Ed's Review Dot Com

Parker Film Company, Luber Roklin Entertainment, Bossa Nova Productions

Adam Goldberg, Marley Shelton, Elon Bailey, Lucy Punch, Vinnie Jones, Zak Orth, Ptolemy Slocum, Michael Panes, Svetlana Efemova

I gotta get with my blogmaster to get a half star, or a ZERO stars, as giving this piece of  crap a whole star is like giving one of those guys on the side of the freeway exit a fifty for a bag of oranges.  It’s not worth it.

I recall one of the episodes of Penn & Teller’s Showtime series “Bullsh*t” where they went to a fancy restaurant in LA and sent the staff out to the back of the restaurant to fill up water bottles with the garden hose.  Then they brought it into the restaurant to sell for up to $8.00 a bottle to a sucker public who raved about the flavor of the water.  They were told it came from some glacier in Greenland and contained all these fabulous minerals.  Every one of the patrons raved about the quality of the water from a garden hose.

I feel like the kid from “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.   If you tell someone it’s expensive art, even if a chimpanzee painted it with his butt, someone is going to plunk down $50,000.00 and call it genius!

This film could have taken on this kind of B.S., but instead it truly is what it’s talking about.   I expected maybe some ridicule about the so called “art experts” who tell us what is art and what isn’t.   But instead, they seemed to take it seriously and it never did anything but show us what spoiled, nasty rotten, smug people these characters are.

One is a really bitchy art dealer.  One is a famous artist who can’t decide whether his works should be displayed closer together or farther apart to really show thier impact.  The other is a musician who bangs on pans, drops chains in a bucket and pounds away incessantly on a piano making a hell of a racket while a lady blows on a horn like a party favor.  They call this noise music, and of course the 15 people who showed up for the “concert” walk out in the first few minutes.

Sullen and dreary, he’s disappointed that people don’t enjoy his genius.  So both of them like the girl, but all of them are too stupid to have a real relationship. 

So I gave this piece of crap a chance.  I watched the whole thing, although I used Netflix Watch Instantly and didn’t waste a spot in my queue.  I hate people who review films they haven’t watched or when they say the turned it off after 10 minutes and then sent it back and wrote a review.  But this is one I really wish I had forgotten the review, and really turned it off after 10 minutes because it never got any better.  The opening weekend grosses on this film tell you how great it is.  It made a gross of $18,002.  

Now you can read reviews from people who give this 5 stars and rave that it’s the most relevant film ever made.  But I have to cry out as loud as I can.  The Emperor has no clothes.  The ones who made this film are laughing at the idiots who think there is any value to this in the least!  I can hear them laughing from here!

WARNING:  I do not know how to classify this junk, so I am choosing Music & Performing Arts but there is NO music I could recognize.    Art is in the eye of the beholder.  Yikes.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Oops Doughnuts Productions, Touchstone Pictures

Kristen Bell, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigourney Weaver, Odette Yustman, Victor Garber, Betty White, James Wolk, Krisin Chenoweth, Sean Wing, Kyle Burnheimer, Billy Unger

This is a very funny movie. 

One of the reasons to attend your high school reunion is to see old friends.  Ok, no it’s not.  It’s to watch the train wrecks and disasters of those who were so popular in high school.  It’s to see the babes that turned into dogs and the dogs that turned into babes.  Well, when you grow up in a small town, as I did, you know everybody.  Go back to visit 30 years later, and attend a high school football game, as I did, and you find the same names being called out on the P.A. system.  Everyone is that guys son, or that girl’s daughter.

But this poor girl was invisible in high school.  And through flashbacks, we get to see how hard high school was for her.  Finally out of school, she went to college, worked hard, and found a great job!  Then word comes that her big brother is getting married.  But when she finds out who, she finds it’s the one who bullied and tortured her the most.

Home for the wedding, suddenly you’re a little kid again, and facing the same challenges you threw away.  Lucky Mom has some good advice.  That is until she finds out that her new daughter in law’s only family is her former best friend who had a major falling out in High School too.

Then there’s Victor Garber, as the dad who has no clue what the heck is going on and why the whole thing is falling apart.  No help there, and Grandma Bunny? (Betty White)  She’s got tons of issues on her own.

So things go from bad to worse, and some of the best physical comedy in a long time happens.  Hilarity ensues, and everyone learns to “just get along!”

Everyone in the theater seems to be laughing along, and it was really an enjoyable evening.  Total relaxation, and forgetting all your problems while watching the poor folks was easy.  I’d highly recommend this movie as one everyone is going to like from the kids – to the grandparents, and everywhere in between.  Good film.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Anchor Bay Films, A Bigger Boat

Emma Bell, Shawn Ashmore, Kevin Zegers, Rileah Vanderbilt, Ed Ackerman

This is just about the perfect little film.  Not a B film in the least.  There are no big stars in this movie, and Emma Bell is a new talent, but all of that was by design.  They started with a very small, but very plausible storyline.   But whoa, what power! 

