Ed's Review Dot Com

Movie Rentals Releasing Tuesday February 14, 2012

• The Rum Diary
• Take Shelter
• Mozart’s Sister
• Tiny Furniture
• Labios Rojos

Screen Gems, Spyglass Entertainment,

Rachel McAdams, Channing Tatum, Sam Neill, Scott Speedman, Jessica Lange, Sarah Carter, Dillon Casey, Jeananne Goossen, Rachel Skarsten, Kristina Pesic

Paige (Rachel McAdams) and Leo (Channing Tatum) are husband and wife who are marvelously in love with each other for the last four years. Paige is an artist, her dream, and Leo is living his dream, running a recording studio in Chicago. They are very happy, when suddenly Paige is seriously injured in a traffic accident. After being in a medically induced coma, Paige wakes up to find there is a four year hole in her memory. She has no recollection of Leo, their life together, or anything that happened since she left home four years before. Leo is left with a wife that doesn’t remember him, and she is ready to jump back four years to the life she had before. What future is there for a relationship where one party doesn’t even recognize the other?

Yes, this is a Valentines Day tear-jerking chick flick most of all. It’s timed perfectly, and did a huge box office volume it’s first weekend. However, it’s not as simple minded as you might think. Comparisons to “The Notebook” are inevitable, but it’s not the same movie, by any means. First of all, it’s based on a true story. One of those “true story” kinds of films where they show you the real Paige and Leo at closing trailers. This is good news and bad news though. Parts of the story, in real life are not as shocking as they would have been had a Hollywood screenwriter taken a crack at it. There is a family crisis that happened after the point in time where Paige’s memory lapsed, so she had no memory of what caused her to change her whole life which made it possible for her to have met Leo in the first place. They could have come up with a pretty awesome crisis were it fiction, but it real life, Paige had just grown past the point where her parents were, and found out she wanted something different in life. In real life, the crisis is not quite so earth shattering. But the best part of the story is how real it is. Knowing it really happened, and what the eventual true story was, shows that it was an amazing story. How the brain works is a mystery to all of us!

The story is very touching, and Rachel McAdams was awesome. Channing Tatum, I guess is doing the best he can. I don’t totally get him in this role, but I guess the young ladies (and gay guys) are in awe of him. To me, he’s a little too much a cross between Adam Sandler and Jason Segel, and not exactly right, but he did his best, and it’s probably my problem, not his. The parents are ok, Sam McNeil and Jessica Lange. They don’t have a lot to do, and the play the same evil parents we’ve seen before. But the star here is the story itself, and Rachel is certainly outstanding and very convincing in making us believe she has really lost her memory. If you’re a guy, suck it up, and take your girl to this movie. Be ready to wipe a tear or two, so nobody will notice you, and there is enough of a break at the end to compose yourself before the credits are through.

Excellent Valentine’s Day Date Night movie! It’s worth the money it’s going to rake in.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Touchstone Pictures, DreamWorks SKG, 21 Laps Entertainment

Hugh Jackman, Evangeline Lilly, Kevin Durand, Anthony Mackie, Hope Davis, Dakota Goyo, James Rebhorn, Karl Yune, Olga Fonda, Marco Ruggeri

In the world of 2020 where real human boxers have been replaced by fighting robots, Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) is a washed up boxer who tried to make the move to the robot boxing world, but hasn’t had much luck. Way over his head in debt, and in need of some quick bucks, he puts his only possession, his robot, up against a 2000 pound bull in a fight to the death. Unfortunately he brings his robot back in pieces. Then an 11 year old boy turns up who the courts claim is Charlie’s son Max (Dakota Goyo), and Charlie figures out a way to “sell” Charlie to get back into the robot game.

This is “Rocky” meets “Transformers”! This is an interesting concept for a film, fighting robots! The robots have a personality. When I was a kid we spent a lot of Saturdays on “Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots!

The star of this film is little Dakota Goyo. He is really a good actor. This kid has a ton of talent. Hugh Jackman is also very good playing the “Han Solo” type of character who’s lovable hero who’s always getting himself in trouble, mostly due to his own pride. There are some other good characters too. Evangeline Lilly plays Bailey Tallet, owner of her father’s gym where Charlie trains and repairs his robot. She’s a caring and faithful friend who’s running out of patience on Charlie’s shenanigans. The fighting sequences are AWESOME. Every bit as good as other great “human” boxing movies. There’s a whole lot of action and suspense the locations and seedy characters at the fighting arenas in the “lower class” unlicensed fighting locations remind me of the cockfighting pits in the Philippines, whereas the high glitz and glamour of the official WRF championship fight was better than a Mandalay Bay Las Vegas fight!

