Movie Rentals Releasing Tuesday February 17, 2015
1984 Private Defense Contractors, Cross Creek Pictures, Da Vinci Media Ventures,
Liam Neeson, Dan Stevens, David Harbour, Boyd Holbrook
Matt Scudder (Liam Neeson) is a former NYPD cop and a recovering alcoholic. One of his AA buddies asks him to help out a friend who is in the middle of a kidnapping and not anxious to call the police. Scudder finds out he’s a high powered drug lord and he refuses to help but when the guy shows up to tell him the “rest of the story” it seems he paid the ransom, and did everything right, but they murdered her anyway in an extremely horrible way. Scudder figures they’ve done this before, so he sets out to find out who is behind these kidnappings and murders and decides to try to rescue their latest victim before they have a chance to kill her.
Typical Liam Neeson high suspense, gory, high adventure film. He’s the Liam Neeson action hero that he’s played lately in all the Takens. This is another one, but the thing I liked most about this film is that it’s a straight forward action crime story without all the subtle nuances, back stories, complicated characters and all over the world settings. It’s a simple straight forward ex-cop drama. As I mentioned a while ago in my Taken 3 review, I am really getting to like the action hero Liam Neeson as much, if not more than all his other types of characters. He’s really good in this one, and his cast is also very good. It’s truly a one man show, but he has some great adversaries that bring a lot to the story. Although there’s a bit of nudity, and some very gory fight scenes, this in not a good choice for the younger folks, but for the adult viewer, it’s a really good crime drama that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
Screen Australia, Screen Queensland, Blacklab Entertainment,
Ethan Hawke, Noah Taylor, Sarah Snook, Freya Stafford, Cate Wolfe, Christopher Kirby, Madeleine West,
The Barkeep (Ethan Hawke) is actually a Temporal Agent (an undercover government group that uses time travel to go back and fix problems in time). He meets a young man named John (Sarah Snook) who tells him her story of how she was raised as a orphaned girl, but she was actually born with both sexes and a problem in her only pregnancy forced the doctors to choose on her behalf to turn her into a male. But the Barkeep is interested in recruiting her as a Temporal Agent and having John/Jane help him in fixing things so that he could capture and thwart the “Fizzle Bomber” who was causing havoc in the city. This complicated time travel journey is a complex film, based on the 1958 short story “All You Zombies” by Robert Heinlein, a well known science fiction piece that has taken decades to come to the screen.
First off, watch every minute of this film. It is very slow starting, and hard to pick up all the details you need to solve they mystery. The moment I finished it, I wanted to restart it, but I waiting until the next morning and watched it again. It’s an awesome, mind-blowing story. I am a sucker for time-travel stories, but this one really had me going. Many people miss the primary purpose of the story, but the title is Predestination. So the main focus is how no matter what we want to change, we end up on the path we’re supposed to. That doesn’t mean going back in time doesn’t change the future, but the world levels out in the end. The story is very complex, and the relationship of all the characters are important to understanding the story, but it’s a very cerebral and well constructed story. Ethan Hawke is really fantastic in this film, but Sarah Snook completely steals the show. Her performance is certainly Oscar worthy, and compared to Cate Blanchett playing Bob Dylan in “I’m Not There”, Sarah is 100 times better. This actress has impressed the heck out of me.
As teens, we spent many weekends and evening talking about the paradoxes and the possibilities of time travel. This story has a lot of paradoxes in it, and you can argue from now till eternity over the validity of the theories. But this movie is about Predestination, not about time travel paradox, and you’d need a time machine to have enough time to finish discussion about whether or not it’s even possible. Don’t waste you time with that, but enjoy this story for the wild and intriguing Sci-Fi treasure it is. There is certainly enough other topics in this movie to discuss. This is certainly one of my favorite films of the year and one that will make me think for a while! Now I can’t wait to read the original story!
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Regency Enterprises, TSG Entertainment,
Ben Affleck, Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris, Tyler Perry, Carrie Coon, Kim Dickens, Missi Pyle, Sela Ward, Casey Wilson, Patrick Fugit, David Clennon, Lisa Banes, Lola Kirke, Boyd Holbrook
Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck) fell instantly in love with Amy (Rosamund Pike), and they were quickly married, but four years later a lot has changed. They’re not feeling close anymore, fighting more than talking, and both feel disappointed in how their lives have turned out. Contemplating divorce, Nick returns home from the bar that he owns with his sister to find his wife is missing. The house is torn up, and it appears like a struggle. As Amy’s family arrives to help, Nick insists he doesn’t know anything about Amy’s disappearance, but as time goes by, everyone seems to turn on him and his alibi is wearing thin.
This is a crime story, right out of today’s headlines, but with plot twists and turns and loads of suspense building, it was a wildly popular film in theaters, and one I wanted to get to see. But the timing was bad, and I never made it. Now it has come out on DVD and I planned a nice evening watching this film. This might be a case where your expectation is too high. Sometimes that backfires, and I was simply not blown away by this movie as I was with some of the others I have seen recently, but knew little about. Ben Affleck was pretty good, and played the frustrated husband with lots of secrets pretty well. I have no complaints with his performance. In fact, it was a very high quality film, and certainly interesting enough to watch. I enjoyed it, and it was an OK thriller with a good cast and an ordinary script. I think my biggest problem here was there were no great AHA! moments, but rather lots of little “ok, sure” moments. I wasn’t shocked by the way the story went, and it was a rather unfulfilling ending at the end. But it fits, and the story is certainly pretty authentic modern America. I don’t want to discourage people from watching this, as it was certainly a good film, but definitely not a GREAT film. Perhaps if you come in with lower expectations you won’t be disappointed.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
Gran Via Productions, Greyshack Films, Water’s End Productions,
Patricia Clarkson, Zachary Booth, Jayma Mays, Joseph Cross, Rutina Wesley, Fran Kranz, Devon Graye, Alexia Rasmussen, Julie Carmen, Judith Light, Chris Mulkey
Celia Green (Patricia Clarkson) has a dream to spend the last weekend of the summer at a cabin on the water with her grown sons and their friends. They set out to have the perfect weekend, which is what she’s looking for, but family dramas, problems, and issues make things worse and worse as the weekend goes on driving them further apart from each other. As she’s looking to sell the home after this summer since they hardly use it anymore, the troubles make her doubt her role in the family anymore.
This is another indie Sundance film about a dysfunctional family on a weekend outing. This one isn’t really dramatic, and it really, really isn’t comedy, so what is it? I’m not sure. There have been some great stories like this in the past, but this one sputtered out of the gate, and never got going, and sank into the sea by 1/3 way through the film. I couldn’t really like any of the characters, and could never get into the story. There’s no point to what’s going on, and I’m afraid I’ve seen too many screwed up family movies that just don’t go anywhere. If there’s humor, or a decent point to all of it, but by the middle of this weekend, I was just hoping it would be over and I could move on. This is not Patricia Clarkson’s fault, except maybe that she accepted the role, but rather the fault of a weak pointless script. I would not watch this if were on TV, and it’s even boring for a Lifetime Channel drama. I really didn’t like it, and I don’t recommend this one. Truly a waste.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
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