It’s been a long time since director David Gordon Green explored
humanity. After a stretch guiding one inspired comedy (“Pineapple
Express”) and two wretched ones (“The Sitter” and “Your Highness”),
Green returns to his backwoods roots with “Prince Avalanche,” an oddly
hypnotic tale of vulnerability that trusts the power of silence and
imagery, managing to attack central conflicts from unusual angles.
Beautifully shot and refreshingly performed from two actors in need of a
change of pace, the movie settles into a position of isolation and
finds rich character notes to play, spun with that special Green
idiosyncrasy that once defined his career before Hollywood came calling.
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Four years ago, Neill Blomkamp made a splash with his directorial debut,
the alien immigration saga “District 9.” A sleeper smash that created a
career for the helmer and star Sharlto Copley, the picture was pure
overkill, but offered an enticing glimpse of Blomkamp’s undeniably
fertile creative vision. “Elysium” is his big-budget follow-up, allowing
the moviemaker a chance to romp around an immense sci-fi sandbox, with
major stars to conduct and immaculate CGI machinery to manipulate. Even
though the features are identical in many ways, “Elysium” is more
polished than “District 9,” filling out Blomkamp’s visual potential in
full. However, old, ugly habits remain, keeping his latest work
frustrating to watch as it avoids greatness to monkey around with
numerous noisemakers.
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“Lovelace” isn’t a bio-pic about the star of “Deep Throat.” The film is
merely a slice of her story told from two different perspectives,
highlighting the perceived thrill of adult cinema fame and its haunting
reality. It’s not an education on the life and times of Linda Lovelace,
but a glimpse of her years as a victim, with barely any effort put
forward to secure a rounded portrait of a complicated existence.
Although it’s nicely shot and agreeably acted by Amanda Seyfried,
“Lovelace” is a superficial examination of profound pain and dubious
character, keeping the material disappointingly one-note when it aches
to be so much more comprehensive.
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Let’s not kid ourselves here, Disney’s “Planes” has arrived to
facilitate the creation of a new generation of toys. It’s classic
Hollywood marketing disguised as moviemaking, only here the groundwork
has been laid by “Cars” and “Cars 2,” the Pixar pair that didn’t exactly
win critical favor, but ran away with billions in merchandising. Billions.
Of course the Mouse House was going to test the limits of this fandom,
especially when the last “Cars” picture showed signs that audiences were
growing a little tired of the automobile flavor. Now we have airplanes,
but the story, the jokes, and the corporate manipulation remains the
same. However, “Planes” does possess the fluid animation “Cars” lacked,
taking to the sky with a slick presentation of aerial balletics and
cartoon antics.
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“Computer Chess” has a gimmick, and it’s a pretty fantastic one. Set in
the early 1980s, the picture is shot with antique Portapak equipment,
the kind of camera one wouldn’t dare point directly toward the sun. It
lends the feature an endearingly low-fi look that’s played almost
entirely straight, setting the retro mood with an authentic visual
presence that’s amusing to simply study, unearthing vivid memories
concerning the early stages of the video moviemaking revolution.
Unfortunately, the effort’s imagination is limited to its look, as
“Computer Chess” appears to mistake stasis for subversion, leaving the
material’s quest to depict programming authenticity admirable, but
hardly enough to fill out an entire film. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Horror films are a dime a dozen, often viewed chasing trends or lazily
slopping the frame with blood to complete the genre task at hand. When a
production comes around that seeks out a different tonal direction,
it’s easy to notice the atmospheric changes. “Jug Face” is such a movie,
with the presence of originality helping to make helmer Chad Crawford
Kinkle’s debut feature stand out from the suffocating pack. It’s short
(80 minutes long), sparingly severe, and mysterious, asking viewers to
follow an unusual premise doesn’t reward with shocks, but a steady pulse
of dread, making the macabre aspects of the work all the more
unsettling. It’s a terrific picture, smartly made and sharply acted, and
it’s one of the best chillers of the year. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com

Writer/director Woody Allen has been in a romantic mood lately. With the
fantasy “Midnight in Paris” and the farce “To Rome with Love,” Allen
was swept away by a golden European glow, scripting tales of life and
love with his special neurotic stamp. “Blue Jasmine” isn’t a
particularly friendly movie, returning the filmmaker to areas of
psychological warfare and social discomfort that have informed his
finest pictures. A satisfying blend of behavioral severity, “A Streetcar
Named Desire” homage, and laughs, “Blue Jasmine” is distinctly
Allen-esque, but dominated by Cate Blanchett’s stunning lead performance
— a masterful tightrope walk of delusion and deliberation that keeps
the effort absorbing and darkly comic.
