Category: Film Review

Mostly everything in “Book of Love” is pulled from other movies, but its central culture clash is unusual. The story tracks the ways of an uptight British author who’s tasked with managing a book tour in Mexico, exposed to a very different way of life, working to adjust to the shock to the best of his ability. Comedy is encouraged by the writing (credited David Quantick and Analeine Cal y Mayor, who also directs), and, of course, romance, with the feature hoping to be a primary Valentine’s Day choice for couples searching for something easy on the senses. Trouble is, there’s not much originality to “Book of Love,” which is weighed down by formula, slipping into Hallmark Channel territory as the tale goes from a passably itchy study of the literary industry to a banal adventure into mutual attraction. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Many believed 2010’s “Jackass 3D” was meant to be the closing chapter in the saga of men hurting themselves for the entertainment of many. It certainly felt like a grand finale, with the production adding 3D touches to best place the stunts and pranks right in the face of the viewer, providing a lasting jolt of physical harm. The gang has been away for 12 years, but with the world in a such dire condition lately, its time to laugh again. Or at least wince. Lots of wincing. “Jackass Forever” is the fourth installment of the series, with Johnny Knoxville and his crew returning to duty, mixing old, battered faces with a new generation of fans/volunteers ready to prove themselves worthy of the “Jackass” name. Once again, big fun is found with the endeavor, but the gray hairs are more pronounced this time around, gags are repeated, and it’s all well and good when a cast member soils himself in his twenties, but when they’re 51, it’s probably time to retire. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Last Looks” is an adaptation of a novel by Howard Michael Gould, who also provides the screenplay for the picture. It’s detective fiction, a slice of L.A. noir, only without all the rough edges the genre is known for. Gould is after something lighter with the material, trying to make a comedy about corrupt people attached to a brutal murder, with a private investigator caught up in the strangeness of it all, hunting for clues and meeting characters who would rather see him off the case. There’s cheekiness to the endeavor that’s a little off-putting, and the director is Tim Kirkby, a celebrated television helmer who also made the excretable 2018 comedy, “Action Point.” Kirkby is better with actors than tonality, getting decent work out of his oddball casting, but the primary whodunit experience of “Last Looks” tends to get lost in Gould’s preference for eccentricity, making this a rare crime story where introductions are stronger than resolutions. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Horror films have a long history of addressing real world problems through the fantasy of fear. “Slapface” takes aim at the issue of bullying, with writer/director Jeremiah Kipp constructing a monster movie that touches on deep psychological situations of abandonment and isolation, following the lead character’s experience with a mysterious entity as he struggles to make sense of grief. “Slapface” is a low-budget production, often fighting against some visual ideas that don’t work, and performances aren’t always where they should be, but Kipp has an idea worth following in the feature, which does an effective job communicating abyssal pain and fear that’s starting to consume young minds, leaving them confused and exposed to an outside evil that works in strange ways. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Horror cinema always follows trends, and the current one involves tales of cult intimidation, often sold through storytelling chapters, with characters going from stable to completely unglued over the course of the run time. “The Long Night” is another offering of the same old stuff, with director Rich Ragsdale (“Ghost House”) and screenwriters Robert Sheppe and Mark Young trying to keep up with the state of “elevated horror,” assembling a feature-length movie that’s not big on fresh ideas, and generally resembles a short film in dramatic design. Ragsdale hopes to support the endeavor through atmosphere, but there’s not enough of the spooky stuff to keep “The Long Night” compelling. The stillness of the effort isn’t welcome, keeping frightening events, or anything involving movement, sporadic, with Ragsdale pursuing a directorial exercise with the picture, not interested in storytelling needs. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Director Roland Emmerich became a very big deal after 1996’s “Independence Day,” managing a sci-fi epic that that updated the disaster movie formula of the 1970s, securing some high-flying fun for the summer season. He’s been chasing that career high ever since, put in charge of similar productions trying to summon complete mayhem with a large cast, emphasizing destruction and melodrama in efforts such as “2012,” “The Day After Tomorrow,” and “Independence Day: Resurgence.” Hoping to restore some career luster after 2019’s underperforming “Midway,” Emmerich is back in the blow-up-Earth business with “Moonfall,” which also attempts to marry the spectacle of sci-fi and the threadbare characterization of disaster cinema. “Moonfall” isn’t the worst film Emmerich has made, but it’s close, offering a thoroughly dopey tale of planetary survival with wretched screenwriting that gets worse the harder it leans into its ludicrous ideas. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After enjoying some amazing box office returns for most of the “Ice Age” sequels, the last chapter, 2016’s “Ice Age: Collision Course,” couldn’t find its audience, or perhaps the audience was done with the series, which managed to crank out five features highlighting the strange survival games of prehistoric animals and their adventure across a rapidly shifting globe. Blue Sky Animation invested in the brand name, which offered big profits to support the company, but Blue Sky is no more, with Disney handing the keys to Bardel Entertainment (the team behind the recent “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” animated movie), ordering a less expensive version of “Ice Age” for a younger audience. With budget animation and 90% of the original voice cast gone, “The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild” isn’t exactly out to delight longtime fans of the franchise, with the spin-off more of a babysitter than a blockbuster, returning to the world of the second sequel, 2009’s “Dawn of the Dinosaurs,” to get some minor league slapstick going. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Home Team” is another simplistic Happy Madison production, with the company hoping to huff some “Bad News Bears” fumes to help inspire an underdog comedy about a disastrous Pop Warner football team and the demands of their new coach. What’s different here is the liberal use of a “based on a true story” label, as the story involves Sean Payton, the controversial coach of the New Orleans Saints. In 2012, Payton was suspended from the NFL for his participation in “Bountygate,” where players were paid to intentionally hurt rivals, but “Home Team” merely uses this situation to make a dreadfully formulaic tale of a dad reconnecting with his son and a coach reigniting his love for football. The feature is predictable and insincere, but its greatest mistake is the lack of a fun factor to make all the familiarity feel less arduous to sit through. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It’s a “John Wick” world, and while the animal loving assassin gears up for another chapter in 2023, there are other actors who want a piece of the action movie pie. For “Clean,” Adrien Brody emerges as a new man of action, crafting his own journey of violence, sharing screenwriting duties with director Paul Solet. Brody hunts for a gritter take on a ruined man confronted with the ugliness of the underworld, looking to cut to the bone with the material, which deals with agonized individuals working through guardianship issues. “Clean” isn’t a consistent film, spending its first half in a psychological abyss before bloodlust begins, and while the endeavor gives the star his juiciest role in quite some time, the picture remains an uneven study of a broken man trying to do the right thing, eventually pulled back into a world of hurt he’s been denying for years. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

For his 49th and likely final feature film, writer/director Woody Allen pays tribute to the movies that moved him with “Rifkin’s Festival.” It’s a typical offering of neuroses from the helmer, who takes his act to the San Sebastian Film Festival, creating a tale of lust, marriage, and cinema while taking in the sights of the event and surrounding Spanish experiences. Allen doesn’t push too hard with the picture, delivering the basics of wit and style, with the cast asked to do most of the heavy lifting as the threadbare story wanders around the run time. There are no laughs in “Rifkin’s Festival,” not even a chuckle, but Allen’s attention to the travelogue aspects of the production are appealing, offering a tourism video for Spain and its inherent beauty, also working in a few digs at the underwhelming nature of modern day film festivals. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

In the era of COVID-19, movie release delays have become common. Studios are sniffing around for dates capable of delivering desired box office returns, holding on to valuable pictures until the timing is right. For “The King’s Daughter,” the situation is a lot more complicated, as the feature was originally shot in 2014, spending the last eight years in limbo after jumping around various studios, looking for a company brave enough to finally send it in front of audiences. The day has finally arrived for “The King’s Daughter,” which brings Vonda McIntyre’s 1997 novel to the big screen, presenting material that originally beat out “A Game of Thrones” for a literary prize. Unfortunately, the project has been handed to Sean McNamara, the director of “Cats & Dogs: Paws Unite!” and “Bratz,” and he’s not the kind of helmer who can do much with ambitious fantasy material. The best he can do is offer Pierce Brosnan as a French king and some iffy CGI, basically aiming the endeavor at sleepover crowds looking for an easily digestible take on love, empowerment, and mermaid vivisection. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Co-writer/director Mauro Borrelli attempts to blend genre elements concerning witchcraft with meaty World War II action in “WarHunt.” The approach appears to mimic the pages of a graphic novel, where the real and unreal are permitted to coexist, as Borrelli introduces some macabre additions to boost the men-on-a-mission formula, giving the production a few surges of compelling violence. While the film deals with various versions of evil, both political and mythical, the real enemy to “WarHunt” is its limited budget, which prevents Borrelli from really indulging the extremes of the story, or offer the viewer more than basic forest locations, mixed with a few sets. The endeavor isn’t a washout, just hobbled by a lack of funds, keeping drama and action somewhat stagnant when this feels like a premise capable of absolutely rampaging with more generous financing. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Tiger Rising” is an adaptation of a 2001 children’s book by Kate DiCamillo, who delivered 116 pages of dramatic development and characterization, focusing on the plight of two 10-year-old kids and their shared emotional frustrations. The film version tries to stretch the material into 100 minutes of soft melodrama, aiming to make an old-fashioned family movie with elements of sadness and fantasy, presenting an adventure from a child’s POV. “The Tiger Rising” means well enough, but writer/director Ray Giarratana grows too comfortable with the endeavor’s leisurely pace and broad performances, trusting in simple messages of friendship and forgiveness to carry the effort when DiCamillo’s source material clearly needs a more refined approach to bring it to life. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Redeeming Love” is a faith-based movie from an evangelical Christian production company, and the material includes several scenes of sexuality and sexual violence. I have questions, you’ll have questions, and some of the answers are found in Francine Rivers’s 1991 novel, which is adapted for the screen by the author and D.J. Caruso (who also directs). Rivers has created a tale of one woman’s experiences with tragedy, studying how it leaves her dead inside until the right man comes along to show her the path of love. The picture is extremely strange, looking to sell acts of submission and superiority as some type of warm union between opposites, and Rivers has a vicious side, with horrible things happening to the characters, which doesn’t exactly encourage the warm fuzzies the feature hopes to end on. “Redeeming Love” has production polish, but not a great sense of what kind of story it wants to tell, and what kind of audience it’s hoping to reach. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Last Thing Mary Saw” has unfortunate timing. There’s clearly a drive to create an atmospheric film about religious oppression and supernatural events, with first-time moviemaker Edoardo Vitaletti putting primary emphasis on the slow creep of doom. He works with a small budget and limited lighting to arrange a creep-out capable of reaching its intended audience, offering small bites of horror for the most patient viewers. Vitaletti has good intentions, but he’s a little behind the curve with “The Last Thing Mary Saw,” beaten to the punch by dozens of similar endeavors that share the same tone and imagination for screen tension. Not helping the cause is the effort’s glacial pacing, which is meant to conjure a special sense of agitation, but doesn’t get the feature where it needs to be in terms of unease, keeping the picture in neutral as horrible things happen to characters, and it’s difficult to work up the interest in their punishment. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“El Deafo” is an adaptation of a 2014 graphic novel by Cece Bell, who turned to the page to detail moments from her early life in the 1970s, where she dealt with the hardships of hearing loss. The book won accolades for its imagination and treatment of a delicate issue, and Bell now brings her story to television, with a three-episode animated series that seeks to support the author’s tender tale of traumatic experiences and empowerment. “El Deafo” was an incredible young adult literary achievement, and director Gilly Fogg and writer Will McRobb do everything they can to preserve Bell’s POV, including a creative use of sound to generate a specific listening experience for viewers, presenting an immersive understanding of hearing issues and a gentle overview of growing pains. “El Deafo” is simply wonderful. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Pedro Almodovar reclaimed his artistic supremacy with 2019’s “Pain and Glory,” which reunited the helmer with frequent collaborator Antonio Banderas, working on a personal story concerning mortality. It was a gem, and now he’s back with another of his favorite performers, Penelope Cruz, for “Parallel Mothers,” with the pair returning to the turbulent ways of a Almodovar melodrama, this time examining the sacrifices of parenthood and the cruelty of history. The picture isn’t a puzzle, but it contains a significant amount of turns and challenging ideas on the nature of motherhood, blended with a feminine POV the helmer adores. “Parallel Mothers” enjoys depicting matters of the heart, but the material heads into some strange directions at times, keeping viewers glued to the wild developments Almodovar has prepared for his latest foray into the depths of doubt. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Just over 25 years ago, the show “Riverdance” premiered. It brought the world of Irish dancing to the world, with touring companies traveling around the globe, delighting audiences eager to experience the thrill of synchronized movement and the power of culture. And what better way to celebrate the stage extravaganza than to release an animated movie about fantasy deer with magical antlers who populate Irish rivers, becoming prey for a mythical predator who becomes real when a lighthouse goes dark. And there’s dancing too. “Riverdance: The Animated Adventure” is one of the weirdest family films I’ve seen in some time, but the oddity doesn’t always translate into ideal entertainment. There’s some fun to be had with the strangeness of it all, but the production doesn’t know what to do with itself at times, reaching a 73-minute runtime in mostly disappointing ways. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

When “Scream” debuted in 1996, little was expected of it. It was horror counterprogramming for the holiday season, eventually making its way to a sizable box office take while inspiring a trend in self-aware chillers featuring disposable teen characters. It launched a line of sequels that gradually lost audience interest (the last appearing in 2011), and eventually found its way to a television series that lasted three seasons on MTV and VH1. The franchise tires were soon deflated, the cash cow was milked dry, but now there’s another “Scream,” which is titled “Scream,” because that’s what studios do when they want to repackage material for a new generation. And this is exactly the approach of the new “Scream,” which takes the original’s fixation on genre movie rules and formula and updates it for the “re-quel” world of today. Screenwriters James Vanderbilt (“Independence Day: Resurgence,” “White House Down”) and Guy Busick (“Ready or Not”) take the concept of remakes quite seriously, mounting what’s basically a do-over of the original Wes Craven film, leaning into déjà vu to best appeal to longtime fans and newcomers to the stalking routine of the Ghostface killer. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

It was inevitable that another “Hotel Transylvania” sequel would be made. The last one, 2018’s “Summer Vacation,” managed to become the franchise’s biggest grossing and best reviewed installment, finally finding a semi-inspired way to deal with director Genndy Tartakovsky’s often manic vision for cartoon chaos. What’s surprising about “Hotel Transylvania: Transformania” is the absence of Tartakovsky, who elected to step down from helming duties, taking a co-writing credit instead. Also missing is star Adam Sandler, who weirdly retreats from the easiest gig of his career, allowing voice actor Brian Hull to take over as Dracula. Some elements have changed for the fourth chapter of the horror-themed series, but slapstick remains in full force for “Transformania,” which works extremely hard to match the energy of previous offerings, though the absence of key players is felt. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com