A dramatization of efforts to contain the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster following the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Fukushima 50 partly succeeds in its ambitious aims while being dramatically clunky in other ways. It's neither good nor bad, but it is unusually political, harshly critical of the blunders of both the Japanese government and TEPCO, the energy conglomerate operating the plant. Such direct criticism is almost unheard of in a mainstream Japanese movie. Star Ken Watanabe reportedly spearheaded the film, adapted from On the Brink: The Inside Story of Fukushima Daiichi, a non-fiction book by Ryusho Kadota.
The film unavoidably invites comparisons to the superb 2019 miniseries Chernobyl, which tells much the same story better in every way. That series was almost unbearably tense and deeply disturbing, while Fukushima 50 is curiously ...Read the entire review

How often do four wise and amazingly talented women come together to discuss their acting careers and to reminisce on old times? More often than we knew, apparently, but for one night only they will allow us to sit in and listen, which could not possibly be more rare. Four friends with ties that go back 50 years and an incredible amount of collective experience have invited filmmakers to their party, and the audience is the lucky plus one. Roger Mitchell may commonly direct fairly dull pictures (udson, My Cousin Rachel), but he knew how to get to the right place at the right time here, and we are just fortunate to hav...Read the entire review

The Collection:

As we remember George Carlin on the tenth anniversary of his passing (June 22, 2008), it will come as a great joy to fans to be able to celebrate George's talent with a new 10-disc multi-format set, George Carlin Commemorative Collection. The set incorporates all fourteen of George's stand-up specials for HBO, several hours of additional television appearances and interviews, the recent posthumous CD I Kinda Like It When a Lotta People Die, and HD versions of his final two specials. It's the definitive George Carlin video collection.

Fans of stand-up comedy already know that George Carlin is often mentioned as one of the top two or three stand-ups of all time. (If George isn't number one, then maybe we give it to the vi...Read the entire review

The Movie:

By now Al Pacino's performance in Serpico is something that if you're not familiar with it, you're familiar with the Serpico name being dropped into a lot of pop culture in the decades since; a guy who wants to do his job and get rid of the bad guys in power who are abusing same. And if you aren't familiar with the film, it's based on the real-life story of Frank Serpico, whose life is reminisced in this documentary bearing his name.

Directed by Antonio D'Ambrosio, the film includes extensive interviews with Serpico and some of the figures during his era of dealing with corruption in the New York police force. Serpico expands this look into a biopic of sorts as he shares stories about growing up and working in New York when he was a child, including an fascinating story about how a cop stiffed him after a...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Obsession meets disability--guess which wins

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: magic, good documentaries
Likes: card tricks
Dislikes: feeling guilty for trying to help someone, narrative-light documentaries
Hates: the very idea of blindness

The Movie
iIa a slick intro mixing card tricks with archival media appearances, and a look at one of Richard Turner's performances at Los Angeles' famed The Magic Castle, director Luke Koren quickly establishes his subject as a charismatic and remarkably talented card mechanic (Turner's preferred title), able to perform sleight of hand techniques with a deck of playing cards that would be...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Even for those unaware of the sport of surfing, Laird Hamilton has achieved a modest level of crossover success. Sure, he's appeared in surfing films like Riding Giants, Step Into Liquid and the sequel to Bruce Brown's Endless Summer film. But he's also appeared in fictional work too, notably in films like the Point Break remake and even had a brief appearance in Alexander Payne's The Descendants. And now as he continues the second half of his life a documentary about Hamilton titled Take Every Wave appears on the horizon.

Directed by Rory Kennedy (Read the entire review

THE FILM:

I tend to miss most of the previews on the Blu-rays I watch, as I am likely too busy fixing a drink or dimming the lights for the main attraction. A couple of months ago, I did catch the preview for Bitch on another MPI release and was immediately intrigued by the premise: an exasperated and unappreciated mom begins acting like a domestic dog after some sort of drastic breakdown. Marianna Palka's film is as crazy as it sounds, but it is also a hell of a good picture about mental illness, feminism and paternal responsibility. The filmmaker plays matriarch Jill in a wildly brave performance, and is joined by Jason Ritter as hapless husband Bill and Jamie King as her sister, Beth. Bitch may not be for everyone, but it cements Palka as a fierce rising talent.

Jill halfheartedly tries to kill herself in the opening minutes of Bitch by tying a b...Read the entire review

I'm completely fine with Hugh Bonneville being type cast as the friendly English duke/earl/lord/viceroy/whathaveyou until further notice, because he's both perfect at it and I love to see it. As Robert Crawley in Downton Abbey he was wonderful, that show is one of my all-time favorites, and he's back for a very similar role in Viceroy's House, although with much more politics and much larger issues on the table. This film is a look at history with a PBS flare, at least at first, before it settles into a romance against a backdrop of geopolitical change. That's quite a shift, but that's basically what Downton do...Read the entire review

It's not as hard for Brits to make the figurative journey to American cinema as it is for foreign language-speaking actors, which makes complete sense, given their literal nearness, cultural ties, and common speech. Many from other countries do grace our screens, but English speakers have the advantage, be they Australian, Irish, from anywhere in the UK, or from around the globe. So for a French native like Cotillard to have such a strong impact on Hollywood is no small feat. I first saw her in an American picture in 2003 in Big Fish, a stunning film. A few years later she'd make her move: A Good Year, Read the entire review

The Film:

French actress Isabelle Huppert had a great year in 2016, what with her Oscar nomination for Elle, a weird thriller in which director Paul Verhoeven for once actually gives us a break from too many gross-out details. Ms. Huppert's other notable show last year is Things to Come (L'avenir), a character study that's just as absorbing, but in a completely different way. I've heard it described as pretentious and uneventful, criticism that I think is sourced in audience expectations. These days audiences won't sit still for a movie that doesn't begin with an explosion, a bloody murder or a psychic cataclysm. The old 'why am I watching this?' reaction sets in, as if we bit into an ice cream cone and didn't get a rush of vanilla. Viewers today have better things to do than wa...Read the entire review

First, a little history behind the tale of Ali and Nino, since this film is, first and foremost, a fictionalization of history, as well as a metaphor for actual events. It's based upon a 1937 novel by the same name, written by the mysterious Kurban Said, a pseudonym for an author whose real identity is still up for debate to this very day. Said wrote the story approximately 20 years after the events on which it is based: WWI and the relationship between the budding country of Azerbaijan and its dictator, Russia. Some 30-40 years after its publication, the book would catch the attention of millions, becoming the national novel of Azerbaij...Read the entire review

The Film:

The vigilante film often takes one of two paths: the brooding character study and the exploitation piece. The "Death Wish" series for instance started as a character study and then quickly morphed over multiple sequels into over-the-top exploitation, propelling a mild mannered architect pushed by tragedy to reclaim his streets into a dispenser of justice on par with any overly muscled action star of the day. "The Demolisher" a low-budget 2015 offering from Canadian writer/director Gabriel Carrer attempts to straddle both those lines in a scant 85-minutes including credits. The tale of Bruce (Ry Barrett) a cable repairman who finds himself caring for a wife badly injured in a gang ambush while on duty as a cop. In the darkest moments of the night though, he dons riot gear and sets his sights on retribution as the titular figure.

The mere concept of "The Demolisher" makes it an intriguing od...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Turning it off one last time

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: The IT Crowd, Moss
Likes: Britcoms
Dislikes: Series finales
Hates: The limited number of episodes in British sitcoms

The Story So Far...
Written and directed by Graham Linehan (Black Books) and produced by Ash Atalla (The Office), The IT Crowd was a British sitcom set at the help desk of a massive corporation (which oddly requires only a pair of analysts to service.) Roy (Chris O'Dowd) and Moss (Richard Ayoade) are socially-inept guys working in the basement peacefully and grudgingly helping the technologically inept, until a new boss is hired. Jen (Katherine Parkinson) knows nothing about computers, and...Read the entire review

