Ed's Review Dot Com

Daryl Prince Productions, 2S Films, DiNovi Pictures,

Hilary Swank, Emmy Rossum, Josh Duhamel, Loretta Devine, Ernie Hudson, Frances Fisher, Marcia Gay Harden, Ali Larter, Jason Ritter, Julian McMahon, Andrea Savage

Kate (Hilary Swank) is a concert pianist. She’s a smart and a strong woman, but when she was diagnosed with ALS, her life began to fall apart. Her husband Evan is doing his best to take care of her, but Kate feels guilty for putting him through everything that she’s going thorough. She hires a college student, Bec (Emmy Rossum) to be her caretaker, but Bec is also a mess. Her mother has convinced her she’s a loser who will never amount to anything. But the bond between Kate and Bec grows stronger as they each teach each other what they need to survive.

ALS is a horrible disease. Playing someone with a degenerative disease like this isn’t easy. But Hillary Swank is a hell of an actress. It must have been horrible to have to play this part, and trust me, this film tugs at all the heart strings. There are many great characters in this movie, and it’s certainly sad enough. But this is a very touching story. Very well written, and stunningly acted, this is a story well worth telling. In addition, it certainly addresses the difficulty of taking care of someone in this condition, and it also shows the pain that it causes to be unable to take care of yourself and the desire not to be a burden to those who love and care for you. It’s touching how each of these two helped the other. This is a movie that is really well done, and superbly performed. The story is well worth the time spent, and this is a movie that everyone ought to see. I highly recommend this film.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Movie Rentals Releasing Tuesday April 7, 2015

• Happy Valley
• Home Sweet Hell
• The Immigrant [Click Here for Ed’s Review]
• A Most Violent Year
• The Voices

Lionsgate, SJ Heat Productions, Sierra / Affinity,

Jason Statham, Michael Angarano, Dominik Garcia-Lorido, Jason Alexander, Sophia Vergara, Stanley Tucci

Nick Wild (Jason Statham) is a bodyguard with a gambling problem. But he works in Las Vegas, so that can’t be too good. Nick is known for his fighting skills and the fact that he never needs to use a gun. He can kill with a spoon and fork, or a plate, or an ash tray. But when a friend is beaten by her boyfriend, Nick steps in to help, without realizing that the boyfriend is the son of a big mob boss. They come after him, but he’s still a bad ass and he still has a few cards up his sleeve.

This is a run of the mill action film set in Vegas to add a little interest to the film. Jason Stratham’s movies are getting a lot similar these days, and this guy really deserves a good script. Ok, there is a market for crime stories with big tough heroes to fill up the late night time slots on the premium channels, but this is really not worth the effort to seek this thing out. It’s not bad, but it’s just not very good either. I mean, this was just ho-hum all the way. I’ve seen this all before again and again, and this is just another one. It’s a good idea that is just so run of the mill it’s tragic. With good actors in this thing, like Jason Alexander and Stanley Tucci, you would think they would bring something to it, but they barely appear in the film, and it’s just to setup the big final fight scene that is just plain silly by that point. I don’t recommend this film, that is unless you’re up late watching Showtime, and you’ve seen everything else that’s on. Sorry.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Black Bear Pictures, Bristol Automotive,

Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Allen Leech , Matthew Beard, Charles Dance, Mark Strong, James Northcote, Tom Goodman-Hill

The true story of Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) who is as much responsible for today’s computers as anyone else, but who was never credited for his discoveries because of the top secret world he lived in. When we heard of James Bond, we learned that he worked for MI6, a top secret level of British security forces. Well there were only MI1 through MI5 that was known, but there was an MI6 that Ian Flemming wrote his novels about. Alan Turing was part of that. He was a mathematical genius, only in his 20’s yet a professor and a very strange fellow. Chosen for his ability to solve puzzles, he was recruited into MI6 to find a solution to the infamous German Enigma code machine. The British had recovered a machine, but it was worthless to them as the Germans changed the key code every day, and there were thousands of millions of possible combinations. Alan and his team worked on trying to crack the code using a smart machine. But far more than that, we follow Alan’s life as a young man, though his efforts to crack the code, and through a third time in his life when he was arrested for what you can hardly believe and punished for not doing anything at all. This is a thrilling adventure through the real life events based upon his autobiography.

Wow, this was a good week for DVD releases. This is another great film. It’s I guess what you would call a docu-drama since it’s acted by some excellent people, but this is truly Benedict Cumberbatch’s movie. I don’t know that anyone else could have pulled this off, and he did an excellent job (even if you ask Alan’s family), and I learned a great deal about WWII from this film. I also took the time to listen to the director and writer commentary after watching the film through, and I enjoyed the extra time learning more about the efforts they went through to make this film realistic. There were so many things I never knew that I picked up from this film. Historical dramas can be boring and tedious to sit through, but this is such a good mystery, and we, as an audience, get to participate in Alan’s team to try to solve the puzzle. And after they built this amazing machine, you won’t believe how they used it, and what happened to this miraculous discovery at the end of the war. This is well worth watching, and I highly recommend this movie since it is now available on DVD. It’s likely one you missed, but with the attention throughout the awards season this year, this is one you need to see.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures,

Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, John Lithgow, Ellen Burstyn, William Devane, Michael Caine

Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) lives at home with his parents and the kids and is a farmer. It’s a futuristic world where the dust bowl has returned and all efforts toward technology and science has turned to survival by growing the only crop left, corn. But Cooper was trained as a space engineer and a pilot, and though he misses it, he grows corn. But accidentally he and his daughter stumble upon a secret NASA location and before you know it they are on the way to distant planets to discover if there is a safe place for what’s left of humanity to survive in and call home.

This is one excellent film. This one is right up my alley. (Is that a bowling reference? I always wondered what alley stuff is up and why). Anyway, this is a really good sci-fi thriller with some sketch science and lots of fiction. If it had been a bit more probable scientifically I might have gone for the 5 star rating I enjoyed this so much. But I bought into it when they flew a space ship out to an asteroid to blow it up with an atomic bomb, so why not a short cut through a worm hole? The casting is pretty good. This is not the role I would have picked for McConaughey, but he actually pulled it off pretty well. Also Anne Hathaway was really good as a book scientist without any practical experience. The main relationships of the movie are between Anne’s character and her father, Professor Brand, played well by Michael Caine. the second one is between Cooper and his daughter in several different time periods. This is truly an all star cast, for sure. This is a long film, nearly 3 hours, but it flies by and is very suspenseful. The story struggles at the end with some very insane “Lake House” type time warps but they pull it all together with love and understanding and trust for each other. As my daughter used to say when she was very little, “Another happy ending”. This is a praiseworthy sci-fi film, like we haven’t seen in a long, long time. Many attempts have fallen short, but this one is hitting on all cylinders. If you have any heart at all for Sci-Fi, pick this one out at your nearest Redbox and give it a look. It’s very satisfying.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog