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Piloting Toward a Path of Mob Hired EVIL! “Flight Risk” reviewed! (Lionsgate / Blu-ray – DVD – Digital)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“Flight Risk” Blu-ray Takes Off and Is Now Availablle to Own!

After tracking down and arresting a criminal kingpin’s accountant in an Alaskan hotel, U.S. Marshall Madolyn agrees to a plea deal with the accountant in exchange for his incriminating testimony that would lock away the mob boss for years, but before prosecution can get underway, the U.S. Marshall must get her witness to New York City.  Charactering a Cessna 208 light aircraft to escort them out of Alaska, the more-than-eccentric rustic pilot is more tirelessly inquisitive than charismatically charming toward the Marshall about having a suspect chained to the seat in the rear of his plane while also gabbing about casual, byway pleasantries and his rural, for-hire lifestyle as a pilot.  Little do Madolyn and the accountant know is that their pilot is a sadist assassin hired by mob boss and by the time they reach cruising altitude, Madolyn finds herself confined with a relentless killer and without the knowhow to fly a plane herself.  

Not since 2016 has “Lethal Weapon” and “Mad Max” actor Mel Gibson directed a film, that film being the World War II action-drama, “Hacksaw Ridge.”  Gibson returns to being behind-the-camera in 2025 with his latest venture, an aerial, hitman thriller “Flight Risk” from a contained debut big picture script by Jared Rosenberg.  “Flight Risk” strays from the normal course of being an epic feature that usually draws the cinematic eye of Gibson with being a smaller production, an intimate cast, and isolated mostly on a deconstructed light aircraft in front of what is essentially a floor-to-ceiling, 180-degree IMAX screen simulator to depict coursing through the snow-topped mountains of the Alaska Range.  Gibson produces the story along with Bruce Davey, John Fox, and John Davis in a Lionsgate presented combined company production from Davis Entertainment, Icon Productions, Media Capital Technologies, Hammerstone Pictures, and Blue Rider Pictures.

Three onscreen principals and a handful of voiceover work is all there is to “Flight Risk’s” casting with many of the scenes “high” above ground inside the tight confines of a personal aircraft to intensify the close-quartered combat with the unspoken caveat of nowhere to run, nowhere to hide thousands of feet up in the clouds.  Actress Michelle Dockery, known for her role as Lady Mary Crawley in the dynamic upstairs, downstairs period drama series “Downton Abbey,” exchanges her glittering ballroom gowns and British accent for a sidearm Glock and a flat American-beurocratic accent as U.S. Marshall Madolyn with a complicated backstory that places her back into the field after being assigned desk duty when a witness dies in her custody.  Dockery is all business and no pleasure with a retaining wall that holds all her emotions in so she can focus on the important opportunity to be back into the field.  Audiences will be thrusted right the middle of the opportunity and experience her unpleasant history being unraveled exposition as she begins to empathize and sympathize with her current witness, Winston, a skilled accountant with a harmless, passive proclivity played by with the sarcastic reflex of a frightened squirrel in Topher Grace (“Predators,” “Spider-Man 3”).  Madolyn and Winston slowly, simmering bond, merging into a fight or flight friendship out of from being an authoritative escort and detainee, is forged by fire when Mark Wahlberg’s receding hairline, eccentrically crazy, sadistic rapist of a hitman pilot attempts to restrain Madolyn and divert Winstown for his own personal pleasure on the behalf of the Mob Boss instruction.  Likely Wahlberg’s most depraved role since 1996’s “Fear,” the “Transformers” and “Daddy’s Home” actor puts forth less of his muscular tone and good looks by stepping into a balding, gum-chewing wild eye maniac, relentlessly bloodthirsty with the gift of grotesque gab, in a cat-and-mouse tit-for-tat game for the plane yoke and control.  A voice cast rounds out the rest that push the story in deception and direction with Leah Remini (“Old School”) and Paul Ben-Victor (“Body Parts”) as Madolyn’s colleagues who may or may not be corrupt and Maaz Ali (“Anxious”) as your friendly and flirtatious pilot instructor. 

