THIS IS BRIANDOM

Blu-ray Review - The House of the Devil

“House of the Devil” is a throwback horror film that actually makes an effort to look and sound like a bygone era. Granted, 1980’s genre nostalgia is nothing cinematically revolutionary, perhaps even tiresome cliché at this point, but writer/director Ti West keeps to the task at hand. Forgoing irony or vile retro winks, “Devil” plays it straight. While that doesn’t generate the most riveting suspense piece of the year, it does deliver a hugely satisfying chiller that’s effectively minimal and marvelously made.

Blu-ray Review - Amelia

There’s a power of mimicry and lavish flight photography that keeps the bio-pic “Amelia” in the air. This is not a strong motion picture, nor a particularly informative one. Instead, it’s a finely polished soap opera from a wonderful director starring fantastic actors, and nobody can quite connect the ambition of the piece with the execution. Moments of midair ecstasy hold it together and without those peaceful pauses of expression, “Amelia” is simply mawkish entertainment, stable and worthwhile for the uncommitted moviewatcher, but it never finds a comfortable altitude.

Blu-ray Review - Whip It

I’ll give director Drew Barrymore this: she made Ellen Page appealing. “Whip It” takes the tart-tongued “Juno” star to the crashin’, smashin’ world of roller derby for a coming-of-age dramedy that bites off a little more than it can chew. Energetically woven by Barrymore, the film suffers from an acute case of the adaptation blues, trying to cram in as many plot points as possible to fill its belly with caloric melodrama. It’s a diluted journey of feminine self-realization, better with bruises and teamwork than it is with pliable matters of the heart.

Saturdays with Siskel & Ebert - Groundhog Day (1993)

Film Review - From Paris with Love

With “District B13” and last year’s runaway train of parental purpose, “Taken,” Pierre Morel positioned himself as a superior action director, and one of the few film minds able to process producer Luc Besson’s harebrained story ideas and cockamamie characterizations. “From Paris with Love” is their latest collaboration, but the timing is off, the script’s stupidity is more grating than endearing, and Morel is forced to contend with a giant slab of Hormel’s finest (assuming the shape of John Travolta) for this action-comedy. These are simple ingredients, but Morel and Besson appear distracted for this round of Euro smash-em-up, making the film disappointingly clumsy and strangely unadventurous.

Film Review - The Secret of Kells

As strikingly animated and superlatively textured a motion picture as “The Secret of Kells” is, it can be a little aloof. A blend of history and mythology, the feature is a distinctive enterprise that aims to challenge family audiences and animation purists with a tenaciously 2-D snapshot of the world. It’s a passionate, dreamlike offering of filmmaking that requires the viewer to surrender to its often challenging storytelling, yet the time invested with this fringe player in the animation marketplace clash of the titans is rewarded with a resourceful, exquisite tale of tradition and education.

Film Review - Dear John

With “Dear John,” Channing Tatum imparts a performance of startling vulnerability. It’s an emotion previously unseen from the actor, who mostly gravitates to roles that require intense amounts of pouting, Gap-ad posing, and B-boy grunts. It’s Channing’s newfound sense of soulful release that helps the sudser “Dear John” locate a special footing to work with, heading into the manipulative universe of author Nicholas Sparks armed with a somewhat settled, organic mood of emotional response to best repel the onion-peeling shamelessness of the whole endeavor.

Film Review - Red Riding: 1974

The first installment in a trilogy of British television crime dramas, “Red Riding: 1974” sets quite a bleak tone of criminal assault from the very start. A haunting, ornately designed odyssey of journalism, corruption, and viciousness, “1974” is an evocative motion picture that soars above its modest television origins. It’s a flawed picture, but in terms of sheer nightmarish scope and top-tier acting, it’s more assuredly constructed and bravely dire than anything Hollywood’s had to offer the genre in quite some time.

Film Review - Red Riding: 1980

The bodies of the West Yorkshire innocent are beginning to pile up in “Red Riding: 1980,” the increasingly literal-minded second chapter of the British television crime trilogy. More directly communicated than the previous installment, “1980” benefits from calmer direction and a better class of actors, while gradually drawing out an additional serial killer tale that goes beyond journalistic investigation to pry open the black heart of the local law.

Film Review - Red Riding: 1983

The profound burden of guilt steps out from the shadows in “Red Riding: 1983,” along with an overwhelming amount of exposition in this, the final act of the British television crime trilogy. It’s the wrap-up segment, in charge of taking the combined mystery of two films and paying it off in a tidy fashion, lest the audience feel they had given over five hours of their life to this endeavor and were left in an inexcusable dramatic void. “1983” is executed rather messily and demands a very concentrated viewer, but the rhythms of violation and corruption remain intact, supplying a fulfilling closer to this ambitious project.

Hate Mail (2/2/10)

(Warning: Rough Language)

Trailer Tuesday - The Dark Crystal (1982) Teaser

Saturdays with Siskel & Ebert - Bull Durham (1988)

Pee-Wee Herman Gets An iPad

Film Review - Edge of Darkness

Mel Gibson has returned to acting after a seven year leave of absence, for better or worse, depending on your perspective. “Edge of Darkness” is the material that hooked Gibson out of his semi-retirement, a remake of a momentous BBC miniseries from 1985, directed once again by Martin Campbell (“Casino Royale”). Originally a six-hour engine of suspense and political intrigue, “Edge of Darkness” has been shaved down to a mere two hours of entertainment. It’s an uneasy translation, and while there’s an undeniably perverse pleasure in watching Gibson mow down baddies once again, the film as a whole doesn’t form a narrative convincing enough to support such action cinema luxuries.

Film Review - When in Rome

The comic relief is provided by Dax Shepard, Jon Heder, and Will Arnett; there’s a punchline where a needle is literally scratched off a record; a character exclaims “My bad!” after a piece of destructive slapstick; the screenplay makes absolutely no sense; and Danny DeVito plays a horny sausage salesman. See, this is what happens when Hollywood gives a romantic comedy to the director of “Daredevil,” “Ghost Rider,” and “Simon Birch.”

Film Review - Nick Nolte: No Exit

Nick Nolte the actor is a celebrated professional with an eccentric, semi-enviable list of credits to his name, revealing a passion for the art form and willingness to surprise. Nick Nolte the man is a walking contradiction; he’s a soul on a life’s quest to find emotional truth in his profession, yet buries his feeling under layers of chemical excess and a pathological need to lie to the press. There’s no one better to tell the story of Nick Nolte than the actor himself, who takes center stage in this undeniably hypnotic but eventually aimless documentary.

Film Review - Paintball

Paintball is a fascinating game, permitting average domesticated folk an opportunity to immerse themselves in a world of heated combat and precise military strategy, with the only possible downside being a few welts and stained clothing. “Paintball” is a low-budget thriller that twists purist enthusiasm for the sport in a rather macabre way, attaching life or death stakes to a pastime often associated with genial weekend warrior escapism.

20 for 10: The Movies of 2010 (Part 2)

Trailer Tuesday - Six Ways to Sunday (1999)