Ed's Review Dot Com

Cinipix, Cosmic Toast Studios, Quincy Pictures,

Zoë Bell, Rachel Nichols, Tracie Thoms, Sherilyn Fenn, Doug Jones, Bruce Thomas, Bailey Anne Borders, Rebecca Marshall, Adrienne Wilkinson, Allene Quincy

Sabrina (Zoe Bell) is kidnapped by a secret society and finds herself in a deep dark dungeon along with dozens of other women. Each woman has been chosen along with a close loved one, and they are forced to fight to the death. Refuse to fight, and your daughter, husband, mother, etc. is killed. Lose and you die and they die as well. Only one winner will survive and survive to hopefully join the society. One by one the battles are televised in a sort of modern day gladiator battle to the death with bare knuckles.

I have been waiting for a long time to see this film. It’s been in my queue for a long time, and I finally caught it on Showtime. I was decidedly unimpressed. Fans of UFC and the Saw movies may enjoy this, but I found it extremely violent without much of a point. The battles take up the entire movie, and unlike the horrible 1970’s women in prison films, there is no point other than just women beating the crap out of each other with their fists. No clever twists and turns, not a single plot point, and the chatter between the ladies is drivel. The story is basically junk, and though the last 25 minutes are a bit more exciting and there is a bit of the ending, it’s not very well done and is a lot more of the same. There was no time spent on the plot, and no real excitement. It doesn’t really matter which of the girls wins, and there are no champions here. All in all I cannot recommend this unless you’re really a fan of girl on girl fist fights to the death or something, and I would not recommend this film to anyone as it has literally no redeeming qualities. What a waste of time!

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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.

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Art Cine Productions,

Christian Camargo, Katie Holmes, William Hurt, Allison Janney, Cherry Jones, Russell Means, Michael Nyqvist, Jean Reno, Juliet Rylance, Mark Rylance, Ben Whishaw

The family gets together to celebrate the Memorial Day weekend at the summer house alongside a lake in rural New England. The period is in the mid 80’s. The family tries to get along, but there are many issues and many problems, and the weekend is a bit of an eye opener and game changer for the family as the fight and bicker their way through the long, long weekend.

This is a Russian story inspired by Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull”, moved to the U.S. It was terribly difficult for me to sit through. Generally I love “people” films and “relationship” films much more than most guys. But I simply despise films that have no purpose and no point. Just setup a camera, film a day or two in a family’s life where nothing much happens (to be fair their is a tragedy in the last few minutes of the story, but by that time nobody really cares). It just goes on and on and on with unlikable characters, no plot or purpose, no direction, it just happens. When I saw it produced by a company called “Art Cine” I knew what I would get. This film is trying so very, very hard to appeal to stuck up artsy folks, and as a result, leaves the rest of us far behind. I really tried hard to give this movie a chance. It has a really good cast, but with nothing for them to do. I’m not sure what made these folks accept this film, but I’ll bet there is a story behind it. I just can’t think anyone read it and said, “This will be a fascinating story”. I was NOT in a bad mood when I watched, neither was I tired or distracted. I went into hoping for the best and a bored nearly to tears throughout. In the end, there wasn’t anything worth recommending. I am not sure with the original story, but people rave about it. Maybe the transfer to America during the Reagan days, just did not work. Avoid it, unless you really like art house movies for some reason.

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Automatik Entertainment, IM Global, Téléfilm Canada,

Clif Prowse, Derek Lee, Jason Lee, Michael McGill, Gary Redekop, Lily Lee, Baya Rehaz

Two friends, Derek (Derek Lee) and Clif (Clif Prowse) decide to go on a world tour to see as much of the world as possible when one of them is diagnosed with a brain aneurism and has only a short time to live. But after a horrible beating on a hot date, one of the men begins to deteriorate with a mysterious illness that may bring everything to a screeching halt.

This movie irritated the hell out of me. I know it has it’s fans, and some people are very exited about this film, but I truly hated it. It starts out as a documentary of the “trip of a lifetime” journey by two friends, and they do a pretty good job of presenting it as a simple documentary, but things go wrong really fast. It turns into a found footage horror film.

Now I’m over these found footage things in the first place. That has been driven into the ground further than reality TV singing competitions. That’s one reason why I hated it. It became really rather stupid, especially at the ending, and I was really sorry I invested my time in this loser of a flick. I found the main characters really annoying. Since they obviously are actors playing a role, even though the advertisement makes it look like they are real people playing themselves, they could have found someone that could act a little bit. The fooling around with the genre is irritating as well. Especially if you go into this thing thinking it’s what it advertises. I didn’t find it clever or unique or any of those things. I am sick of the shaky camera stuff. I didn’t think it was a good horror film in the least, and I was pretty bored throughout. I really did not enjoy this film, and though it’s rare I absolutely dislike a film, this one did not do anything for me. I suggest you avoid this one like the plague.

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Alcove Entertainment, Attercop Productions, British Film Institute (BFI),

Jesse Eisenberg, Mia Wasikowska, Wallace Shawn, Noah Taylor, Yasmin Paige, James Fox, Cathy Moriarty, Phyllis Somerville, Sally Hawkins, Chris O’Dowd, Craig Roberts

Simon (Jesse Eisenberg) is an employee in an office who is invisible to everyone. No one notices him, especially the girl he likes, Hannah (Mia Wasikowska). Nobody pays any attention to him, and he gets no credit for what he does. Suddenly a new employee, James (Jesse Eisenberg) shows up to work, and he’s an identical physical copy of Simon, but very smooth, great personality, and a hit with the girls. James makes Simon do all the work, but takes all the credit which drives Simon nuts. He can seem to tolerate all the abuse and all the negative energy around him, except for James who he just can’t stand, although he can’t seem to make anyone see that James is a fraud, as they all like James so much.

It has been a hard week for Ed’s Review. Either I have been in a bad mood, or the new DVD’s just haven’t been very good lately. This was, I think, the lamest of the bunch. I don’t have anything against Jesse Eisenberg but what they made this movie for is hard for me to understand. Someone called this film the poor man’s Fight Club, which is probably not a bad description, but at least Fight Club has some sort of purpose. There wasn’t anything that made any sense in this film. I am not sure what they were going after, but unfortunately it was all really silly. They may have been going for something really deep, but it didn’t gel in the least for me. I found myself wanting out all the way through this film. I thought if I stuck it out, there may be some payout in the end, but there wasn’t anything worth waiting for. This is one of the dumbest movies I’ve seen all year, and I’d suggest you avoid this one like the plague. This was a waste of a good cast and another missed opportunity to create something meaningful.

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