An absolute different kind of project for director Mel Gibson that’s not historical, period, or epic as he takes off into unknown territory and elevating as a director who can remove himself from the bigger picture for a smaller one.  “Flight Risk” is a prime example of what Hollywood should be putting into production rather than squandering millions on grand flops but limited the budget that, in turns, limits the star power and conceding the story to saturate with substance rather than with ostentatious effects.  “Flight Risk” proved to be a modest profiting film on what is now considered a meager budget of $25 million, but a profit is a profit, and the thriller is highly entertaining and engrossing with solid performance supporting a step-by-step, linear story arc.  Granted, the film isn’t completely without flaws.  While Johnny Derango (“Fatman”) can capture the correct angles in the plane’s small, confined space and gratifying the depth with the visual screen through the plane windows, these aspects are negatively counterbalanced by visual effects that stunt the aesthetics with cheap-looking knockoffs of exteriors at the beginning and end of the film.  Fortunately, these scenes are scarce and does continue the yard forward without looking back as girth of Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Dockery, and Topher Grace vie for their moment in the spotlight with their character’s idiosyncrasies. 

The Lionsgate presented “Flight Risk” takes cue from the locomotive folktale being the little film that could, replacing the small train for a small plane and chugging, climbing up the Alaska mountain of nonstop thrills.  The new combo format Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital set from the company evokes many ways to enjoy the latest, and humblest, Mel Gibson picture.  The Blu-ray is AVC encoded, 1080p high-definition, BD50 while the DVD is MPEG2 encoded, upscaled to 1080p, on a DVD9.  In covering the Blu-ray, the picture is near perfect without compression issues faulter a landscape of whites, blues, and the spotted greeneries in between that make up the Alaska geography on the big 180’ volume screen for pseudo flight. The matte visual mixed with the angle of the cameras work to the location’s authenticity and the camera angles solidify that the illusion while the pixel range sharpens any loose ends that might occur in presentation.  Coloring and breadth of saturation diffuse fine with an organic look except for the VFX that stands out like a sore thumb.  English Dolby Atmos creates an immersive audible impression, splicing through the channels that reflect more in the back channels of Mark Wahlberg’s frantic, and sordid, diatribes from the plane’s cargo tail.  Exteriors are not as explosive around the plane as expected with the Dolby’s loss of fidelity but, to the advantage of the story, the engine him and the turbulence has an agreeable depth muffle to it in the surrounding channels and into the frontloaded dialogue, which is intelligible and without unintended equipment interference.  Also included are French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks and an English descriptive audio.  English, Spanish and French subtitles are optional.  Risk Management:  Making flight Risk is the standard fare behind-the-scenes cast-and-crew interviews with some raw behind-the-camera shots surrounding the genesis of “Flight Risk” and the how certain aspects of the film, such as cinematography and Mark Wahlberg’s devilish persona, are achieved.  The theatrical trailer rounds out the encoded special features.  Personally, I was not impressed with the cover art that’s on the Amaray and the cardboard O-slip with a sheen coating that puts Wahlberg front-and-center of a misleading campaign of the ruthless killer looking oddly unflappable while zipping fighter jet theatrics are composited over his midsection; the whole illustration just doesn’t speak the “Flight Risk’s” disposition.  Nothing else to note tangibly other than the 4K digital code insert in its usual slot.  Rated R for violence and language, Lionsgate Blu-ray is region A encoded and has a textbook runtime of 91-minutes.

Last Rites: “Flight Risk” cruises at a palatable attitude of flight dynamics, aerial assassinations, and the rehabilitation of broken character in Mel Gibson’s smaller, but mighty, latest feature.

“Flight Risk” Blu-ray Takes Off and Is Now Availablle to Own!

