Category: Film Review

“Bleeding Love” tells the story of two very fragile people trying to make sense of their relationship while on a road trip to an unknown destination. The screenplay (by Ruby Caster, making her debut) sets up a troubled dynamic between a father and daughter dealing with the roughness of estrangement, and the production tries to maintain some performance reality with the casting of real-life relatives, Ewan McGregor and Clara McGregor, who are tasked with portraying the strangeness and hostility of an unexpected reunion. “Bleeding Love” finds its rhythm with the stars, who nail occasional moments of behavioral clarity. The movie as a whole doesn’t quite work, finding the material a little too in love with the quirks of small-town America, and director Emma Westenberg (a music video vet) doesn’t trust her performers to communicate the horrors of addiction and abandonment, turning to distracting camerawork to sell such personal distortion. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

We don’t get many stone age stories on screen these days, giving “Out of Darkness” a bit of distinction as the production examines struggles from long ago, back when the Earth carried tremendous mystery and its inhabitants were fighting to understand their place in the world order. Though listed as a horror film, the endeavor isn’t really built to generate scares. Director Andrew Cumming goes intensely atmospheric instead, attempting to put the audience in the middle of a tribal fight for survival, where the characters are surrounded by pure darkness and unknown predators. “Out of Darkness” isn’t a thrilling sit, as Cumming takes his time with the effort, occasionally getting lost in his own moviemaking vision. But there are layers of storytelling in Ruth Greenberg’s screenplay that hold attention, creating a suspenseful study of behavior and survival. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Lisa Frankenstein” marks the feature-length directorial debut for Zelda Williams (daughter of the late Robin Williams), who’s been working in short films and music videos for the last eight years. The picture also represents a return to screenwriting for Diablo Cody, who hasn’t been heard from since her excellent work on 2018’s “Tully.” The pair team up to show their favorite genres some love in the endeavor, which blends the dark comedy of “Heathers” with the gothic goofiness of Tim Burton. “Lisa Frankenstein” isn’t a stunningly original creation, with much of the offering pulled from better movies, and it’s surprisingly low on laughs. It’s Cody returning to her “Juno” days with broad dialogue and limp humor, striving to blend gore and goofballery with this disappointing effort, and Williams also struggles to find her own tonal balance, unable to capture a special insanity. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director James Bamford is a seasoned stunt professional, supplying physical force for such productions as “Watchmen,” “X2: X-Men United,” and “Final Destination.” Screenwriter Steven Paul is best known for his work on “Baby Geniuses,” “Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2,” and “Baby Geniuses and the Space Baby.” This weird blend of talent is put to the test in “Air Force One Down,” which opens like a “Die Hard” knockoff before it evolves into more of a generic actioner. Bamford works to bring the thunder in the endeavor, which really shines in butt-kicking mode, watching star Katherine McNamara take down waves of baddies in the name of presidential protection. The rest of “Air Force One Down” isn’t as compelling, with Paul trying to knot up what should be a simple study of self-preservation, and he makes a creative choice midway through the tale that ruins what little fun there is in the effort. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Molli and Max in the Future” looks to follow everyday relationship woes of today in the world of tomorrow. It’s a blend of “When Harry Met Sally” and “Tron,” with writer/director Michael Lukk Litwak trying to conjure a strange world of alien encounters, high-tech inventions, and robot battles while still tending to universal feelings involved in the experience of love and dating. Litwak doesn’t have much in the way of money to really go bananas with his vision of future world travel and connection, forcing him to go creative instead. There’s a lot of charm on display in “Molli and Max in the Future,” which is mostly held together by cast and crew enthusiasm, with the helmer offering a conversational study of a union tested by outside temptations and time itself. Such complications work to mess with the central relationship between a half-fish person and the highly neurotic space witch he can’t seem to quit, much to her great relief. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Keir O’Donnell is a longtime actor, perhaps best know for his role in 2005’s “Wedding Crashers.” He makes his directorial debut with “Marmalade,” also taking a writing credit on the picture, which follows the planning stages of a young man in love with a wild woman, with their union newly focused on a bank robbery to deal with rising pharmaceutical prices. It’s not an original study of carelessness, but O’Donnell attempts to add some turns to the plot, juicing up its potential as a mystery. “Marmalade” rides the line between quirky and clever, and one really starts to feel the length of the feature in the final act, finding O’Donnell taking his time organizing a way out of the story. But there’s charm in the movie, which is helped along by enthusiastic performances, and technical proficiency is present, adding some style to help digest the unsteady endeavor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Float” is an adaptation of a book by author Kate Marchant. This is not the usual literary translation, with Marchant finding success on a social media platform devoted to Gen Z writers looking for eyeballs on their work. Potential box office success for a project like this was established with the release of 2019’s “After,” which spawned a franchise of heated romantic tales for younger viewers. “Float” is chasing the same idea, only Marchant’s work is aiming for a more tender examination of wounded people finding one another in small-town Canada. Co-writer/director Sherren Lee looks to provide a human story of burgeoning communication, crafting something that’s easy on the senses and possibly relatable for some audience members. It’s not the most stirring viewing experience, but the picture has a welcome gentleness and interest in emotional needs to keep it going. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Screenwriters Christine Lenig, Luke Spencer Roberts, and Justin Matthews are challenged to produce an interesting story for “Upgraded,” which is competing with a hundred other movies in the film year that deal with misunderstandings, mishaps, and the tingles and tangles of new love. And they manage to create an interesting professional life for the main character, who works in an art auction house, getting caught up in mistakes and misrepresentation during an assignment in London. There’s a lot to explore with this vocation and ambition, and “Upgraded” finds ways of making this section of the picture involving, offering a riff on “The Devil Wears Prada,” with Marisa Tomei in the Meryl Streep role. It’s the rest of the feature that’s disappointing, as the ways of attraction tend to disrupt what actually works in the endeavor, making moments of passion more of a nuisance in this romantic comedy. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Matthew Vaughn enjoys making noisy movies that slip all too easily into overkill. He didn’t start out that way (2004’s “Layer Cake”) but he’s become that way, for most of his career. He’s spent the last decade trying to transform “Kingsman” into a viable franchise (the box office failure of a 2021 prequel didn’t help the cause), and he’s not giving up the fight, returning with a big-budget superspy extravaganza, “Argylle,” which is very much in the same vein as a “Kingsman” sequel, only instead of gentlemanly violence with a collection of heroes and villains, there’s a literary world of characters to untangle here. Scripted by Jason Fuchs (“Pan,” “Ice Age: Continental Drift”), “Argylle” starts off with a spring in its step, only to become a cinematic equivalent of a headache, with Vaughn losing his mind trying to wow viewers with gonzo visuals, turns of plot, and CGI overload. It’s an iffy idea for adventuring turned into a rough 139-minute-long viewing experience, with excess the goal here, not cleverness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There’s always been some type of rivalry between DreamWorks Animation and Disney, resulting in movies that were similar, perhaps intentionally so, going back to the “Antz” and “A Bug’s Life” collision of 1998. There’s some of that feeling surrounding the release of “Orion and the Dark,” which, at times, plays much like 2015’s “Inside Out,” following the adventure of a child getting used to the reality of the world around him. He’s joined by the creatures in his mind, but instead of emotions, the eponymous character interacts with multi-colored “Night Entities.” There are moments when the pictures are quite similar, but “Orion and the Night” isn’t quite as close to the heart as “Inside Out,” with screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (making his family film debut) offering a slightly less enthusiastic understanding of growing pains and phobias. It remains a charmingly animated endeavor with a welcome message on the ways of bravery, but it also feels a little too tired at times, and not because the subject matter involves sleep. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Television writer and actress Laura Chinn makes her directorial debut with “Suncoast.” It’s a semi-autobiographical tale of a young woman’s quest for human connection during a time of tremendous emotional demands and typical adolescent awkwardness, with Chinn using her experience with a dying sibling in Florida to inspire a study of family dynamics and loneliness, with a little real-world headline news of the day helping to add some perspective to the story. Chinn scripts with authority for half of the feature, creating deeply wounded characters who have no idea how to interact with each other, left to manage some kind of routine that’s impossible to follow for long. There are two sides to “Suncoast,” which creates a frustrating viewing experience, with the potential for a sensitive, knowing examination of difficult relationships repeatedly disrupted by the banalities of teen cinema. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Tiger’s Apprentice” is an adaptation of a 2003 YA novel by author Laurence Yep, who created a tale about a boy making contact with the magic that surrounds him, emerging in the form of mythology based on the Chinese zodiac. It’s a tale of adventure and discovery that seems perfectly suited for animation, and certainly the success of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” has influenced the production, with the feature not exactly turning down an opportunity to vaguely resemble the 2018 hit film. While the endeavor isn’t endowed with an enormous budget, the picture remains flashy, with vivid color and smooth action, and the central exploration into zodiac-inspired heroism and history holds attention. It offers younger viewers blasts of creature antics and villainy, bringing select sequences to life as danger increases for the main character, who’s newly exposed to a different level of reality. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Leah McKendrick has been an actress for over 15 years, appearing in an assortment of shorts and features. She attempts to find more control over her creative outputs with “Scrambled,” going triple threat with the endeavor, claiming credits in direction, screenwriting, and acting for this seemingly personal effort. The story concerns the battle of a single woman in her thirties trying to envision a future of parenthood for herself, unsure if she really wants to commit to the responsibility as she decides to freeze her eggs. McKendrick touches on a sensitive subject with “Scrambled,” hoping to reach universal concerns about motherhood and loneliness with the picture, using comedy as a way into some heavy feelings about love and loss. It's this tonal juggling act that becomes an issue for the helmer, who can’t manage mood swings in the film, making for an erratic sit with weirdly unlikable characters. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Snoop Dogg isn’t much of an actor, but his simple screen presence has certainly livened up a few movies over the years. For “The Underdoggs,” Snoop Dogg has created a lead role for himself, also co-hatching the story for the pee-wee football saga, which lifts liberally, as they all do, from the 1976 classic, “The Bad News Bears.” Once again, it’s the hardened, light-headed coach put in charge of rascally kids against his will, with underdog cinema expected to form around all the formula concocted by screenwriters Isaac Schamis and Danny Segal, who have zero interest in adding some originality, or even passable human emotions to the feature. “The Underdoggs” is woefully cliched, but it’s not without a few laughs and some dependable kids sports energy, in need of more inspired leadership, with director Charles Stone III putting in the least amount of effort to boost the endeavor’s appeal. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Bryan Greenberg has been in the acting trenches for quite some time now, and he’s been steadily employed, taking supporting roles here and there. Greenberg looks to acquire a new level of career power with “Junction,” also stepping behind the camera to make his directorial debut, claiming credit for the screenplay as well. The helmer’s heart is in the right place, taking on the horrific systems of corruption involved with the opioid epidemic, following a community of characters as they navigate addiction, ethics, and legal affairs while in the midst of dealing with the nightmare of oxycodone. Greenberg hopes to create a low-budget take on “Traffic” and other drug-related pictures, but he ends up with a clumsy television movie instead. “Junction” should be tougher and more cinematic in its depiction of human decay, but the production doesn’t have that kind of energy, with tedious melodrama prized instead. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Jade Halley Bartlett makes her filmmaking debut with “Miller’s Girl,” and she offers an ambitious tale of seduction and power with the material, which has a distinct theatrical quality to it. The movie examines an unsettling relationship between a high school writing teacher and his top student, who’s quite capable of reaching inside the older man’s mind in an effort to tap into his fantasies. Bartlett isn’t making a thriller with “Miller’s Girl” (which is co-produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg), but something slightly more sinister, toying with the influence of sexuality as it beguiles and destroys in equal measure. The writing stays close to character, generating some powerfully intimate moments, and those highlights are enough to carry a somewhat unsteady picture, but one that offers fascinating sequences of manipulation, finding horror in the hotness of it all. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Seeding” isn’t shy about hiding its horror, with the opening shot of the film following a filthy baby around a desert area, with the kid snacking on a severed finger. The concept of the movie isn’t exactly obscured either, with the next shot in the endeavor a car driving along a trail that forms the image of a spermatozoon. Writer/director Barnaby Clay is ready to deliver an unnerving viewing experience with “The Seeding,” but he’s not always in a hurry to share frights with the audience, going the slow-burn route with this tale of a man stuck in the wild, pulled into a situation of imprisonment that’s not what it initially seems. The writing portions out details of doom carefully, with Clay looking to generate a heavy atmosphere of confusion and frustration, finding his way to some crazy acts of torment in a compelling feature. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“We Are the World” was released globally on March 7th, 1985. It served as the foundation for the U.S.A. for Africa movement, where a large assortment of musical stars of the 1980s came together to sing an anthemic song about the healing power of love and unity, endeavoring to raise money for famine relief in Africa. The record captured the imagination (and wallets) of listeners, emerging as one of the biggest singles of its release year, becoming omnipresent and representative of what such a project could achieve. There are stories to be shared about the making of the tune, and documentarian Bao Nguyen tries to sort through the incredible details of it all with “The Greatest Night in Pop,” which examines the herculean effort to create the song and corral all the diverse personalities involved in the music scene at that time. There are no twists or turns here, just a straightforward understanding of the moment, and Nguyen does an extraordinary job bringing order to chaos with this massively entertaining picture. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Sometimes I Think About Dying” is a very small film about feelings and personalities. There’s no major dramatic movement in the screenplay (by Stefanie Abel Horowitz, Kevin Armento, and Katy Wright-Mead), just quiet interactions and heavy reflection on depression, while sensitivities start to develop during the run time. Director Rachel Lambert sets a delicate mood with the endeavor, hitting some comedic moments along the way, but she mostly remains in a state of stillness, creating a small mission for two characters to understand each other in different ways as they participate in daily life. While its subject matter promises a gloomy viewing experience, “Sometimes I Think About Dying” ends up gentle and lovely, best reserved for audiences with patience to explore a personal connection between two people hunting for a way to communicate with each other. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Co-writer/director Mike Cheslik takes on an unusual filmmaking challenge with “Hundreds of Beavers.” He’s resurrecting a silent movie approach to a cartoon-style study of survival and fur-trapping in the 1800s, going wild and wacky with the story of a man and his desperate need to bring in enough beaver pelts to win the hand of a young women in the middle of a frozen forest. Silliness is the name of the game in “Hundreds of Beavers,” which is non-stop nonsense from Cheslik, who shows remarkable creativity with his limited budget, working with whatever he can to bring his war of animal vs. man to life. It’s a wild ride, and an exhausting one too, but before the feature loses steam with its parade of shenanigans, the production achieves an enjoyable level of madcap antics, sold with a charmingly tireless lead performance from Ryland Brickson Cole Tews (who co-scripts with Cheslik). Read the rest at Blu-ray.com