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It’s strange that the producers of “Blood” have decided to use a
six-part miniseries as the inspiration for this endeavor. Remakes are
difficult enough to pull off gracefully, but reducing multiple episodes
of narrative breadth and character arcs to a single 90 minute feature
feels like dramatic suicide, forced to compact nuanced relationships and
burn through conflict in a full sprint. Thankfully, there are powerful
performances to cling to, watching the actors conjure full-blooded
depictions of guilt to patch holes left behind in the script. There’s
powerful work here to savor while the story searches for ways to define
its direction, keeping “Blood” convincing when it should rightfully fall
apart.
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“We’re the Millers” feels oddly retro with its bawdy sense of humor,
resembling a long lost Farrelly Brother film from 1999. It’s an
audience-pleaser with its mind in the gutter, playing up its R-rating
with gusto, offering oodles of sex jokes, foul language, and a moment of
graphic nudity, unwilling to break any new ground in the genre.
Thankfully, the movie is also funny, though rarely hilarious, holding to
a steady rhythm of absurdity and slapstick antics that manage to
please, with a few highlights hinting at a more interestingly devilish
picture than the McDonald’s meal director Rawson Marshall Thurber
ultimately slaps together here.
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It’s actually surprising to be confronted with a sequel to the 2010
release, “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.” While
a modest success, the picture didn’t inspire the type of pop culture
ubiquity that normally shadows blockbuster franchises, but the producers
aren’t giving up just yet, submitting the more compactly titled “Percy
Jackson: Sea of Monsters” to the moviegoing public, hoping to build on a
foundation poured by director Chris Columbus. There is noticeable
improvement here, with a general muting of slapstick tendencies to shape
the material into a straightforward adventure/visual effects orgy,
finding helmer Thor Freudenthal conjuring the forces of Spielberg and
Rowling to craft a fantasy romp that, much like its predecessor, is far
too tense with exposition to really let ‘er rip.
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Filmmaker Brian De Palma has always been an acquired taste, often seen
storming through seedy material that plays to his strengths of
seduction, suspense, and stylized cinematography. He’s fallen on hard
times in recent years, with his last picture, 2007’s Iraq War lament
“Redacted,” arguably the worst movie of his career. “Passion” won’t win
over any new fans, but it’s an acceptable cleaning of the creative
gutters for De Palma, who orchestrates his traditional serving of sin
with aplomb, even if the material is somewhat lacking in cohesion and
venom. At its finest when whipped into a frenzy of implausibility,
“Passion” is a bubble gum thriller with plenty of snap, returning the
helmer to a place of excitement that’s been missing from his work for
far too long.
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The miracle of “Shaun of the Dead” has cast a long shadow on the British
filmmaking scene, especially any production that dares to touch the
balance of horror and comedy concerning the plague of the undead. That
“Cockneys vs. Zombies” is a blood-splattered delight isn’t a shock, but
how the picture manages to find a personality of its own while treading
on the same battleground of genre highlights as “Shaun” turns out to be a
major surprise. Silly, gory, and always on the go, “Cockneys vs.
Zombies” is an entertaining romp with nitwits and monsters, keeping to
the essentials of makeshift warfare while preserving all the necessary
funny business. All that’s missing from the effort is a translator for
American audiences.
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Perhaps “Drift” would be more appealing with the mute button engaged.
Without dialogue in the way, the feature is left with its picturesque
Australian locations and impressive surfing footage, creating a cool
summer view of beach life in the 1970s, with its rolling waves and
heavenly sunshine. Unfortunately, “Drift” is no travelogue, but a
melodrama concerning the rise of modern surfing, and it employs a host
of clichés to develop a tale of two brothers working to make their mark
on the industry. Certainly atmospheric but depressingly predictable,
“Drift” is more stimulating visually than dramatically, unable to
provide a gritty look at careworn lives looking for a path to
fulfillment. Instead, it’s a soap opera, but one infused with tremendous
cinematographic presence.
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There’s almost too much plot swirling around “2 Guns,” though it’s not a
particularly deep film. Striving to give the buddy cop picture a
criminal spin, the material offers plenty of double-crosses and
squinty-eyed showdowns, striving to puff itself up to appear significant
when it’s really just another tale of corrupt people making bad
decisions. Credit star Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington, who provide a
strong core of charisma that carries the feature through numerous rough
patches. It’s violent and brimming with nonsense, but there’s a pulpy
quality to the work that keeps it compelling, even while it tries to
script itself into unnecessary situations.
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There are expectations with “Europa Report” that are thankfully never
met. From the outside, the picture appears to be another
stranded-in-space saga, inspecting tensions between astronauts while an
unidentified life form creeps menacingly into view. However, director
Sebastian Cordero and screenwriter Philip Gelatt aren’t interested in
chasing cheap genre highs, preferring to play “Europa Report” as science
fact, contributing one of the most realistic depictions of a space
mission the screen has seen in ages. The effort is wonderfully
suspenseful and exhaustively mysterious, but the true grip of tension is
founded in procedural behaviors, gifting the film a striking realism
that makes it superior to the average B-movie.
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