Starve EVIL With Unseen Faith. “A Banquet” reviewed! (Second Sight / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

After the long-term care of her terminally ill suffering husband, he suddenly commits suicide right in front of her and right in front of their oldest daughter who just came home.  Holly must now pull it together for her two teenage daughters, Betsey and Isabelle.  Drowning in debt to maintain a wealth front of normalcy, Holly puts on the facade to juggle life’s adversities to order to keep the family above water, but when Betsey is overcome by an apocalyptic vision that intermittently possesses her behavior, Holly’s unsure of how to cope as any threats of committing Betsey for treatment is rebutted by talks of suicide.   Betsey goes into deep trances, deep sleeps, and won’t eat despite not losing any weight and as imaginations run wild of what’s driving her unusual behavior, Holly must contend to survive and triumph not only in her daughter’s wellbeing but in all of the seemingly insurmountable problems threatening to tumble down and crush her spirit.

If you’re a fan of elevated horror then Ruth Paxton’s debut dysfunctional family drama horror, “A Banquet,” will tickle your thinking pickle.  While some would argue there is no need for elevated horror in the genre, sometimes exercising the old thinker can be immensely stimulating as well as scary in the same breath.  The 2021 psychological thriller-horror hailing from the United Kingdom was one of the first productions shot in the thick of government issued pandemic lockdowns that tossed the moviemaking job market into a frenzy, scary void of uncertainly and, what seemed like, an eternal limbo, similar to what “A Banquet” offers in its multifarious themes and interpretations that involve faith and religion, family hierarchy, and postural image.  With many departmental crews and cast out of a job and unable to find work during forced lockdowns, “A Banquet” became a beacon of hope and a chance to indulge a passion no matter how little it paid.  “A Banquet” is penned by Justin Bull (“Merge”) and was secured by first time producer Leonora Darby with Nik Bower (“Replicas”), James Harris (47 Meters Down”), Mark Lane “Cockneys vs Zombies”), and Laure Vaysse (“A Dark Place”) co-producing the conglomerated production from HanWay Films, Riverstone Pictures, Tea Shop Productions, and Reliance Entertainment Productions 8 LTD.

“A Banquet” surrounds around a nuclear family minus the patriarch who immediately removed from the picture within the first five-minute opener in a powerful scene of weary difficulty, distressing pain, and a harsh untethering of a burden that begins the inklings of the uncanny to come. Enter mother Holly (Sienne Guillory, Paul W.S. Anderson’s “Resident Evil” franchise) and her two daughters, Betsey (Jessica Alexander) and Isabelle (Ruby Stokes), into the frame weeks, maybe months later, and resided to the loss. Playing the center of concern is the raven-haired Jessica Alexander in what is one of her first feature film performances and it’s a doozy.  As Betsey, a mild-manner older teenage girl at the forefront of adulthood, Alexander earns the chance to showcase herself in a variety of ways with a role that transcends from a docile daughter to a variable vessel of unknown origin that’s haunting and unpredictable as you can never tell what’s taken control over Betsey is naturally good or evil.  Alexander even gets to dip her toes into, or rather dig her fingers into, gross and horrifying practical effects with brilliant results.  Opposite Alexander in the role of the mother, Holly, is Sienna Guillory, a beguiling veteran actress now in the throes of maintaining the routine and keeping appearances aggregated up to snuff.  Guillory exudes a bottled-up pressure that’s so immense it can be translate right off the screen and into the viewer.  There’s plenty of tension in the story but most of it is concentrated right on Guillory’s embodiment of a mother treading desperately in deep waters.  A maelstrom of frustration, fear, loathing, and neglect eviscerate Holly open to shoulder her family’s bleeding and she claws frantically, with poise, to cauterize the fissure.  Isabelle is a fascinating and almost unintentionally forgotten character that is meant to evoke that effect as the neglected younger sister.  While we’re constantly orbiting Holly and Betsey’s, we lose track of Ruby Stokes’s Isabelle yet the upcoming star for Netflix’s “Lockwood and Co.” Stokes paints a potent psychological picture of Isabelle being on the backburner.  Raw and tragic, Stokes subtly pushes Isabelle, who initially is the more cavalier and disobedient of the two sisters, to strive for attention in her own way whether be that longing glance into the stands when her mother isn’t paying her mind during figuring skating instruction or wanting to reluctantly engage in alcohol and sex just to outlet that notice me energy elsewhere.  Concluding this bloodline of women is the more draconian matriarch, Grandmother June, with an uncompromising and plain-spoken fascia erected by Lindsay Duncan (“Body Parts”).  Duncan’s fine snide performance compounds the pressure on Holly and is a cold bucket of ice water to her granddaughters when speaking her mind, telling them simply stop pretending, and remind them of their mother’s own historical mental problems in a matter-of-fact tone.  Between the four, there’s individualistic dominance over each of their domain without an ounce of withdraw or relief until the bitter end and that dreadful dynamic sets the tone for the “A Banquet” austere veneer and tone.

“A Banquet” is a lot to unbox and chew on in this women-driven created film.  Open for a many number of interpretations, based on one own’s spiritual outlook or personal opinions, Ruth Paxton tees up a broader theme of centrical growth of stepping outside another’s shadow.  The message can be applied to Holly and her two daughters as each one of them attempts to move forward or past a routine of some form of contempt.  Isabelle is trying to get out of her sister’s shadow, Holly bristles against her overbearing mother, and Betsey is being supernaturally guided through a symbolically painful transition of growing up into an adult as if the process came naturally. Blunt defiant moments shine Betsey’s overall separation from mother’s control, such as threatening to kill herself if her mother institutionalizes her or in during the number of elaborately prepped dinners that Holly slave over are just pushed aside and untouched by Betsey. Those dinners, in themselves, are a sign of privileged with fine dining right at their fingertips with no sign of hot dogs or sloppy joes in sight. Holly strives to maintain that sense of luxury, which is another form of control but, in this case, is Holly’s mother June whose elitist fundamentals enslave Holly to live up to the hype. Systematically, each member of the family, working up the ladder from youngest to oldest, breaks the inherent status quo. What Betsey undergoes is mystically charged after she emerges from the woods a changed woman and what might seem like a possession of sorts, we don’t exactly know if the extent of what inhabits her is wicked or actually good as the pendulum sways constantly between being enlightened and being cursed. There’s plenty of allusions toward a religious experience with encouragement of faith and rapture talk that not only spooks Holly but also makes her the primary subject of Betsey’s claim to save. When the time does come, and Betsey passes through a substitutionary atonement, the end scene shows Holly being embraced by a candescent light that illuminates from within her. Is it being saved or is it something else? Ruth Paxton smashes her first feature with an elevated deconstruction of a family obliviously rotting at the core and attacks the film with dispirited ambiance sewn to dread.

Feast your eyes on the new limited-edition Blu-ray set of Ruth Paxton’s “A Banquet” from Second Sight films. The region B, PAL encoded UK boxset presents the film in 1080p widescreen 2.39:1 aspect ratio with a frame rate of 23-24 fps. David Liddel’s deep and encroaching cinematography of somber is highly effective in dulling out any kind of hope that might try to sneak in and with Liddel’s close-to-mid shots of macro-sized foods of all fresh and decaying varieties and in the middle of the more volatile struggles between mother and daughter opens up “A Banquet” to a plethora scene being uncomfortable moments. Details are sharp and colors are about as rich as Liddel can make them inside a grey-covered world. The English language set comes with two audio options: a DTS-HD 5.1 and a LPCM 2.0 stereo. DTS is clearly more robust through the various channels with a well-balanced mix. Other than a few outlier moments in the forest that disperse the dialogue in a naggingly boxy echo that doesn’t fit the environment, dialogue is discerningly clean and clear of obstructions and damage, as if there would be any on a digital record. Optional English subtitles are also available. Bonus material includes an interview with director Ruth Paxton Deformity of the Flesh on creating her first film during the height of the pandemic, an interview with star Jessica Alexander Improvised Exorcism in which she discusses her experience soup-to-nuts from hiring to completion, an interview with producer Leonora Darby Producing a Feast who notes about the difficulties of being a first-time producer in pandemic time, an interview with cinematographer David Liddel Dark Edges on how he creates “A Banquet’s” gloomy aura and creative shooting angles, the Q&A from Glasgow Film Festival with Paxton, Alexander, and Sienna Guillory, and a making of featurette. The limited-edition physical boxset is a sturdy vessel of beauty with a rigid slipcase with new artwork by Jen Davies, a 56-page soft cover picture and essay book with thoughtful examinations by novelist Alexandra Heller-Nicholas (“1000 Women in Horror”), film critic and writer Jennie Kermode, and Heather Wixsn, the managing editor of the Daily Dead. The contents round out with 6 collectable art cards. The film has a runtime of 97 minutes and is certified 15 for strong threat, language, suicide, self-harm, and drug misuse. “A Banquet” is lavishly cataclysmic as a divinely damning dish of a broken, dysfunctional family made to order by first time director Ruth Paxton with more to say.

