On DVD & Blu-Ray: June 5, 2018

This one is a hard nut to crack. Both for this reviewer and the filmmakers as Madeline L'Engle's 1962 novel that serves as the source material for this latest Disney live-action adaptation has been said to be unfilmmable. A Wrinkle in Time was always going to be different though, in that this wasn't a Disney live-action re-make in the vein of one of their treasured animated films from their golden age or renaissance period, but rather the Mouse House had enlisted Selma and 13th director Ava DuVernay to bring this much beloved material to the screen. On the other end of this review is myself who somehow made it through grade school without finding L'Engle's novel despite being an avid reader and fan of all things science-fiction/fantasy. A Wrinkle in Time is one of those cases where my intent was to in fact read the book prior to seeing the film, but that intent never led to any kind of fruition and so I walked into DuVernay's adaptation of this seemingly complex yet still kid-friendly source material last night with little to no expectation as to where the story might take me. What I did know was that the trailers hinted at some pretty spectacular imagery as well as some intriguing ideas that would be interesting to see worked out through a narrative. First things first though, A Wrinkle in Time misses a huge opportunity to inject a rather epic title card (which, if you've read my reviews before, is kind of a thing for me), but more so by the third or fourth scene it's clear there is a stiffness to the events that have unfolded thus far and that there is a certain flow most movies settle into that A Wrinkle in Time isn't finding. It's a weird kind of phenomenon that either happens or doesn't and most of the time, especially with movies such as this AKA big-budget spectacles produced by Disney, there is such a reliability factor that we as viewers automatically settle into the groove and/or movement of the environment the movie invites us into, but this speaks to what is the biggest weakness of DuVernay's adaptation in that it's never sure enough of itself. Where this apprehensiveness comes from in terms of movie language doesn't necessarily seem to come from DuVernay's filmmaking skills as anyone who saw Selma can attest to her talent, but there is a more deep-seated issue at the heart of this big-budget spectacle and I don't know whether it comes from the seeming compression of the original text or the inability to materialize the countless words L'Engle put on the page, but 2018's A Wrinkle in Time is essentially a concept that possesses these larger than life ideas as reduced to their simplest form. Full review here. C-

You get what you pay for and in this instance you get Bruce Willis and Eli Roth ratcheting up the violence and gore in ways that you're scared might feel icky, but are smartly undone by the tone of it all. 2018's Death Wish is more inclined to be a mindless actioner than it is morally contemplative allowing it to play the field of the genre rather than hold its characters accountable.

Still, all ol' Hank AKA Dean Norris had to do was look up Willis' characters YouTube searches and he would have had enough for a warrant. Always good to see D'Onofrio schlub it up as well. C-

Call me crazy, but I really enjoyed myself. The many plot elements and characters may not necessarily be as fleshed out as well as they could be, but they serve their necessary purpose to entertaining effect. And yeah, the "weed pill" is more a catalyst for the action as a whole in Gringo rather than a topic of discussion, but the dark ensemble comedy pitch works and as a result I dug way more of this than I didn't.

-Oyelowo raps an entire verse of "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It" and nails it
-Theron does Mavis Gary, but from a different angle and steals every scene in which she appears.
-It (literally) took me two whole minutes to realize that was Paris Jackson
-Sharlto Copley is a South African treasure and should be utilized far more than he has been since 2009.
-"That's like paying a $1,000 for a Whopper Jr." Not a whopper, but a whopper jr.. I'm right there with ya.

I'll give this another go to see if I can catch what so many are complaining about, but I hope it's the other way around and people come to appreciate this eventually. Unfortunately, those who've already seen this will likely never happen across it again. B-

Thoroughbreds never goes where you think, but that doesn’t mean it necessarily goes anywhere interesting either.

So badly wants to be cooler than it ends up being, but what it’s trying to say or do is so lost in translation that it ends up being more of a bummer than a stunner. C

The Hurricane Heist is a movie from director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious) about a group of thieves who attempt a massive heist against the U.S. Treasury as a Category 5 hurricane approaches one of its Mint facilities. Needless to say, I haven't seen the movie and probably won't any time soon, but would be lying if I said I wasn't slightly intrigued.

Every Day seems like one of those movies that was a good idea when written as young adult novel, but terrible when turned into a film that actually has to reflect real life. From the director of The Vow, a bunch of pretty young people star in a movie adaptation of David Levithan's (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist) novel about a shy teenager who falls for someone who transforms into another person every day. See what I mean? It's not as weird when you only imagine it.