Joey from Friends once said that if two actors have chemistry, it's because they haven't had sex yet. If they have no chemistry at all, it's because they've already done it. The passion of anticipation builds the heat, and when there's no more pressure, there's no more on-stage spark. That silly theory fits well here, as the two main characters of Last Girl Standing have no chemistry whatsoever and are, in real life, a married couple. I guess that's the problem with acting on screen or on stage with your significant other; no matter how wonderful your relationship might be off camera, it's hard to show that to audiences in the...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Henry: Portrait Of A Serial Killer is one of those films you've got to admire and appreciate, even if you don't necessarily enjoy watching it. One of the more notorious horror films to emerge out of the eighties, it's an ugly and uncompromising film that presents an all too real look at murder and those who commit the ultimate sin.

The story is amazingly simple. Henry (Michael Rooker) is a thirty something drifter who ends up letting his cousin, Otis (Tom Towles), come and stay with him for a while when he moves into Chicago and needs somewhere to hang his hat. Otis' sister, Becky (Tracey Arnold), is also along for the ride. Otis and Henry hit it off pretty much from the get go and they decide to head out into town one night and pick themselves up a couple of ladies of the evening for some entertainment of the carnal sort. Once they've had their way with them, He...Read the entire review

The Series:

Even though it's a fairly typically executed three-camera sit-com about geek culture like The Big Bang Theory, The IT Crowd is nowhere near as condescending, obvious, and obnoxious as that American show that's still a major hit for some godforsaken reason. In fact, the reason behind The IT Crowd's cult status lies is in the way that it sympathized with the many plights of geeks, without catering to that audience with empty pop culture references, while managing to find a mainstream tone that maintained the boisterous and cynical approach of the best that Brit sit-coms have to offer.

Technically, the show has a very typical three-camera sit-com set up: Brightly lit video of obvious soundstages, simple setups and punch lines accentuated by the laughter from the live audience, the whole shebang. What makes the show stand the test of time lies in the perfect ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

There are two perceptions of Pele, one is widely known, the other perhaps less so. There is the one we know, the ebullient soccer star who exploded on the world stage in the 1958 World Cup, winning the first of three trophies for Brazil. The guy who was one of the icons as part of the North American Soccer League for the New York Cosmos and is at the top (or just before it) of every list of the top soccer players in history. There is another Pele, a little lesser known, who I'll elaborate on in a bit, but it seems strange that a movie hadn't been made about Pele's life, or one that I know of at least.

Pele: Birth of a Legend was written and directed by Jeff and Michael Zimbalist, who directed the excellent The Two Escobars documentary on Colombian soccer player Andres Escobar a...Read the entire review

In an unidentified area of the Balkans, two aid workers, Mambru (Benicio del Toro) and "B" (Tim Robbins), try their best to help whoever needs it despite the many limitations they're facing, both legal and physical. Today's roadblock: they need a piece of rope so that they can haul a dead body intentionally stuffed in the only one of the area's three wells that isn't loaded with mines. With fired-up newbie Sophie (Melanie Thierry) and translator Damir (Fedja Stukan) in tow, they run into resistance from the military police, pick up sad local boy Nikola (Eldar Residovic) in need of a replacement soccer ball, and find themselves shuttling around Mambru's former fling Katya (Olga Kurylenko), all while trying to avoid mines, angry locals, and worst of all, enemy soldiers who haven't yet heard that peace talks are on the verge of wrapping up.

A Perfect Day is an odd duck. It's a comedy that is on...Read the entire review

The Movie
Dixieland uses the Star-Crossed Lovers motif to explore the lives of people who dwell in the criminal underworld and struggle to find a place of their own in a world that doesn't easily forgive ex-cons. The day he's released from prison, Kermit (Chris Zylka) is immediately drawn back into the criminal element when he is asked to make a run for local drug dealers. Only hours after being released, he meets Rachel (Riley Keough), who takes up stripping to help pay her mother's medical bills. Kermit agrees to make a drug run that will put enough money in his pocket to help Rachel and her mother. Dixieland's narrative is driven by Rachel and Kermit's relationship, which is sparked by an intense attraction between the two and hinges upon the notion that people who have broken the law can be redeemed by performing good acts.