Southern Hospitality is all EVIL Cloaks and Daggers! “The Long Night” reviewed! (Well Go USA / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

“The Long Night” now available on Blu-ray home video!

After spending years in foster care as a child, the now adult Grace tries to track down any information or background about her biological parents with the help of affluent boyfriend Jack.  The New York City couple travel into the rural, deep south on a seemingly solid lead about her folks.  As Grace and Jack drive up to their contact’s isolated and grand manor estate, their contact with the information doesn’t greet them upon their arrival and as they search the house, they find it as empty and still as the wide open land around them.  When darkness falls, cloaked members of a demon worshipping cult surround the estate, using their telekinetic and telepathy powers to infiltrate and corral Grace toward being a host for the prophesized return of 400 year slumbering and powerful demon the night of the equinox.  The couple battle the subservient minions inside and outside the manor as the night progresses into terrifying visions of Grace’s predestined lineage and the hope of surviving the night is quickly dwindling.

A longstanding demonic cult with supernatural psychotronic abilities besieging two city slickers armed with broken cell phones and a fireplace poker feels like the mismatch from Hell.  Somehow, “The Curse of El Charro” director, Rich Ragsdale, was able to stick the landing with loads of dourly, yet intensely powerful, cinematography crafted from a Mark Young (“Tooth and Nail”) and Robert Sheppe script based off the Native American mythology of the Horned Serpent, Utkena.  Keeping with the mythos’ descriptors involving snakes and horns or antlers, Ragsdale utilizes his usual bread and butter music video talents to fashion psychedelic imagery out of an extremely committed cult mercilessly stopping at nothing in resurrecting their preeminent master who will cleanse the world of corrupted humanity to start the world afresh…or so they believe.  Shot on site at a deep-rooted and isolated plantation house and property in Charleston, South Carolina, “The Long Night,” also known as “The Coven, is a production of Sprockefeller Pictures (“Fatman”) and Warm Winter in association with Adirondack Media Group, El Ride Productions, and Hillin Entertainment.

