Latest Home Video Reviews

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Logan Lucky (2017)

Soderbergh’s here to have fun, and his mood is contagious.
Atomic Blonde (2017)

Isn’t about anything more than the spy game and how to make it to the end of the board...Then, too, there is Theron, whose kind of un-performance in repose keeps breaking out into ferocious fighting that suggests a feral Jackie Chan.
The Mummy (2017)

As a story to speak to our hearts and minds, it's an utter failure, and perhaps so too even as a disposable corporate product.
Certain Women (2016)

Reichardt in no way pushes her material, instead giving the viewer the space to live in this space with the characters, observe them and listen to them, and then draw one’s own conclusions about thematic import.
The Space Between Us (2017)

Despite the multiple genres, The Space Between Us feels thin in its plot, and corny in the telling...
A Dog's Purpose (2017)

In this sort of Quantum Leap for dogs, a soulful, gender-confused, repeatedly reincarnated canine goes on a magical journey of Hollywood formula. Come with me, and you’ll be in a world of pure manipulation.
Woman of the Year (1942)

An effervescent but edgy rom-com about love, career, the insecurities men and women felt (and, sadly, still feel to some extent) around burgeoning feminism.
Rogue One (2016)

Will give die-hard Star Wars fans multiple orgasms...runneth over with Star Wars spectacle.
Canoa: A Shameful Memory (1976)

A deeply disturbing study of mass hysteria, a lasting cultural document of "a shameful memory"...and a culturally specific but widely relevant snapshot of that late-'60s moment of student rebellion being met by violent institutional crackdowns.
20th Century Women (2016)

Empathetic and self-searching...a highly witty, deeply humane look at people who may be too conscious for their own good, people who think and feel too much ever to be truly happy.
Sing (2016)

Sing is pleasant enough...but scrutinize it, and you'll find that it's neither very musically accomplished nor very funny. The tone is bright and colorful but still evinces a kind of joyless duty...
Being 17 (2016)

Its emotional beats strike honest notes, well played by the actors in the clutch moments...Téchiné and Sciamma prove that there is, in truth, beauty, as in youth and mountain greenery, as in nature's need and human nature's desire.
Moana (2016)

When it’s cooking, Moana prepares tender, slip-off-the-bone meat on the tried-and-true bones of the Disney formula.
45 Years (2015)

Implications, about the long odds for romance, the deeper psychology of mating, and the devastating possibility that love isn’t an absolute but a willful, occasionally mutual, delusion.
Moonlight (2016)

Filled with extraordinary performances, Moonlight explores the tension between private and public selves for a closeted black individual who feels pressure to conform to traditional but arbitrary standards of masculinity.
Cameraperson (2016)

Smart enough to make implications but let us draw our own conclusions about what these images, individually and collectively—and the art form to which they belong—mean to their photographer, to us, and to human society.
The Tree of Wooden Clogs (1978)

It's easy enough to appreciate The Tree of Wooden Clogs as a painterly near-documentary, shot and edited by a director who got his start in documentary films...or a spacious moral fable about humility and trust in following the righteous path.
Nocturnal Animals (2016)

A moody and deeply unsettling look at a pair of failed relationships, regrets and recriminations, and measures of emotional violence—oh, shall we call it 'lashing out'?—symbolized in physical violence.
Manchester by the Sea (2016)

In its broad strokes, Manchester by the Sea doesn’t explore anything new...[but Lonergan] is the master of telling behavior and conversational nuance.
Doctor Strange (2016)

Doctor Strange looks at urban architecture through a twisting digital kaleidoscope, next-stepping from Inception to an M.C. Escher-esque action aesthetic that amounts to three-dimensional chess.
by Sidney Lumet (2015)

Like Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow's De Palma (also released in 2016), by Sidney Lumet has one undeniable result: it instills a fervent wish to watch the director's entire output from beginning to end...
Pinocchio (1940)

Expertly balances whimsy, adventure, terrifying perils, music, comedy, and warmth on the way to a reassuring worldview of moral order, of virtue rewarded and the bosom embrace of familial figures.
The Light Between Oceans (2016)

Cianfrance makes intimate, psychologically penetrating films, with quiet spaces and moments of brutal intensity...As unlikely as the story is, Cianfrance deftly steers the material through elemental themes...
Inferno (2016)

You won't ever find me calling Inferno a good movie, but I won't deny that, in dribs and drabs, it gets closer to the marks of fun and quality than I thought possible from this picturesque but dopey franchise.
xXx (2002)

Superficially, it resembles exhilarating action films of the past, but the paint-by-numbers approach just doesn't do the trick. With all-around bad acting, hyperactive production, and a script that passes 'camp' and goes right on through to 'bad'...
Deepwater Horizon (2016)

Hammer[s] home what the news media didn’t much convey in 2010: the human-level horror of being on the rig and the sheer scope of the unnaturalness of the enterprise.
Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life (2016)

Silly and rarely believable in any of its particulars...Andy Daly, though? Really funny.
Snowden (2016)

Born on the Fourth of July for millennials...Stone effectively streamlines Snowden’s story for mass consumption, edification, and identification.
The BFG (2016)

Largely lifeless, which is unusual for fantasy material birthed by Roald Dahl or directed by Steven Spielberg, much less a combination of the two.
LEGO Star Wars: The Freemaker Adventures—Complete Season One (2016)

Even adult Star Wars fans with enough of a sense of perspective to laugh at this not-overly-serious non-canonical storyline will have a good time.
Fear the Walking Dead: The Complete Second Season (2016)

The show's second season improves the spinoff (from more famous elder sibling The Walking Dead) in just about every respect...
Pete's Dragon (2016)

There's room enough for both Pete's Dragons in this big old world.
Heart of a Dog (2015)

'Arty,' to be sure, but it's not pretentious: rather, it's expressive of the scattered state of mind, the reflective state of mind, that attends grief.
Don't Think Twice (2016)

Pinpoints a creative community that’s never been explored in a narrative film...its wistful, naturalistic presentation of a thirtysomething turning point—a forced maturation of sorts—rings true.
Macbeth (1948)

The graphic intensity of Orson Welles' black-and-white 1948 film of Macbeth, then, isn't merely for show, but a carefully considered symbolist staging for screen, meant to complement the Bard's immortal poetry.
Hands of Stone (2016)

The film works as well as it does on the strength of its acting. De Niro is in fine, grounded form, and his verbal sparring with Ramírez, [et al]...elevates the film, the overlapping dialogue highly effective in infusing naturalistic energy.
Don't Breathe (2016)

Once Don’t Breathe detonates its big twist...some audience members will feel the film stops being fun while others will feel the fun has started in earnest.
Lone Wolf and Cub (1972)

Could be fairly branded exploitation pictures in their quantity of sex and violence (and nudity and gore), but they also qualify as comic-book movies, and perhaps the first in the modernistic style to which we've become accustomed.
Morris from America (2016)

An amiable, gentle, light drama with coming-of-age and outsider elements...a movingly attentive Robinson has never been allowed to be this warm on screen.
Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders (2016)

A gleeful exercise in nostalgia, a fun and family-friendly Batman story in its own right, and a running commentary on the character's flexible interpretation.

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