Ed's Review Dot Com

LD Entertainment, Fortress Features,

Josh Stewart, Emma Fitzpatrick, Lee Tergesen, Christopher McDonald, Shannon Kane, Tim Griffin, Andre Royo, Randall Archer, Johanna Braddy, Navi Rawat, Brandon Molale

Arkin (Josh Stewart) is held captive by an evil madman known as the Collector. He somehow manages to escape and is free of the house of horrors when he is kidnapped in the hospital by mercenaries hired by Elena’s (Emma Fitzpatrick) wealthy father who is paying them to rescue his daughter who is also being kept for “The Collection”. So Arkin has to go back into the house of horror and risk his life again to try to save Elena or die trying.

This movie is really gory and violent, and very bloody. It’s also pretty silly and a direct derivative of the Saw franchise. It’s nearly identical. The same premise of killing people in extremely gruesome manners that are highly technical and very unique is what Saw is all about. This movie is the exact same thing. But it’s not that scary, and really not worth the effort. If you’re a fan of the Saw series, there are so many of them, you might as well watch one of the originals. I just didn’t think this film was worth the time I spent watching it.

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FilmDistrict, Contrafilm, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM),

Chris Hemsworth, Josh Peck, Adrianne Palicki, Josh Hutcherson, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Isabel Lucas, Connor Cruise, Kenneth Choi, Alyssa Diaz

This ill advised remake of 1984′s film of the same name has been updated to have the attacking army be from North Korea. A group of young people wake one day to find the armies of North Korea have taken over their city. They decide to fight, and take off, hiding in the woods taking every opportunity possible for fight for truth, justice, and the American way. One of the friends, Jed Eckert (Chris Hemsworth) is a Marine, and helps train his friends to hideout and go underground. They call themselves Wolverines, and eventually join up with the armed forces to fight the enemy.

This film was ready for release in 2010, but MGM ran into financial problems and it was shelved. Perhaps it should have been one of those films that gets lost in the vault and found hundreds of years later when we’re all dead and gone and don’t have to watch it. This was a horrible film. There was no personality at all in the bunch of freedom fighting kids that gave you anything to interest you, and it was unimportant if they win or lose. There are lots of complaints about the film being unrealistic. Well, lots of movies are unrealistic fantasy and such, but this attempts to be a real war story that makes you feel like it ought to be an authentic war story, not a fantasy/adventure, but that isn’t my biggest beef with this film. The acting was just so bad, and the script doesn’t have anything for the people unlucky enough to be cast in this movie to work with. The whole thing is just rather silly. The original 1984 film had the Soviet Union as the attackers. That had to go, of course, since they don’t exist anymore. So the film was filmed with China being the bad guys, but in the 2 years it sat on the shelf, someone realized that if this film was released internationally, that China would naturally ban it, so they cast the villains as the North Koreans. I don’t suppose there is much of a box office in North Korea anyway, so go ahead and make them upset. But I really wonder if it ever was released in China, and if so, what the actual box office was. I haven’t been able to find that out, but I would expect it to be dismal. We can’t all like everything, and in my opinion this was a waste of my time. I really did not enjoy this at all.

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Summit Entertainment , Temple Hill Entertainment , Sunswept Entertainment,

Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Ashley Greene, Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning

So Bella (Kristen Stewart) is now a vampire and getting used to her new powers. Of course naturally she’s the strongest vampire in the whole north woods because, uh, we don’t really know, she just is. Her half human baby, regrettably named Renesme, is growing at an alarming rate, and Bella is extremely upset to learn that Jacob (Taylor Lautner) must stay close to “Nessie” because he imprinted on her. So someone sees Nessie, and assumes she is “immortal” and has been turned by the Cullen’s so she’s off to tell the Volturi that the Cullen’s have broken the law of the vampires. Volturi’s are very tough, so they’re coming to kill the Cullen’s and put an end to the abomination. So the Cullins travel all over the world to call in all their friends to vouch for them, and they set out to explain to the Volturi that Renesme is not immortal. But just in case, all the vampires and werewolves prepare for a battle royal.

