer “Another Earth” is a particularly chewy intellectual amuse-bouche. A plodding melodrama concerning the effects of loss and the potential for soulful rebirth, “Another Earth” doesn’t pursue its provocative ideas with any sort of narrative momentum. Instead, it’s all dreary navel-gazing and cinematographic posturing hoping to wade into a profound philosophical bath, using the mysteries of the universe as a way to hypnotize an audience more likely to be annoyed by this story than entranced.
BRIAN ORNDORF 