Dixieland opens with documentary-style interview footage of the...Read the entire review

Although IMAX theaters have moved into showing current blockbusters on their large screens, documentaries are still their "killer app" and are shown at least a few times per day at most of them. IMAX documentaries often take viewers to places they might never visit otherwise, and this one takes us to the ancient city of Jerusalem, considered by many to be "the center of the world" as the roads leading to and from Europe, Asia and Africa all passed through it. Although much of the film plays like a standard travelogue (with distinguished narration from Benedict Cumberbatch, telling us about what we're seeing onscreen), there are a few diversions from this which liven it up quite a bit. The filmmakers sought to include the perspectives of some young girls who actually live in Jerusalem, and three were chosen to be the focus of and provide narration for their own sections: Farah Ammouri, a Muslim, Chri...Read the entire review

In 1971, Dr. Philip Zimbardo began what he believed would be a two-week experiment involving 24 test subjects. The goal was to investigate the source of abusive behavior in prisons, with 12 subjects playing the guards and 12 subjects playing the prisoners. Within only six days, Zimbardo ended the experiment after his future wife Christina Maslach took issue with Zimbardo's moral culpability in letting it continue. Within only 24 hours, the relationship between the guards and prisoners had become toxic, with the guards' willingness to embrace their authority to torment and torture the prisoners spiraling out of control. Maslach correctly identified that Zimbardo was falling into the same pattern, allowing the experiment to continue despite the physical and mental anguish of some of the test subjects simply because he believed he had control over it.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is a reasona...Read the entire review

One of the most influential & stunning psychological experiments ever run, Dr. Zimbardo's Stanford Prison simulation revealed more about the human mind than even he could have predicted. Zimbardo thought that the experiment would be extremely boring to facilitate, watch, & study, that the results would be academic perhaps, but not dramatic. Well, 44 years later we're still talking about the implications of the study and making movies based on the actual events; I'd say drama made an appearance. The scenario didn't play out the way researchers imagined it would, mostly because the human element can never be predicted. But ...Read the entire review

My Favorite Martian: The Complete Series

Space, and the promise of the aliens incumbent within, was big business in the 1950s and '60s. Movies and Television shows literally sprung up from nowhere to embrace this vital new concept. One of many programs to tackle the subject with sober-eyed realism was My Favorite Martian, in which veteran thesp Ray Walston reveals himself to be an actual Martian, only to be forced into hiding, an exile that looks a lot like Walston shacking up with up-and-comer Bill Bixby. When this series finally bid adieu after three seasons, our understanding of the cosmos had been changed forever. Now, when MPI Home Video has released the Complete Series from its vaults, we can relearn the ABCs of interplanetary relations.

Newsman Tim O'Hara (Bixby) discovers The Martian (Walston) when his ship crash-lands due to a malfunction. The two hit it off almost immediatel...Read the entire review

Ron (Onur Tukel), his wife Nicki (Trieste Kelly Dunn), Ron's friend Les (Max Casella), and his wife Kate (Jennifer Prediger) are all longtime friends who routinely meet for group dinners. Tonight's topic of dinner conversation is inspired by Ron, who had to be dragged away from a phone call he was making to Steve Bricks' (Dylan Baker) radio segment, where he asks listeners to tell him the worst thing they've ever done. With some prodding, Ron confesses that his answer was a time in college when he accidentally hit on another student's girlfriend, and slammed a door on him in defense, accidentally chopping two of the guy's fingers off. What Ron can't know is that this revelation will open up a can of worms, one which will threaten both marriages, put multiple people's jobs in danger, and result in Ron being sent not one but a string of severed body parts by an unidentified tormentor.

This is the premi...Read the entire review

"Manglehorn." A quick Google search reveals few to no examples people actually going by this "phrase", yet it's perfect for the grizzled old man played by Al Pacino in director David Gordon Green's new film of the same name. A.J. Manglehorn is a locksmith, a tired and disillusioned old man who whittles away his free time writing letters to Clara, a former lover. Clara looms tall in Manglehorn's memory, but she was not his actual wife, the one with whom he had a son, Jacob (Chris Messina). At some point, his letters started to come back as undeliverable, but that hasn't stopped old Manglehorn, who continues to mail them every week, as if he is delivering his diary to someone else, one page at a time. The actual words comprising "Manglehorn" suggest a choked or damaged instrument, and Manglehorn often acts like one, ending pleasant conversations with people whose company he enjoys on a discordant note, a...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Normally I try to contain my thoughts about films until the end of the review, but it's really hard to do it when it comes to Call Me Lucky, so I'll get it out of the way now. Call Me Lucky may be one of the best films I've seen in 2015. It deserves to be on more Top 10 lists than it will probably appear on, and deserves more awards recognition than it will likely receive. The details that are brought up are unflinching in their gruesomeness, its subject has more anger than the average guy. Hell, its subject has more anger than the average arena full of people. But its subject is one that is memorable for his causes, which he goes over here.

This documentary is directed by Bobcat Goldthwait (Willow Creek), and focuses on the life of Barry Crimmins. Crimmins was a stand-up comedian in Bo...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Tiller Russell's documentary The Seven Five tells the true story of a handful of cops working out of the seventy-fifth precinct in New York City, specifically in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn. At this point in the city's history, crime and murder were at record highs and East New York and its surrounding neighborhoods were dealing with the crack epidemic. Things were bad, and some of the cops that were supposed to be cleaning things up weren't making the situation any better.

Michael Dowd was the ringleader. He hadn't been on the force very long when he started to learn it wasn't that hard for someone in his situation to dip into confiscated cash or drugs lifted by the NYPD from various crime scenes. Soon enough, he and his new partner Ken Eurell had a good thing going. They were dipping into whatever they wanted and then, when by chance Dowd discovered...Read the entire review

The Movie:

In Abel Ferrara's Welcome To New York, Gérard Depardieu plays Devereaux, a high ranking French banker based on Dominique Strauss-Kahn and in this picture exaggerated to the point where it almost feels like a political cartoon. If you've paid attention to the news over the last few years then you'll know, more or less, how this all plays out.

The movie begins before the highly publicized sexual assault. We spend some time with Devereaux and learn not only of his penchant for sex but also of his ambitions. He's a married man, his wife Simone (Jacqueline Bisset) is not blind to his character flaws, but this doesn't stop him from playing around when and where he feels like it. One time he feels like it happens to be while in New York City, where he forces himself on a hotel maid (Pamela Afesi). This lands him in hot water with the authorities and finds him doing a stin...Read the entire review

There are few genres as specific to fans as Westerns. Dramas can be about any topic, spin in any direction, make any point. Comedies can be whatever style, with whatever plot line, doing whatever it takes to make us laugh. But Westerns don't have that same freedom of voice, because fans of the genre know exactly what they want. As with horror, Westerns must have a few key ingredients to even be accepted. Horror better feature a few boobs (perhaps on a babysitter), a few screams (again, the babysitter can do it), tons of blood (yes, some from the babysitter), and something that frightens us enough to remember it when we head to be...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Angus MacLachlan, who wrote the well-received dramas Junebug and Stone, tries his hand behind the camera with the divorce dramedy Goodbye to All That. MacLachlan's inexperience at the helm is unfortunately apparent, as most of the visuals are bland and utilitarian, and the first third of the film is too low-energy to be all that dramatic and too awkwardly paced to be all that funny. However, right around the 25-minute mark, the film starts to find its way and, thanks to a great cast, it ends up a pretty good, low-key indie flick.

Paul Schneider, of Read the entire review