Two guys have been best friends since first grade.  They love to ski and snowboard.  One has a new girlfriend, so he decides to bring her along on a Sunday visit to a ski resort.  Now the resort is only open Friday to Sunday.  Unfortunately Parker (Emma Bell) is not the world’s best snowboarder. In fact, the boys have to spend the whole day on the “bunny slope”.    Bribing the operator for one last run because the resort is going to close early, and 2/3 of the way up the hill the ski lift suddenly stops.

Now it’s Sunday night, and if somebody doesn’t realize they’re up there, what in the world are they going to do?  A storm is coming, and there won’t be anybody around until Friday!  That’s 5 days from now.

I think every skiier has had this dreadful thought.  Especially when you’re up there way too high to jump!  Would you just sit there and freeze to death?

This is a simple story, and could have been really cheesy.  But it’s not!  I think for two reasons.   First, it could have been shot in front of a green screen in downtown Hollywood!  But it wasn’t.  They managed to get all the equipment up to the top of the mountain and shot this in a real ski resort.  The view is unbelievable, and the realism is obvious.  They didn’t have to act frightened or cold.  They were scared half to death and it was cold as it looked, some days below zero.   Secondly,  there are no big name stars in this movie.  Quite on purpose as the characters are very real, and you really care about them.  And the cinematography is amazing.  You aren’t watching 3 kids on a ski lift.  You are up there with them.

The suspense is about as great as I have ever felt, and I really felt for the characters.  They are not what they think they are.  Those who think they’re tough are soft, and those that think they’re soft are tough.  Working together to try to survive this thing.

One final note.  There are a collection of Special Features on the DVD version.  These are long.  There is over 90 minutes of special features.  But they are the story of how this movie got made, and if you are in the least interested in how movies are made, this is the perfect story.  They explain how and why they did everything, and it was fascinating.  Watch them in the order they appear, and you’ll learn how they thought of the story, how it was sold, how it was cast, and how it was filmed.  It’s as interesting as the movie.

Also on the deleted items is a very gory bloody scene that was left out of the movie.  The special features explains why this was filmed (for the international audience) and why it was not part of the film.  And also why it does NOT belong in the movie.  The way it was filmed is far more frightening and horrifying (without watching what’s going on, but just hearing it and seeing the reaction of those at the scene is far worse than seeing the blood and gore).

Fun, suspenseful, and extremely exciting.  It’s never a dull moment, and you’ll really feel for these poor unfortunate souls!!!

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Movie Rentals Releasing Today Tuesday October 5th, 2010

• The Karate Kid
• A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
• Grindhouse
• Splice
• The Secret of Kellis
• Mid-August Launch
• The Human Centipede

Dogwood Entertainment, Ginny Mule Pictures, Image Entertainment

Hal Holbrook, Ray McKinnon, Walton Goggins, Mia Wasikowska, Carrie Preston, Barry Borbin, Dixie Carter, Barlow Jacobs, Anthony Reynolds

This is a really good film.  It’s just so damn slow.  It seems like it will never get going, and there is so little action.  But it’s still such a great story, so I feel conflicted in writing this review.  This move stayed with me, and all in all, I felt the time spent watching it was well spend.  But it’s just so damn slow.

This film is based on a short story by William Gay called,  “I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down”, and it must be a wonderful story.   Hal Holbrook is such a wonderful actor, and this is the film appearance of his wife, Dixie Carter before she left us.  Abner Meecham (Holbrook) is a crotchety old guy who’s somewhat ungrateful son put him in a nursing home.  But there aren’t really and real bad people in this film.  Abner spent his life working hard on a farm, and obviously can’t keep it going by himself.  It’s a hopeless dream, but it’s still his dream.  So, fed up with the Nursing Home scene, he just takes off and heads home.  It isn’t long till he’s apprehended, but he mangaes to bribe the guy who was paid $20.00 to bring him back to drive him back to his farm instead. 

He arrives to find a family living on his farm, and claiming that his son leased the farm to him with an option to buy.  But this family is headed by an alcoholic bum with a nasty streak a mile long.  He plans to buy the farm, but hasn’t even begun to plant the fields.  So Abner takes a spot in the guest shack, and decides to wait them out.  

Not long before the son shows up and then everything gets complicated.  Dad wants to be home, but can’t handle it.  The Choats want to buy the farm, but they can’t see eye to eye, and have plenty of conflicts on their own.  And then on it goes.  Dirty tricks, gun fights, double crosses, and lots of meaness continue until finally it comes to a conflict.

It’s great cinema, and Holbrook is, as I said earlier, AWESOME in this role.  But it’s so DAMN slow!

Watch at your own risk.  If you are in a mood to watch an excellent story that takes a while to develop and with no great excitement, it’s a well developed character study.  If you like that kind of movie, you’ll really enjoy this one!  BUT IT’S SO DAMN SLOW!!!

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog