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Blu-ray Review – Daydream Nation
It appears writer/director Michael Goldbach really enjoyed Richard Kelly’s 2001 mind-bender, “Donnie Darko.” In fact, he liked it so much, he went out and made a copy for himself, dialing down the sci-fi complexity, but retaining the apocalyptic teen angst routine, performed by a cast of frantic actors who always look bewildered. I can’t blame them, for “Daydream Nation” is an impenetrable, seemingly unfinished saga of love, rage, drugs, and sinister activities, thrown up on the screen all at once. “Donnie Darko” it’s most certainly not, though it finds a few appealing moments underneath the deflating sense of chaos Goldbach is incapable of aiming.
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Film Review – Last Night
“Last Night” is an account of marital trust put to the test, though it’s not a habitual situation of primitive carnal delights. The picture dares to approach the sensitivity of emotional need, asking difficult questions about infidelity, submitting a disconcerting query: When it comes to wandering eyes and escalating flirtations, what’s the worst offense, sex or love?
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Film Review – Jumping the Broom
With Tyler Perry spending his precious time driving his most popular character into the ground to sustain a hold on African-American entertainment dollars, burgeoning movie mogul T.D. Jakes (“Not Easily Broken”) has selected a softer approach for multiplex dominance, taking on the trials of family and marriage with the charming feature, “Jumping the Broom.”
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Film Review – Something Borrowed
“Something Borrowed” is a romantic comedy, thus immediately placing its contents outside the border of reality. That whimsy established, this movie is still a total crock. Even by the low standards set by the occasionally nauseating genre, the feature doesn’t play fair, electing to strip a complex situation of romance and friendship free of any human qualities. With all the crude good vs. evil scenarios passed around in this unbearable motion picture, it might as well be a western.
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Film Review – Thor
Now here’s a superhero that’s difficult to translate to the big screen. Born of mythology and armed with a magical hammer, Thor isn’t exactly Batman or Iron Man, lacking the brood and the gadgets required to keep viewers in a shadowy mood of fractured valor. To successfully bring the character to cinemas, director Kenneth Branagh has conjured an epic visual experience, infusing “Thor” with the expansive sweep of a comic book and some snappy personality, creating a wildly entertaining yarn that effectively launches the adventures of a new caped crusader (and his trusty hammer).
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Film Review – Poetry
It’s easy to misjudge the South Korean drama, “Poetry.” From the outside, it might appear as another mawkish tale of self-discovery, with an older woman finally seizing the finer triumphs of the world in the twilight of her life, tasting her surrounding at the very moment it’s all about to be taken away from her. Instead, “Poetry” is a far more pained, unsentimental picture, investigating the commotion raging inside a perplexed grandmother, generating over two hours of spellbinding introspection.
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Film Review – The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
Marketing is everywhere, surrounding us daily with a sensorial assault that’s slowly become white noise. The public’s ability to tune it all out has stymied advertisers, requiring more subtle means to push their brands to consumers. It’s an elaborate game of buying and selling, with the average human powerless to stop the madness. Documentarian Morgan Spurlock? Well, he wants to contribute to the invasion in the name of satire. Or whatever Spurlock calls his toothless brand of filmmaking these days.
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Blu-ray Review – Jolene
“Jolene” is chunk of old-fashioned American storytelling, adapted from a short story by E.L. Doctorow. Crossing the country detailing the swelling woe of a redhead and her failure to find uncontaminated love in the world, the film attempts to spread the feeling of a life lived across a widescreen environment, working out the complex mechanics of a tragedy in two hours, deploying a supporting cast of familiar faces to help make the violations stick. Cruelly, the display of sorrow never takes command, with most of the film an unsatisfactory soap opera that never seizes an illuminating essence.
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Blu-ray Review – De-Lovely
As a swinging, small-time musical composer in the early 1920s, Cole Porter (Kevin Kline) ruled the Parisian nightlife with his witty combination of songs, bubbly charisma, and sex appeal. Cole soon meets his match in Linda (Ashley Judd), a divorcee who finds Cole’s songwriting gifts intoxicating, falling in love with the composer even with prior knowledge of his homosexual desires. Linda gives Cole confidence to reach for the big time, creating legendary Broadway shows (“Kiss Me Kate,” “Anything Goes”) and finding riches in Hollywood. However, their relationship is severely tested when Cole’s preference for men clouds his connection to Linda, threatening to disrupt his amazing talents for writing music.
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Blu-ray Review – Knockout
There’s not a drop of originality to “Knockout,” which largely plays out like a photocopy of “The Karate Kid” set in the high school boxing realm. The picture lacks a great deal of innovation, but it retains an impressive reservoir of charisma to help squeak it through the rough patches, making for an atypically pleasant picture from star Steve Austin, who takes a slightly less knuckle-sandwich position of caring in this underdog sports drama.
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Blu-ray Review – Chawz
I’ll give the Korean production “Chawz” this much: it definitely aims to please. An overlong, underfunny horror picture about a rampaging mutant boar, the picture has difficulty translating frantic fits of performance and slapstick into a crisply executed feature film, wasting a delicious premise on two protracted hours of stillborn silly business, tickling a screen concept that needs to play as lean and mean as possible.
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Film Review – Dylan Dog: Dead of Night
Based on the popular international comic book created by Tiziano Sclavi, “Dylan Dog: Dead of Night” is a monster movie trapped inside an exposition hurricane. It’s a winded movie of relentless explanation, eager to guide newcomers safely into a world of the comically undead, absurdly underlining every single move it makes. The thoughtfulness is commendable but the storytelling is atrocious, wrecking a perfectly low-fi creature feature.
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Film Review – Fast Five
Well, it took the producers long enough, but they’ve finally made a “Fast and the Furious” film that didn’t immediately trigger my gag reflex. “Fast Five” is the fifth installment of this unlikely saga of cars and bros, and while dopey as ever, the fun factor has increased exponentially now that certain plot elements and subculture porn has been ditched to roughhouse in Rio with a band of crooks who’ve blossomed into a family. The acting remains atrocious, but the formula has been altered dramatically, injecting needed restlessness into a comatose franchise.
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Film Review – Prom
Many films claim reverence for the work of John Hughes, insisting their high school scripts match the idiosyncratic tone and wit of the late filmmaker. “Prom” is an unassuming dramedy that also genuflects before the “Breakfast Club” architect, only this reserved production actually manages to replicate a minor amount of Hughesian DNA. Though at times unforgivably plodding, this gentle teen picture keeps matters surprisingly human, evading abrasive Disney Channel trappings to play more sensitively, thus encouraging a heartier emotional investment.
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Film Review – Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil
Now here’s a sequel nobody asked for. A modest box office hit, “Hoodwinked” cut through the competition with its brand of fairy tale satire and sarcasm, providing a budget “Shrek” experience for families hungry for something to see in January, 2006. The sequel limps to screens five years later (after a year gathering dust on the shelf), and while the technical effort shows some badly needed improvement, the jokes are as stale and dated as ever, making the second round a sleepy viewing event, despite the presence of a splashy 3D makeover to pinch a few more bucks out of paying customers.
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Film Review – The People vs. George Lucas
George Lucas. The name alone elicits quite a response in today’s geek community. The “Star Wars” universe of appreciation is no longer about starry-eyed fandom, instead transformed into a full-fledged religion, sparking a passion within its congregation that’s so profound, so damn testy, it’s easy to miss the sense of love so many swear they’re upholding with their criticisms. “The People vs. George Lucas” is a documentary covering the stormy reaction to filmmaker and his controversial artistic choices, debating the merits of his career and the perversion of his greatest success. In other words, it’s “Internet Forum: The Movie.”
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DVD Review – Fly Away
“Fly Away” details the experience of autism in a stressful manner I’ve never seen before, outside of the occasional documentary. It’s a stimulating sense of realism that helps to shape a raw, compassionate portrait of life lived with the disorder, finding pauses of behavior and response that shock and enlighten. It’s not an easy film to watch, but it’s a picture of immense importance, capturing an intimate state of mind few are allowed to visit.
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Blu-ray Review – Street Kings 2: Motor City
It seems rather odd that there’s a DTV sequel to the 2008 police drama, “Street Kings,” but perhaps 20th Century Fox knows more about the original film’s bottom line than I do. As strange as the film’s existence is, the procedural and thriller mechanics are well oiled in the compelling distraction, which returns to the black heart of cops and robbers and their mutual interest in stolen money and dirty deeds.



