Super stoked that “The Lurker” and Rob Zombie’s “Halloween” remake star Scout Taylor-Compton is playing an age-appropriate role and not another high schooler, the actress plays the soul and parent searching Grace who has a strong desire to track down her parents, which never comes to the forefront why Grace was placed in foster care to begin with. Compton is completely competent assuming a role that requires her physicality as well as her emotional range in fear through resistance against a group of mostly unknown cast of characters that mostly keep their hoods and masks on for the entire engirdling of the manor house. Compton can also exude being a badass at times, but the script shamefully holds the character back that never allows Grace to become a true opposition to their exalting will toward their demon god. Nolan Gerard Funk (“Truth or Dare”) might ooze that trope persona of a dude-bro bred out of spoiled opulence as Grace’s boyfriend Jack. Despite his unappealing swaggering veneer, Jack reaches for depth more than any other character in the film and Funk pins it pretty well. Jack loves Grace but can’t face his Hamptons residing parents’ derision of a woman, of any woman in fact, who will never be good enough for their son and that creates some nice early on tension that fizzles out to being actually nothing of real importance to the couple. Yet, Jack continues to be the one with more common sense, receiving pre-plot point hump bad vibes since arriving at the manor and also making some of the better decisions when the bottom drops out and snake-charming demonists come calling for his main squeeze to squeeze out the resurrection of an unholy being. Funk adds bits of comedic charm throughout like someone who watched too many horror movies and tries to reenact scenes that could be beneficial to their survival in theory but hopelessly fails in a humorous way. A real waste of a raw cinematic talent is in Jeff Fahey (“Body Parts”) who plays the brother of the missing manor owner. Fahey feels very much used for solely his veteran star power, a recognizable face, just to be nearly instantaneously forgotten at the same time and by the climatic ending, you might not even remember Fahey being a part of the story. “The Long Night” rounds out with Deborah Kara Unger (“Silent Hill”) and Kevin Ragsdale (“Little Dead Rotting Hood”).

“The Long Night” is a delicate incubus uncoiling its snake-biting venom of inexorable fate. Rich Ragsdale hyper stylizes flashbacks and often mundane moments to conspicuously denote unimaginable and resistant-futile power over a pair of out of their league NYC outlanders. Speaking of which from within the script, there is a sting of contrast between North and South, as if the Civil War was still relevant, ever since the first moment Jack and Grace hit the screen with their travel plans. Jack passively continues to harp upon his dislike of South and even looks to Grace to make sense of a demon cult outside on the front and back lawn, hoping that her Southern roots can explain the provincial nonsense raising torches and speaking in tongues that’s blocking any and all exits. Even Grace, a character originating from the South, believes that the makeshift totems surrounding the property are resurrected to ward off evil. As a Southern, I never heard of such a thing. The concept for a Lazarus possession out of the depths of dimensional binding sounds like a winner in my book, but Ragsdale can’t quite smooth out the edge to effectively and properly give the cult and Grace a banging finale of supercharged hellfire that sees our heroine fight to the bitter end. Instead, the entire third act and ending feels like a sidestep because not a single better thought came to the writers’ imaginations. Cool visuals, good special effects, but a banal trail off ultimately hurts “The Long Night’s” longevity.

Well Go USA Entertainment delivers the Shudder exclusive, “The Long Night,” onto Blu-ray home video with a region A, AVC encoded, high definition 1080p release. Presented in 16X9 widescreen, some scenes look compressed or rounded suggesting an anamorphic picture, but the overall digital codec outcome is really strong elevated by the creepy folkloric and the pernicious dream atmospherics of “Escape Room’s” Pierluigi Malavasi who can masterfully casts the light as well as he shields it in a menacing silhouette. Some of the nightmares or hallucinations see more of compression flaws in the mist, smoke, or gel lighting with faint posterization. The English language 5.1 DTS-HD master audio balances a vigorous surround sound output, catching and releasing all the appropriate channels with a range of environmental ambient noise and the scuffle between violent contact, denoting a strong amplitude with depth between foreground and background. Dialogue comes out nice and clear with a vitality that’s reverberates in the ear channels whenever a momentous moment sparks an outburst of rage and dominion. Special features include a behind-the-scenes featurettes that look at the raw footage of the birthing flashback scene, the overall aesthetic tone of the film, and the resonating tribal score. Also included is a Rich Ragsdale commentary track, the theatrical trailer, and Ragsdale’s 2019 short film “The Loop,” a meta-horror surrounding a scary VHS tape and two young brothers. While “The Long Night” has flaws with unfinished plot details that will leave a lingering unsatisfied aftertaste, entrenched within the narrative is a contemporary premise revolving around dark fate and that gut feeling toward belonging to something bigger that unfortunately turns out to be murderous summonsing of a demon scratching at the door wanting to be let out in the world. An unforgettable long night of terror.

“The Long Night” now available on Blu-ray home video!