Category: Film Review

“Americana” feels like a movie that was meant to come out in 1996. The picture (which was shot three years ago) seems like one of the many edgy indies that arrived after the unexpected success of 1994’s “Pulp Fiction,” with writer/director Tony Tost (making his helming debut) charging up his creative batteries on Quentin Tarantino energy, submitting his own take on criminal and relationship activity involving an assortment of characters. He even plays with time in the feature, which tries to deliver crime world thrills in the open world of South Dakota. “Americana” has some accomplished performances and early scenes of tension, but Tost can’t keep the endeavor upright as it moves into a meandering second half. There’s violence and a treasure multiple people are hunting for, but Tost allows the offering to slowly fall asleep instead of building to a thrilling finale. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The world is a pretty bleak place right now, and “Night Always Comes” offers a reminder of the hopelessness that permeates everything in this life. It’s an adaptation of a 2021 novel by Willy Vlautin, who explores the financial ruin of a thirtysomething woman as she spends an entire day trying to make one simple deal to own a home a possibility. There’s a lot on the mind of the material, and screenwriter Sarah Conradt is challenged to make it all make sense for director Benjamin Caron (“Sharper”), who’s also tasked with creating an approachable endeavor despite every moment of the feature being soaked in depression. “Night Always Comes” is almost two movies in a way, opening as a study of desperation before turning into a crime picture, and the mix of moods doesn’t always work. However, potent scenes remain in the offering, which successfully captures the way of life these days for the haves and have-nots. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Released in 2021, “Nobody” was put into theaters by Universal Pictures without any real clue if anyone would show up to see it. The pandemic world wasn’t kind to movie theaters as streaming began to take hold, and star Bob Odenkirk wasn’t exactly a star, primarily known for his comedy pursuits, not his mastery of action cinema. While hardly a major hit, “Nobody” found an audience ready for its very “John Wick”-ian ways, turning a profit during a time when such an achievement wasn’t easy. A four year wait for a sequel isn’t the optimum play for a feature like this, but now there’s a “Nobody 2,” with Odenkirk returning to destroy more bad guys, this time for director Timo Tjahjanto (“The Night Comes for Us”). Screenwriters Derek Kolstad and Aaron Rabin don’t come armed with a particularly inventive idea for “Nobody 2,” but they offer simple, violent entertainment, creating more of a group effort for the sequel to take some of the pressure off Odenkirk, who remains an oddball action figure. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Highest 2 Lowest” isn’t meant to be an original film from director Spike Lee. It’s a remake of a beloved 1963 Akira Kurosawa picture and an adaptation of a 1959 novel. It’s familiar work for those who’ve enjoyed the story before, but Lee is utterly determined to make his own way with the tale, joined by screenwriter Alan Fox. The effort maintains Lee’s DNA throughout, finding the helmer making one of the best features of his career with this examination of a kidnapping and response involving a record label executive already facing all kinds of difficulties on the job. Lee reunites with actor Denzel Washington for their fifth creative collaboration, and the men submit a consistently surprising and dramatically exciting endeavor that finds the helmer firing on all cylinders once again, finding his way through family ties and business trials in unique ways, reconnecting with his artistic soul. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Screenwriter Justic Piasecki makes his feature-length debut with “Relay,” and he offers a very interesting idea about a relationship the develops between two people involved in a whistleblower event gone horribly wrong. It’s a fascinating story that blends procedural action with deep characterization, at times recalling some of the better paranoia thrillers of the 1970s. Director David Mackenzie (who hit a career high with 2016’s “Hell or High Water,” only to come back down to Earth in 2018’s mediocre “Outlaw King”) is tasked with maintaining steady pressure on the audience, creating unusual tension from scenes of communication and surveillance. For the first two acts, “Relay” is excellent, hitting a few logic gaps while generating an impressive amount of suspense, promising a great conclusion to come. A satisfying ending doesn’t arrive, but Mackenzie and Piasecki get most of the way there, handling the nail-biting needs of the tale and its unique study of planning and pursuit. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Kate Beecroft makes a kind of docudrama with “East of Wall.” After spending time with horse wrangler Tabatha Zimiga and her family in South Dakota, she wanted to do something with their special energy, creating a loose story of grief and connection for a mix of professional and amateur actors. It’s not an experimental picture, but something that aims to be sincere, soaking in the atmosphere of the household and the locations as multiple personalities are examined. Beecroft has passion for the subjects and a love for ranch life, also offering an unusual dramatic focal point in Tabatha, who’s challenged to replicate her daily experiences and realize the script’s dramatic inventions. “East of Wall” is a modest offering, and doesn’t always provide a commanding viewing experience, but Beecroft’s attention to the family and their relationships maintains raw power at times, finding her ways into the aches and pains of these people and their remote Midwestern existence. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After the success of 1982’s “Conan the Barbarian,” plans were quickly put into motion to deliver a sequel and help expand the cinematic potential of writer Robert F. Howard’s literary creations with a spin-off. 1985’s “Ren Sonja” was intended to keep the world of Conan going, but it didn’t find an audience, who were offered a visually striking but largely inert fantasy adventure, while Brigitte Nielsen’s performance as the main character left much to be desired. Talk of returning to Red Sonja has been going on for decades, but now there’s another big screen pass at the character and her violent spirit, with actress Matilda Lutz (“Reptile,” “Magpie”) hired to bring the flame-haired warrior to life for director M.J. Bassett (“Rogue,” “Endangered Species”) and screenwriter Tasha Huo. The new “Red Sonja” has a plan for Hyborian Age action and adventure, but not a lot of resources to pull off the adaptation, which often struggles with low-budget visuals and a few critical miscastings. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

After experiencing a creative wipeout with the 2009 comedy, “Miss March,” director Zach Cregger took some time to reinvent himself. He returned to theaters in 2022, delivering the modestly budgeted chiller, “Barbarian,” embarking on a new career path to disturb viewers instead of tickle them. The film performed well at the box office, but, more importantly, it suddenly turned Cregger into a talent to watch, keeping the movie business interested in his next offering. “Weapons” is the follow-up, and while “Barbarian” was a deeply flawed endeavor, Cregger shows noticeable improvement in his command of tone for the picture. It begins as a terrifying tale of loss involving missing children and the guardians dealing with such an event, but the helmer isn’t strictly focused on examining trauma. “Weapons” gets a tad weirder than that, keeping up Cregger’s impishness and love of surprises in a feature that manages to maintain some dramatic balance for most of the run time. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

22 years is a long time to wait for a sequel, especially for a film like “Freaky Friday.” The original/remake/literary adaptation provided big screen appeal for the summer of 2003, delivering a spirited take on body switching mayhem while boosted by engaged performances from stars Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan. It was fun stuff, and probably could’ve handled an immediate follow-up, but an extended wait was encountered instead. “Freakier Friday” arrives to basically deal with the same situation of confusion and cover-up, returning Curtis and Lohan to their roles as overwhelmed characters handling a baffling hit of magic. Screenwriter Jordan Weiss isn’t coloring outside the lines with the feature, but she does a commendable job summoning chaos for “Freakier Friday,” generating a mostly light and zippy adventure that’s just as charming as the 2003 offering, even with some obvious pacing issues. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Julian Glander gets a little weird for his feature-length directorial debut, “Boys Go to Jupiter.” It’s an animated offering of absurdity and screen detail, delivering a Wes Anderson-y spin on the experiences of a 16-year-old kid trying to take on an adult world of financial responsibilities and relationships. Glander plays with dryness and video game-like visuals, but he’s fully committed to the oddity of his screenplay, which demands viewers go with its flow as it visits areas of adolescence, weird science, and late-stage capitalism while it also explores teen dilemmas of life and love. “Boys Go to Jupiter” is a creative effort from Glander, and it possesses enough humor and visual idiosyncrasy to hold attention as the tale dances with unreality and musical interests while visiting the secret lives of Floridians. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“Strange Harvest” is a movie that’s been made to resemble a television show. Writer/director Stuart Ortiz makes an unusual creative choice with the picture, which is meant to resemble an episode of true crime T.V., aiming to transform a study of a serial killer into something slick and formulaic, hoping to entice viewers used to such journeys into darkness that streaming companies tend to favor, bringing real-world horror to an audience that loves the stuff. Despite the appearance of realism, “Strange Harvest” is a fictional study of menace concerning the brutality of a murderer known as Mr. Shiny and his reign of terror across a California town. Ortiz creates a mostly credible study of such evil, using interviews and crime scene media to generate an authentic atmosphere of dread for the endeavor. As a technical exercise, the feature delivers on its invented reality, making for an interesting examination of storytelling. Dramatically, the offering is a bit lacking, as there’s a reason why this kind of programming typically runs under an hour in length. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Kristin Scott Thomas has created an impressive career as an actress, working with some of the finest filmmakers around, taking in experiences with such talent as Anthony Minghella, Sydney Pollack, Joe Wright, and Robert Altman. “My Mother’s Wedding” is Thomas’s directorial debut, finally taking command of her own production, and she goes a semi-autobiographical route with co-writer (and husband) John Micklethwait, digging into her own past, which involved the presence of two fathers in her life. This experience fuels the screenplay, following three estranged siblings trying to make sense of terrible loss in their lives and their mother’s hope for love again, confronted by change and reflection during a celebratory weekend. “My Mother’s Wedding” is a smaller picture with milder dramatic goals, but Thomas holds it together with help from a talented cast and sincere emotion, exploring how these characters handle their feelings and their maturity when reconnecting with their past. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Greasy Strangler” was released in 2016, introducing film nerds to the curious anti-comedy vision of writer/director Jim Hosking. The picture was a wild ride of ideas and textures, and while it didn’t always hold together, the movie offered inspired goofiness at times, delivering an edgy understanding of a peculiar sense of humor. Hosking graduated to a slightly bigger moviemaking challenge in 2018’s “An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn,” offered some name actors and a decent budget to continue his exploration of oddity, coming up with another interesting study of lunacy. The effort was largely ignored by viewers, sending Hosking back to the world of small-scale storytelling for “Ebony and Ivory,” which actually doesn’t contain a plot. It’s more of an experience, following two characters as they deal with each other in a remote location. Hosking continues his hunt for slow-burn strangeness with the offering, but his creative drive is noticeably lacking this time around, showing more concentration on repetition in a feature that’s not easy to endure, even during its most inspired moments. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“The Pickup” is an Eddie Murphy action comedy where co-star Pete Davidson is assigned all the funny lines. Something definitely went wrong during the development of the project, resulting in a decidedly underwhelming viewing experience where the actor capable of extracting laughs from the material is hired to play the straight man, and the director is Tim Story, who specializes in generic entertainment (“Ride Along,” 2019’s “Shaft,” 2004’s “Taxi”). The helmer adds another dud to his resume with “The Pickup,” which hopes to deliver big thrills with plenty of car stunts, while hilarity is meant to emerge from Davidson, who’s working extra hard to remain energetic in the endeavor, acting like a puppy who really wants a forever home. The screenplay is no help, taking few creative risks as Story is hired to provide as vanilla a viewing experience as possible, delivering an instantly forgettable feature. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

2022’s “The Bad Guys” began life as a book series by author Aaron Blabey, but the writer has gone far beyond his original premise of animal hoodlums and their battle with decency. Blabey’s imagination has taken the series into downright cosmic directions, following his creative impulses into challenging narrative territory, making for an unexpected ride of risk-taking storytelling, especially in the world of children’s literature. The brain-scramble approach hasn’t come for the cinematic incarnation of “The Bad Guys,” which remains content to be just a good time for young audiences, keeping up with animal high jinks and heavy action, really playing up the master criminal aspect of the series. “The Bad Guys 2” is more of the same, quietly denying Blabey’s insanity while it moves forward with cartoon bigness, generating a second helping of colorful characters and bright voice work, while animation remains stylish for this return to criminal temptation for the morally dubious bandits. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

The television show “Police Squad!” debuted in 1982 and only lasted six episodes. It offered broad humor and sharp visual gags, allowing creators David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker to extend their brand of wild comedy after the success of “Airplane!” The trio revived their idea for the big screen in 1988’s “The Naked Gun,” which became a sizable hit for Paramount Pictures, who eventually ordered two sequels that also did significant business. It’s been a long time since Lt. Frank Drebin busted crime on the big screen, and while star Leslie Nielsen has passed away, co-writer/director Akiva Schaffer (“Hot Rod,” “Popstar,” “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers”) hopes to revive the spirit of his biggest career triumph in, well, “The Naked Gun,” which plops Liam Neeson in the main role of Drebin’s son (don’t do the math). It’s inspired casting, as Neeson has a funny side to his gruff screen presence that doesn’t get much attention, but the bright, silly highs of the 1988 movie are missing in 2025, which certainly commits to the rat-tat-tat approach of the ZAZ creation, but doesn’t share its inspired sense of humor. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Michael Jai White has been steadily building a directorial career over the last 14 years, periodically taking control of his action movies. His last effort was 2023’s “Outlaw Johnny Black,” a mediocre attempt to continue what 2009’s delightful “Black Dynamite” started, with White going weirdly bloated with his light comedy, unable to recapture the same magic. “Trouble Man” finds White returning to the Blaxploitation subgenre, now with an acceptable run time (90 minutes) and a more direct script by Michael Stradford. The production doesn’t win on style or mystery, but it’s a surprising amount of fun, finding White encouraging a certain level of silliness while also overseeing conflicts, including several resolved through martial arts contests. “Trouble Man” maintains a sense of humor, and White does what he can with his limited budget, clearly having a good time bringing the main character and his specific way of doing business with others to life. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

We don’t get too many kid adventure movies these days. The family film marketplace is loaded with animated offerings and live-action versions of animated offerings, but “Sketch” is trying to provide a different sort of jolt for fans of PG-rated entertainment, returning to the 1980s and the Amblin years for inspiration. Writer/director Seth Worley (making his feature-length debut) concocts an unusual study of panic in the endeavor, which follows the actions of kids and adults finding their real-world troubles replaced by fantasy ones as a child’s drawings come to life, ready to terrorize the community. “Sketch” plays a fun game of humor, heart, and (mild) horror in the effort, and Worley proves himself to be an imaginative storyteller with limited resources. He stays attentive to character and offers some amusing thrills and chills in the picture, making it a pleasant cinematic alternative for those seeking a more adventurous moviegoing experience. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

“She Rides Shotgun” is an adaptation of Jordon Harper’s 2017 book, tracking the desperation of a man marked for death who’s trying to keep his estranged daughter alive while they figure out a way to make it to some sort of safe space. Screenwriters Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski embark on a challenge to turn the intimate story into a cinematic experience, bringing the material’s emotional content to the screen while also preserving hits of threat and pursuit to keep the endeavor at least passably exciting. Director Nick Rowland (“Calm with Horses”) has some difficultly knowing when to cut short all the speechifying going on the movie, but he mostly connects with characterization and especially performance. Young Ana Sophia Heger is surrounded by talented actors in the feature, but she manages to best them all with a powerful turn as a girl caught up in a dangerous situation with a father she barely knows. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Body horror pays a visit to couples therapy in “Together,” which is the feature-length filmmaking debut for Michael Shanks. He heads into Cronenberg Country with the endeavor, using the ways of the flesh to explore a corporeal breakdown between two people who’ve stopped communicating with each other, on their way to living separate lives. The universe has other plans, and Shanks labors to create a nightmare to follow on multiple levels of interpretation, spending the first half of the picture creating a successful mystery concerning possible evil and a potential break-up. “Together” makes a few questionable creative decisions as it hunts for an ending, limiting the lasting impact of its dramatic mission, but the movie remains vivid enough to engage, finding pockets of ugliness to investigate, and the writing has a few things to share about the struggles of cohabitation and partner support. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com