Ed's Review Dot Com

Universal 1440 Entertainment,

Danny Trejo, Mickey Rourke, Anthony Michael Hall, Dina Meyer, Richard Dillane, Colin Mace, Emil Hostina, Ovidiu Niculescu

When Guerrero (Danny Trejo) arrives in the town they call Tombstone he decides he and his gang are going to take control. But the gang double crosses him and kills him. Guerrero ends up in hell where he’s faced by the devil (Mickey Rourke) who is rather excited to have him to torture for eternity. But Guerrero makes a deal with the devil that in exchange for his life, he will kill every one of the gang members and trade their souls for his own. With time running out, he has to avenge each one by his own hand or return to the devil.

This is a movie for Trejo fans. If you love Machete and you can’t wait until the third installment, then this is made for you. It’s a straight out western, no aliens or zombies running around, unless you count Guerrero coming back from the dead, so it’s not as gimmicky as many other westerns lately. It’s just bad ass versus bad ass in an all out gun battle royal. Mikey Rourke is a plus to the cast, and he makes a pretty decent devil, but it’s definitely all Trejo. There’s not much more to say, as it’s a decent movie, but certainly not great. It doesn’t have the star power that the Machete films do, and most mainstream audiences aren’t going to get this, but it’s made for the people who loved the spaghetti westerns of the 70’s. The Terrence Hill, Bud Spencer’s Trinity films, the Clint Eastwood westerns, and the Lee Van Cleef, Lee Marvin westerns of old. This is a newer breed, but in a similar vein, so it should be easy to tell before going in if this is the kind of movie that will appeal to you or not. If you’re the right kind, you’ll enjoy the adventure. Otherwise, stay away. It will be absurd to you.

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Modernciné,

Caitlin Stasey, Sianoa Smit-McPhee, Brooke Butler, Amanda Grace Cooper, Reanin Johannink, Tom Williamson, Chris Petrovski, Michael Bowen, Leigh Parker, Jordan Wilson, Nicholas S. Morrison

Maddy (Caitlin Stasey) is an outsider, but hatches a plan to infiltrate the Cheerleader Squad to seek vengeance on them and especially the captain of the football team. But a freak occurrence causes the girls to suddenly find themselves caught up in a supernatural adventure of epic proportions.

I hardly know where to start with this one. It’s not horror, although it sort of spoofs horror films. It’s funny, but it’s a dark comedy. I suspect black comedy is probably the best description of what you’re going to see here. It’s a low budget movie, and that shows, but doesn’t really detract much. It’s also very silly, but darn it, I really had a good time watching this film. Granted it’s for a teen audience, I get that, but it lots of fun in a “Mean Girls” kind of way. The acting isn’t stunning, but it’s adequate for the tongue-in-cheek type of movie that it is. The bottom line is that I enjoyed watching this. If I stumbled upon this on TV or instant streaming, I am sure I would be sucked into the story and I have to admit I found myself amused throughout. It just isn’t horrible, that’s about the best I can say about it. I wouldn’t recommend heading out and searching everywhere for this film, but by the same token, if you have a chance to watch it, it will probably be fun.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Emmett/Furla Films, Closest to the Hole Productions, Envision,

Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster, Eric Bana, Ali Suliman, Alexander Ludwig, Yousuf Azami, Sammy Sheik, Dan Bilzerian

Marcus Luttrell (Mark Wahlberg) who is a Navy Seal set out with his team on a mission to capture or kill Ahmad Shah, a Taliban chief who was responsible for many deaths of American troops. Running into communication issues, a lack of enough chopper power in the area, and a couple unique coincidences and the team found themselves in a fierce battle. The men gave a courageous fight against all odds to try to accomplish their mission and survive. If all of them had been killed, we probably would have never known about these missing seals, but through extreme effort, Marcus managed to stay alive until he was rescued and tell the story. This true story told in a book by Marcus Luttrell himself cause great honor to be brought upon the men who fought and died for their country.

Being based on a true story, this film is limited to the facts as best as it could be remembered. It’s not a documentary, so there are things that have to be made up to fill in the story. For example, if a dying soldier is all alone on top of a cliff, no one knows what he said or did before he died. But that is nit picking. But I mention that there was a lot of fact checking and the cast and crew tried their very best to portray the characters as truthfully as they could. On the special features there are interviews with the family members of the fallen soldiers and each of the actors visited and studied all they could to bring the story truthfully to the screen. In one of the most touching moments of the special features one of the mother thanked the actor who played her son for letting her have a couple more hours with her son. She said the portrayal was so spot on that she really could see and hear her lost son once again. Many will cry that this is American propaganda. I don’t feel that way, as there were a lot of things in the film that I feel that were portrayed very fairly. Likewise, the action is breathtaking and the photography is stunning. Very well acted, these guys really busted themselves up trying to give a good go to the action in this movie. There were many reported injuries to the cast. It was a suspenseful movie, and though the title itself is a big spoiler, it’s still very tense and exciting throughout. This was one of the most realistic war films I have seen, especially about the modern warfare of the last 10 years or so. I had doubts as to whether Mark Walhberg could actually pull this off, but he did an excellent job. But all the other guys in the squad also did an excellent job bringing this story to the screen. Sometimes truth is stranger in fiction. If you can handle the violence and accurately shown war scenes, I’m sure you’re going to enjoy this film. I was highly impressed and I recommend it.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Movie Rentals Releasing Tuesday August 5, 2014

• 12 O’Clock Boys
• Around the Block
• Divergent [Click Here for Ed’s Review]
• God’s Not Dead
• I’ll Follow You Down
• Need for Speed
• Oculus [Click Here for Ed’s Review]
• Ping Pong Summer

Roth Films, Screen Gems, TriStar Pictures,

Greg Kinnear, Kelly Reilly, Connor Corum, Thomas Haden Church, Jacob Vargas, Nancy Sorel, Lane Styles

Based on the New York Times bestselling book Greg Kinnear play Todd Burpo, a small town pastor in Nebraska, whose 4 year old son becomes very ill. He slips into unconsciousness and nearly dies, sorely testing his faith. But when the boy returns home, he begins telling stories of how he visited heaven and of the things he saw. Many of these stories he could not have possibly known, and certain events that he didn’t even know about he was able to discuss after learning about them during his visit to heaven. This obviously causes a lot of confusion among their friends and especially the congregation as they try to figure out whether it’s really true or if their pastor has gone off the deep end. .

This is obviously a film with strong religious content. Some people will hate that part of it, but it’s not all up in your face. Greg Kinnear presents a minister with a lot of good thoughts, but some serious doubts, and his wife has even more doubts. It appears that the child could be spouting things that he’s heard or things that he would imagine from the religious training that he is exposed to, but some of these things are so amazing, that the writer seems to conclude that it must be real. It is a touching story, and the emotion is pretty high, but at the same time it’s kind of reassuring that there is a purpose for all of this, and that the things we believe may actually be literally true. Pastor Burpo basically just tells the story of what happens an allows you to decide for yourself what to make of it, and as that goes, it’s a very interesting story. When something unusual happens in our lives, does the conclusion we draw depend on what we wish or hope to be true, or are we able to leave our biases aside and make a logical decision. It seems the answer is somewhere in between as sometimes we really try hard to prove the outcome we want to happen, but sometimes the evidence is just so strong that you can’t ignore it. It’s a fascinating story and I enjoyed the movie so I rated it rather highly. I recommend this just for the experience.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog