Ed's Review Dot Com

Creative Differences, History Films, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication,

Werner Herzog, Dominique Baffier, Jean Clottes, Jean-Michel Geneste, Carole Fritz, Gilles Tosello, Michel Philippe, Julien Monney, Nicholas Conard, Charles Fathy

Back in 1994 a group of scientists discovered a cave in the South of France. To their amazement, the cave was full of ancient art work from the prehistoric ages. The cave was named Chauvet Cave, after the one who discovered it, and was immediately closed off to the public due to the historic significance of some of the oldest drawings known to man. Documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog was granted access with a small crew of handheld cameras for one hour to the cave to film a documentary. There are raised walkways, and they were required to stay on the walkway at all times, and not to touch anything. The result is this film of some of the most complex and intriguing art work of prehistoric man.

As you probably know, I often check out documentary films. I am interested in many of the things we can learn from these types of films. This one is certainly unique. With drawings as old as 32,000 years ago in a perfectly preserved state, they are able to build a bridge to ancient times, and learn a lot about the people back then. This part of the film is very fascinating, and very interesting. Unfortunately, they only had one hour access to the cave, so they filled this documentary up with a lot of fluff that is simply not very interesting. Interview after interview of things that are repetitive, and a lot that really doesn’t have much to do with the subject. If this film was a 45 minute production, it might have been wonderful, but with all the filler to make this film longer, it’s really causes you to lose interest after a while. As time goes by, it gets so boring, it’s hard to take. It’s sad, really, that the documentary is so poorly done. It may be that because it’s European, we American folk just don’t get it, as documentaries here may be somewhat different, but though very interested through the first 30 minutes or so, I really got bored to tears and it dragged on and on. Fortunately, it’s available on “Watch Instantly” on NetFlix and you can feel free to skim through the parts that get very dull. I can’t heartily endorse this film, but parts of it are very interesting.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Omnilab Media, Ambience Entertainment, Current Entertainment,

Jason Statham, Clive Owen, Robert De Niro, Yvonne Strahovski, Dominic Purcell, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Grant Bowler, Ben Mendelsohn, Michael Dorman, Firass Dirani, Lachy Hulme, Aden Young, Sandy Greenwood

Danny (Jason Statham) is a retired member of Britain’s Elite Special Air Service, and is a deadly assassin. He’s gotten out of the business. But when his friend and mentor Hunter is captured and held ransom, the pull Danny back into the business to kill 3 operatives and make it look like an accident. But there is a catch. Each has to confess to something they did before they are killed. If Danny fails, Hunter is dead, but can he trust the ones that are holding Hunter to be true to their word? And what’s worse, now Danny finds himself hunting the ones he used to work for making him a target for them as well. Someone is on to his every move and trying to take him out before he can finish the mission.

This is a wild, action, adventure film, and the kind Jason Statham is best at doing. But the psych in this film is that it’s a true story, based on a real life story of the man who accomplished these feats. The locations in this film are as good as any James Bond film, as Danny travels all over the world attempting to accomplish this mission. The action sequences are very well filmed, and put you right in the midst of the action. There are plenty of twists and turns that make the story interesting as well as exciting.

All in all, this was a surprisingly good film, and one of the best adventure films I’ve seen in a long while. The fact that it’s a true story, blew my mind as I came to realize that this stuff really happened. It’s all the more an amazing story. If you want a really good action adventure, this is a great one.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Summit Entertainment, Sunswept Entertainment, TSBD Canada Productions,

Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Peter Facinelli, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz, Jackson Rathbone, Elizabeth Reaser, Nikki Reed, Billy Burke, Maggie Grace, Jamie Campbell Bower, Michael Sheen, Anna Kendrick

Bella (Kristin Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) get married, and take off to a private island where the Cullins family has a resort, vacation home. Bella becomes pregnant, but immediately the baby is bad for her, as she is still human. This also alerts the Quileutes of the danger this baby is to them. They set out to destroy this baby and possibly the whole town of Forks.

Ok. Here I go making enemies of all the die hard Twilight fans. I’ve never read the books, and I’m not invested in the story where it rules my life. I have stayed up with the tale since the beginning, but I’m not one of those who camps out for 3 days outside the theater to be the first in line to see the movie, obviously, since I waited till it was out on DVD. I truly feel the films have been getting weaker and weaker as the series moves on, and this one was rather pathetic as adventure movies go. There is nothing happening here that makes much sense. Bella gets pregnant, as a human, by a vampire. Now, according to the story, this is supposed to be impossible. Well I guess so. Vampires are dead. They’re cold, and they have no heartbeat, and I guess no blood or other bodily fluids, yet she’s able to get pregnant. Then, of course, because of the superhuman powers of the vampire, a perfectly looking human baby is fully developed and born in one month, cutting the standard time of gestation 9 times. Now this is a fantasy, so we have to suspend the normal laws of science, I understand. There really aren’t sparkly people. But if we do that, then how are we supposed to get involved in the drama of the difficulties of this miraculous pregnancy anyway? And there’s not much action here either. Yeah, the Wolf people are a bit ticked off, but nothing really happens. Besides, as tough as the wolves are, it’s hard to believe that they’re much of a threat to vampire people with ultra human strength (If a wolf tries to bite you, you’re not going to bleed, and you can just thrown them into the next county! And if all else fails, you climb the highest tree in five tenths of a second anyway, and wolves don’t climb trees. All in all I found this to be by far the weakest story of all, and though I know many people are truly invested in the beautiful wedding and love story between Bella and Edward, I didn’t find that worthy enough of a huge blockbuster film like this.

I guess that the film maker had a tough call, as they could probably have made the story better by compressing part one and part two into a single film and cutting out the fluff, but there are two major reasons not to do that. First, the Twi-hards are going to be extremely pissed off if they skip any of the canoodling between Edward and Bella as they’ve been waiting for that forever, and secondly, mega-$$$$$$$$$.

Then another thing I just didn’t get? What was with the horrible music in the soundtrack? I made the mistake of turning on captioning, so I got to see the words to these strange pieces of music. What they hell was that?

For example, this is the lovely lyrics to the beautiful wedding scene:

I was a quick wet boy, diving too deep for coins
All of your street light eyes wide on my plastic toys
Then when the cops closed the fair, I cut my long baby hair
Stole me a dog-eared map and called for you everywhere

Have I found you
Flightless bird, jealous, weeping or lost you, american mouth
Big pill looming

[ From: http://www.metrolyrics.com/flightless-bird-american-mouth-lyrics-iron-wine.html ]
Now I’m a fat house cat
Nursing my sore blunt tongue
Watching the warm poison rats curl through the wide fence cracks
Pissing on magazine photos
Those fishing lures thrown in the cold
And clean blood of Christ mountain stream

Have I found you
Flightless bird, grounded, bleeding or lost you, american mouth
Big pill stuck going down

Now if I were getting married, this would certainly not be a prime choice for the wedding dance. 🙂

Some other great musical moments:
And if I was you
I’d use the loo
Before the long drive
We compliment each other
Just like Satan and Christ
I wear my hair fizzy
I don’t copy no style
Cause kissin and a scrubbin
Has consequences
You’re on the bus again
Past big ben
With your rip off oyster card
Tell your A.S.B.O. friend
To sling his hook and “go make your girl smile”

Then one last complaint, and then I’ll shut up. I was shocked at the closing credits. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, one of the great jokes is how the people who created the credits have been sacked, and the people who were responsible for sacking the people who created the credit have also been sacked. What we’re left with is crappy put together credits that look like any 5 year old could have put them together. This is what the closing credits looked like to me. It was like they spent 3 dollars on creating these red and yellow text flash cards. It was like one of the old 1960’s spaghetti western credits which were done in English to overlay the original Italian credits or something. I thought it really weird.

So basically I’m going to stop and open the gates for the people who love Twilight to attack me for not getting this, and I probably deserve it, but I have to admit that I was really sorely disappointed after watching the last two Potter films to see this as the end of Twilight. I could have skipped it and not missed anything worthwhile. Sorry.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Movie Rentals Releasing Tuesday February 21, 2012

• Puss in Boots
• Tower Heist [Click Here for Eds Review]
• J. Edgar
• The Way
• Martha Marcy May Marlene
• The Mighty Macs

Reliance Big Pictures, Loubyloo Productions, Eden Rock Media

Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, Katrina Bowden, Jesse Moss, Philip Granger, Brandon Jay McLaren, Christie Laing, Chelan Simmons, Alex Arsenault, Travis Nelson, Karen Reigh

Two self declared “hillbillies” have a mountain home near the lake. They’re on their way up to the house which Tucker (Alan Tudyk) has sunk all his fortune (maybe a few hundred dollars, who knows) into for some fishing and fixing up the property a bit. They have a cooler full of beer and are raring to go. Dale (Tyler Labine) is a bit more scatterbrained, but they are out for a good time, and nothing else. Meanwhile, a bunch of college kids have the same idea, to visit the lake, camp out, do some skinny dipping, and have a great time. In a series of weird coincidences bodies start piling up and there appears to be a fearsome serial killer at work.

This is a really funny film. Some years ago Matthew Broderick came out with a funny, funny film about the town of Buzzsaw called “Out on a Limb”. If you haven’t seen that one, it’s hysterical. (There are two hillbillies named Jim who live together. Jim gets stuck in a pit and Jim is looking for him. Jim calls out “Jim” and Jim replies “Jim!” Then Jim says, “Jim” and Jim answers “Jim” to which Jim yells is that you or is that me? Now that’s my kind of humor. Well Tucker and Dale are just like the two Jims. They aren’t too bright, but in this case the kids aren’t much brighter. One mistake after another, everyone’s jumping to conclusions here, and they ALL have the worst luck I have ever seen.

This movie has some real gore. But it’s funny gore. It’s making fun of those “Friday the 13th” kids camping out at Crystal Lake kind of movies, and they copy the type of gory death scenes from those movies, but with a hysterical amount of humor, so it’s not scary, it’s a laugh fest. Tucker and Dale are funny and the sheriff is a hoot. The college kids are stupid but the girls are pretty. What more could you ask for. This is available on Netflix Watch Instantly, and is a good add to your instant queue if you have one. Being it was a very little film with a miserable box office (222k anyone?) it is well worth tracking this down, as nobody has ever seen it, and it’s a shame. It’s really fun. Check it out.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Red Band (R Rated) Trailer Below: