Yesterday, a high concept comedy that asks what the world would be like if The Beatles never formed or recorded an album, is a genial, engaging enough crowd pleaser, but only if you don’t stop to think about it for even a nanosecond or take into account that it’s made by a filmmaker punching well below his weight class.
Well executed and performed, but ultimately hollow and meaningless, filmmaker Joe Berlinger’s look back at the crimes of serial killer and rapist Ted Bundy, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile is a distressingly passive exercise to behold.
To the Bone wants to be two very different things at once: one of them noble and important and the other hackneyed and clichéd. The feature directorial debut of television veteran and screenwriter Marti Noxon, To the Bone offers a deeply personal look at the struggles of anorexia through the lens of a filmmaker who once struggled with the disease herself. That aspect is the noble, well meaning, and imperfectly delivered one. It’s just unfortunate that about half of To the Bone is a turgid, chaste, thoroughly unconvincing teen romance that bogs down a lot of good and necessary conversations that could be had from the material.
Bullets fly in the drama, The Bang Bang Club, which arrives on DVD and Blu-ray this week and tells the story of a group of photographers in Apartheid South Africa. Other new releases include the terrible action film Priest, starring Paul Bettany; and Demolition Man on Blu-ray.
Opening at a theatre near you this weekend, Kristen Wiig stars in what could be the break-out comedy of the season, Bridesmaids; and Paul Bettany battles vampires in the disastrously reviewed action film, Priest.