All in all it’s a long movie, a little over 2 hours, but it’s so interesting you hardly notice. This is really a great adventure movie with a great David and Goliath story that is fun for all ages. The relationship between Charlie and Max is really endearing. This is a very good film.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Artists Public Domain,

Brit Marling, William Mapother, Kumar Pallana, Robin Lord Taylor, Jordan Baker, Flint Beverage, Matthew-Lee Erlbach

Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling) is an astrophysics student who has just been accepted to MIT. After partying it up, celebrating with some friends, she is driving home a little under the influence. She accidentally crashes into a car with a man, John Burroughs (William Mapother), his wife and son. John is in a coma, and the rest of the family is killed. Coincidentally this is the day a second earth is found in the sky, identical in all ways to earth, setting the science word on it’s ear trying to figure out what it’s about. Rhoda is sent to jail for the DUI, and gives up her hopes of going to MIT and becomes a janitor. Rocked with guilt, she decides to visit John, who’s now living alone with the pain, to tell him she was the one who killed his wife and kids, but she loses her nerve and instead volunteers to give him a “sample” cleaning as part of a marketing plan for her phoney employee. As she gets closer to John, they start a very inappropriate relationship. The mystery of the other Earth, and the guilt Rhoda feels, along with John’s pain brings the movie to a stunning conclusion.

This is a very strange film. It is an independent, Sundance Film Festival kind of film that is very cerebral. Though advertised as a science fiction film, there is much, more going on here than the science of the duplicate earth. It’s much more metaphoric and symbolic than a science fiction thriller. The big issues are with the pain John feels over the loss of his family, and even more about the guilt and redemption Rhoda is feeling and seeking. This is a very slow developing story, but is very though provoking. How would you feel if your entire family was yanked away from you and you’re left alone? And what if by a stupid mistake, you caused the pain and suffering to another person. How could you ever make up for that? And could you try? These are the kind of things that this movie really addresses.

Would I call it a science fiction film? Yes, I certainly would because this is a kind of science fiction story, certainly. No it’s not ET or Aliens, but it does offer us a fictional account of a very strange series of events.

So everyone is not going to love this movie. If you hate slow, cerebral films, you’re going to hate this. But, on the other hand, if you like to think your way through a movie, this is a very interesting premise, and well executed methodically and slowly, step by step.

This is one of those obscure films that I like to find from time to time. It’s certain an interesting concept and I enjoyed it

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

IWC Productions, Mandate Pictures, Point Gray,

Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Seth Rogen, Anna Kendrick, Bryce Dallas Howard, Anjelica Huston, Marie Avgeropoulos, Jessica Parker Kennedy, Serge Houde, Andrew Airlie, Matt Frewer, Philip Baker Hall

Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a young broadcaster for NPR in Seattle. He’s dating Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard) and best friends with good nature but crude Kyle (Seth Rogen). Adam has a strained relationship with his mom (Anjelica Huston) and his Dad who is suffering from Alzheimer’s. But everything suddenly comes caving in when Adam is told by the doctor that he has a very rare form of cancer of the spine. The film takes us through Adam’s life dealing with the disease, and how it affects everyone around him.

This is an interesting film. Based on a true story of writer Will Reiser who was diagnosed with cancer, and with Seth Rogen as his friend, beat the disease and under Seth’s urging wrote the script. So it’s very realistic because it’s written by the one who lived it. A lot of the misadventures in the screenplay are based on the real experiences Will went through. It has a lot of humor! How a movie about cancer can be funny is odd, but it really is. Seth Rogen does his gross out dialog that he’s famous for, so the R rating is mostly for the words that come out of Seth’s mouth! He’s so inappropriate, it’s hysterical.

There is a lot about the deterioration of Adam and Rachel’s relationship. Anna Kendrick plays a very young psychologist who tries to council Adam, and there are undertones of how much they like each other, even though it’s a doctor patient relationship. Then there’s the issues with Adam and his Mother. But the primary focus of the film is always the buddy film relationship between Adam and Kyle. After all, this is primarily Seth Rogen’s film.

Not exactly stellar, but very unique. It’s a very humorous look at something that is very serious. There are plenty of scenes that will make you cringe and look away, but it’s so light-hearted about it that makes it not a sad or depressing story. Very well written, and so it’s certainly watch watching.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog