Category: Film Review

Writer/director Riley Sterns likes the dry stuff. He has a dark sense of humor, especially when portioned out into bite-sized pieces of deadpan delivery and mild absurdity. He was last seen helming the 2019 comedy “The Art of Self-Defense,” which strived to be weird, goofy, and severe, only emerging with a moderate amount of success on all three fronts, and he returns to his specific tastes in oddness in “Dual.” The plot is unnervingly similar to “Swan Song,” a 2021 picture that detailed the experience of a man getting to know his clone before death claims him. “Dual” shares the same story, but Sterns isn’t making a heavy drama. He’s after a more elusive tone with the effort, working with star Karen Gillan to embrace the stillness of silliness, putting his love of idiosyncrasy to the test in this study of low self-esteem, cloning, and combat training. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Father Stu” tells the story of Stuart Long, a rough-around-the-edges guy who stumbled through life as a boxer and a man of dented charms who suddenly found his calling to the priesthood, taking him on a much different journey. It’s a bio-pic that’s more about the odyssey of life than select moments of drama, with writer/director Rosalind Ross (making her feature-length debut as a filmmaker) trying to identify the power of persistence and faith, as Long was eventually diagnosed with a muscle disease that threatened everything he was working for. “Father Stu” isn’t typical Christian entertainment, with Ross keeping things raw and as real as possible while still trying to engage her audience, often going to comedy to remain approachable. She has a faithful servant in star Mark Wahlberg, who goes about as far as he can as an actor here, working extra hard to deliver a performance that respects the development of Long’s unique determination to be of service to others while saving himself. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Chariot” is a brain-bleeder from writer/director Adam Sigal. It plays like a sci-fi novel and probably should’ve been one, looking to confuse and beguile viewers with its sustained oddity, exploring one man’s awareness of unreality while dealing with personal issues and meeting bewildering people in his new apartment building. There’s a clear voyage into the unknown with this material, as Sigal enjoys introducing unexplained visuals and personalities, giving the audience about 75 minutes of disorientation before the answers start coming, and it’s debatable if they ever do. “Chariot” has many issues, the primary one being a lack of a clear invitation from Sigal to join the lead character on his odyssey into the unknown, keeping participation at arm’s length as he organizes a carnival of weirdness only for himself. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Brendan Muldowney was last seen in action with 2017’s “Pilgrimage,” which brought viewers on a mission with medieval monks. It was an action movie set during the Crusades, giving Muldowney a shot to make as much of an epic as possible while remaining in his native Ireland with a limited budget. The feature was a creative success, but perhaps not a financial one, inspiring the helmer to limit his range for his next endeavor, where screen activity is largely contained to a single house. “The Cellar” is a horror picture, but one that tries to shake up the norm by adding an element of mathematics to go along with all the hellraising, giving it a more distinct approach than similar genre offerings. Bits and pieces of the effort are quite interesting, but Muldowney still wants to engage in a familiar manner, mounting a fairly routine chiller that offers shadowed threats and characters with frustratingly limited situational awareness. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The power of musical performance courses through the veins of “Metal Lords,” but writer D.B. Weiss (“Game of Thrones”) looks to go a bit deeper than simple stage showmanship. He’s creating a teen comedy, and one that’s more interested in character and mental health than basic high jinks, which gives the endeavor appealing emotional texture and unexpected depth. “Metal Lords” rides the same lightning as 2003’s “School of Rock,” getting off on the musical subgenre and the educational potential of it all, and director Peter Sollett (“Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist”) keeps the feature’s energy up as he manages teenage pursuits and musical management. “Metal Lords” is a bright film about a few dark subjects, and the production handles tone superbly, careful to avoid spirit-crushing formula, developing a highly amusing idiosyncrasy to the journey. It’s a whole lot of fun, and periodically hilarious as it explores the mischief motivation only heavy metal can provide. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

There was a time when the entire geek nation rose up and boldly protested early animation design work on 2020’s “Sonic the Hedgehog,” pushing producers to rethink their vision for the speedy video game hero, returning him to a more familiar appearance to appease the fanbase. It’s a powerful lobby, and “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” attempts to keep the faithful happy with a more directly adventurous sequel that moves the eponymous character away from domestication, keeping him more active with survival challenges and matching him with an assortment of game-based supporting characters. “Sonic the Hedgehog” was entertaining and funny, but it stepped carefully when it came to connecting screen elements with franchise highlights. The follow-up gets a bit too noisy at times, but it wants to impress, offering more hectic encounters to provide thrills, hoping to engage former and future players, not casual admirers. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Musical bio-pics are basically all the same, tracking the hardships and successes found in the wild experiences of an artist’s life. And they usually have permission from the subject to dramatize such developments, which clears access to music and moments otherwise locked behind legal barriers. “Aline” tells the story of music superstar Celine Dion, but the production doesn’t have her approval, which inspires a slightly different take on a tale most of her fans already know. Director/co-writer/star Valerie Lemercier is forced to get creative with her vision for Dion’s rise to megafame, and she delivers quite a compelling melodrama, paying full respect to everything the singer had to endure to achieve such global recognition. Lemercier doesn’t pay attention to the gritty details of Dion’s upbringing, but she captures an emotional journey for the movie, which balances musical performances with big feelings. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When we last saw director Michael Bay in action, he collected an enormous amount of money from Netflix to make “6 Underground.” It was meant to be the beginning of a new franchise for the company and Bay, who slipped into autopilot, offering his usual assortment of booms and bangs without putting in a noticeable effort to make something interesting with the basics in superteam cinema. Netflix quickly lost interest in a sequel. To keep busy while he sniffs around another blockbuster project, Bay elects to make “Ambulance,” which isn’t a small project, just minor league to Bay, who’s tasked with constructing a chase film with the bare minimum of character and interiors, endeavoring to make the streets of Los Angeles his battle zone. Bay being Bay, everything is amplified to a headache-inducing degree in “Ambulance,” which finds the helmer digging into his small bag of tricks to make something flashy out of a close-quarters concept (a remake of a 2005 Danish picture), asking viewers to surrender 135 minutes of their lives for a movie that barely has 45 minutes of story to share. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Chris Pine and Thandiwe Newton are offered an acting showcase with “All the Old Knives.” It’s a spy game from author Olen Steinhauer, who adapts his own 2015 novel for the screen, put in charge of transferring a character study that has a lot of room to roam on the page. As a film, the endeavor isn’t quite as deep or all that riveting, finding director Janus Metz (“Borg vs. McEnroe”) struggling to make something interesting happen with a story that slowly explores the growth of suspicion between two characters who once enjoyed blissful intimacy. “All the Old Knives” makes room for Pine and Newton to do what they can with the deliberate mood of the feature, but what’s imagined as a psychological chess game between two prepared players gradually runs out of moves, straining to find a powerful sense of closure while the rest of the movie periodically comes to a full stop. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Screenwriters Tyler W. Konney and Mike Langer hope to present a cinematic chess match with “Agent Game.” The tale features eight characters involved in different areas of paranoia and secretive actions, with the picture slowly clarifying a situation that’s introduced in an intentionally confusing manner. Konney and Langer have a diverse range of personalities and temperaments in play, and there’s some star power to the production, which offers supporting turns from Mel Gibson, Jason Isaacs, and Dermot Mulroney. However, a grand plan for thriller cinema isn’t executed with any noticeable gusto by director Grant S. Johnson, who’s dealing with a limited budget and dull writing. “Agent Game” isn’t motivated to be anything more than an acting exercise, and those expecting something more aggressive are left with little to enjoy with what’s basically a filmed play. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In their quest to develop comic book films without the participation of major superheroes, Sony returns to the darker side of the Marvel universe with “Morbius,” which joins “Venom” and its 2021 sequel as Spider-Man-less pictures about the world of Spider-Man. Originally created as an enemy of the web-slinger, a “living vampire,” Morbius is now a hero for his big screen debut, albeit one who struggles with his deep thirst for human blood. The complexity of the character appears to be there for the writers, but Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless (“Dracula Untold,” “Gods of Egypt”) peel away many potentially interesting problems. They prefer to focus on Morbius’s origin story and his battle against an equally powerful villain, keeping “Morbius” dramatically thin as director Daniel Espinosa puts on a visual display of flying creatures, echolocation, and shirtless posing from stars Jared Leto and Matt Smith. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Contractor” appears intended to become a Jason Bourne-style series for star Chris Pine, handed a role that demands a balance of one-man-army action interests and a more substantial dramatic effort. He’s playing a character struggling with the world around him, forced to deal with the demands of life once a sense of stability is taken away from him. It’s a juicy role for Pine, who gives the part a thorough itchiness to best capture the feelings of a silently frustrated man. Screenwriter J.P. Davis is interested examining such private horrors, also attentive to threat levels in play as a simple assignment goes all kinds of wrong. “The Contractor” is familiar in many ways, but Pine’s nuanced take on matters of trust and disappointment helps the material find its way to recognizable human moments, and while director Tarik Saleh (“The Nile Hilton Incident”) is a bit clumsy with the rough stuff, he still handles suspense reasonably well in this occasionally absorbing thriller. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In writer/director Richard Linklater’s varied career, “Apollo 10 ½” almost plays like a greatest hits complication from the helmer. The feature returns to the rotoscoped animation approach of “Waking Life,” touches on similar wonders of childhood ideas found in “Boyhood,” and carries a deep affection for years gone by, also found in “Dazed and Confused.” Linklater is playing to his strengths with the effort, which is intent on producing some cool waves of nostalgia during heated times of global and political conflict. It’s escapism in a way only Linklater could produce, bringing viewers back to the late 1960s to assess the state of the kid union as space adventures escalated, planting seeds in the imaginations of young minds everywhere while they dealt with all sorts of challenges to their safety. “Apollo 10 ½” isn’t a completely formed idea, but it’s a riveting stroll down memory lane. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“You Won’t Be Alone” is being sold as a horror experience, but it’s not exactly that. It’s more Brothers Grimm than terrifying, with writer/director Goran Stolevski attempting to rework the tensions of a dark fairy tale, focusing on an uneasy tone of discovery mixed with visual and aural poetry commonly found in a Terrence Malick endeavor. There are twisted events that occur in the feature, but Stolevski appears to be on the hunt for clarity in cruel experiences, detailing the odyssey of a cursed woman as she takes on many forms, trying to wrap her mind around the essence of life itself. “You Won’t Be Alone” is unusual and atmospheric, and it finds a fresh way to approach the dangers of evil, offering an episodic understanding of a strange education, where barbarity and beauty coexist in the weirdest ways. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Boon” is a sequel. There’s no mention of this on the marketing materials, and I wasn’t made aware of it before I sat down to watch it. However, there was previous movie, “Red Stone,” which was released last year and established the world of Boon and his history of violence. Director Derek Presley hopes to turn his initial idea into a franchise for star Neal McDonough, who co-writes the follow-up, which brings the lead character to a new town, where he encounters a fresh problem he initially wants nothing to do with. “Boon” teases major conflicts and aggressive actions, but Presley can’t knock the airlessness out of the feature, which doesn’t have much enthusiasm for the one-man-army subgenre. The writers are looking to westerns as their influence, but when the budget is this low and the star power this minimal, it’s best to go crazy with action, which this picture tries to avoid until the final act. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The multiverse is big business these days, with superhero cinema in the midst of exploring the mysterious ways of alternate timelines and different lives. The art house version of this idea is found in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which comes from writer/directors Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (credited as “Daniels”), who previously helmed the 2016 comedy “Swiss Army Man.” The gentlemen love the weird stuff, and they’ve accelerated their fantasies and fixations for their latest project, which takes the long way around when examining a middle-aged Chinese woman and all the relationships she’s neglected to deal with. However, Daniels doesn’t have a drama in mind, going the fantastical route instead, with “Everything Everywhere All at Once” an explosion of feelings, fighting, and oddity. It’s a whole lot of everything, which is now an official Daniels fetish, taking audiences on a 139-minute-long ride into confusion as a way of detailing their own philosophies and amplifying their filmmaking interests. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

With Broadway struggling to find its footing again during the COVID-19 pandemic, a story like “Better Nate Than Ever” might be the thing to shoo away the blues as the theater industry pieces itself back together. Writer/director Tim Federle oversees an adaptation of his own 2013 novel, which follows the determination of a young musical theater fanatic as he goes for his dream in New York City, looking to sneak into an audition for an upcoming production. “Better Nate Then Ever” isn’t a major achievement in entertainment, but there’s some charm in the material, which offer a palatable tale of dream-seeking and family ties, and Federle gets to scratch a few itches when it comes to staging song and dance numbers. It’s a cute film, but that’s about as far as it gets for anyone who doesn’t eat, sleep, and breathe Broadway. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It takes a considerable amount of patience to remain interested in “Barbarians.” It’s not an especially menacing thriller, with writer/director Charles Dorfman keeping away from violence for the majority of the feature. He’s more interested in mental challenges involving land deals, a dinner party, and all sorts of secrets that won’t stay hidden. It take most of the run time to get anywhere visceral, with most of “Barbarians” dealing with characterization and conversation, which isn’t as riveting as Dorfman assumes it will be. Perhaps there’s something in the more physical conclusion worth waiting for, but escalation isn’t a priority for the production, which aims for a more slow-burn sense of agitation, but even that’s debatable as Dorfman gradually finds his way to an unsatisfying conclusion. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Sandra Bullock has spent the last few years making different kinds of movies, focusing on drama (“The Unforgivable”) and suspense (“Bird Box”). She’s stepped away from her usual frothy screen personality, but the vacation from more interesting acting ends with “The Lost City,” which returns Bullock to a comedic part, trying to make magic with co-star Channing Tatum. Actual jokes are hard to find in the feature, which basically mixes mild action with riff-happy performances, with the production trying to remake 1984’s “Romancing the Stone” for a new generation. Laughs are scarce here, along with charm from Bullock and Tatum, who embark on a tedious journey into improvisation while the supporting cast steps up to become the most appealing element in this bland adventure, which seriously lacks excitement. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Naomi Watts has always gravitated toward roles that require sometimes extreme physicality. She worked through the devastation of a tsunami in “The Impossible,” spent nearly an entire movie in motion in “The Desperate Hour,” and devoted plenty of time to thrillers that demanded a full-body response to oncoming dangers. She’s back in full pain mode with “Infinite Storm,” which is based on an article (“High Places: Footprints in the Snow Lead to an Emotional Rescue” by Ty Gagne) exploring an especially arduous situation of survival and partnership high atop Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Director Malgorzata Szumowska has harsh conditions and deep psychological scars to explore for over 90 minutes, and she prefers to slow the feature down to best examine the steps of self-preservation. “Infinite Storm” gets periodically lost in its own real-time approach, but there’s something buried in Joshua Rollins’s screenplay worth waiting for, as a story of endurance gradually becomes one about loss, packing quite an emotional punch when the film needs it the most. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com