This movie sucked worse than the Part 1 did. Honestly, I don’t think there was near enough material to break this into two movies, and it’s just the greed motive that caused it. Nothing at all happens in this film. We’re stuck with an hour of people standing around and talking. Werewolves and Vampires are friends now, and the Volturi who are supposed to be so bad assed, are simply standing around with everybody else. There’s a huge battle scene that means nothing, and they take it all back anyway. To make matters worse, I could see the movie was completely out of gas, but when I looked at the DVD time left, it showed over 18 minutes. They used to be able to do a whole TV show in 18 minutes, but I couldn’t possibly imagine what else they had to show us. Well, the answer to that is that someone proposed that the movie was way to short, so they ought to put the names of everyone in each and every film in the entire series in the credits which literally ran over 18 minutes. Holy cow, what a way to give the custodial crew time to clean up the theater before the next showing! Honestly, the only thing going for this final episode is that the scenery in British Columbia is really beautiful. This film is almost 100% shot in the woods.

Truthfully, I know there are the young girls out there who really loved these books, but I do believe that every movie went downhill after the first one. I don’t know if this is true for the books too, as I haven’t read any of them, but the films started out with a half decent story of wolves and vampires that had a lot of interesting possibilities. But as it went on and on and on, it just had nowhere to go. The movie was not quite as bizarre as it was in Part 1, so that was perhaps the only improvement over the last one which was really strange. All in all, I didn’t watch this one for a long time because I knew it was going to be bad, but I had to give it a shot. It was clearly the worst ending to a story in a long time.

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AdScott Pictures,

Ari Graynor, Lauren Anne Miller, Justin Long, Mimi Rogers, Nia Vardalos, Mark Webber, James Wolk, Seth Rogen, Don McManus

Lauren (Lauren Anne Miller) is a business woman who has just lost her job and can’t face moving back home with a very controlling Mom and Dad. Jesse (Justin Long) suggests she moves in with his friend Katie (Ari Graynor) so they can afford a really nice apartment, but these girls remember each other from college when they had a very unsuccessful meeting. Lauren and Kate hate each other, but have to move in as neither has any other options. Lauren is thinking it’s just for a little while, but finding work is harder than she thinks. When she finds out Katie is working for someone else, running a phone sex line, Lauren has the idea of using her business sense to set up their own phone sex business with hilarious results.

Hilarious? Well, maybe not so much. This movie struck me a lame on a number of levels. Number one, phone sex is rather old fashioned these days. Yeah, I know it still exists, but it’s hard to imagine it as a fresh topic for a movie. Second, they are stretching so hard for the laughs, that it seems rather painful. Seth Rogen is here as a customer, and his role is completely wasted. Not only is it very short, but really stupid and a waste of good talent. It just seems everyone is trying so hard that it just comes off as awkward. I really didn’t care for this film. I have to say it could have been a lot better with a little work on the screenplay. This seems like one of those films that someone in pre-production should have stopped and said, “Maybe we ought to send this back to the screen writers for a little more work?” Or perhaps they just decided to crank it out and let it just bomb, I’m not sure. But this is one of those films that you never heard of for good reason, and you might as well skip this unless you are really hard up for entertainment. Not good.

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Benaroya Pictures, Lee Daniels Entertainment, Millennium Films,

Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron, David Oyelowo, Macy Gray, John Cusack, Nicole Kidman

Jack Jansen (Zac Efron) helps his brother Ward (Matthew McConaughey) who is a reported investigating a convict, Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack) on death row in rural Florida. Hillary’s confident, Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman) convinces Jack that Hillary is innocent, and he tries to convince his brother of that as well. Meanwhile, Jack is really attracted to Charlotte who either likes him, or is just playing him to free her boyfriend Hillary.

This is a dark film, and one that tries to develop their characters really well. Macy Gray has a part here that is one of the better things in the film as a maid who is watching over the boys. She’s sort of a narrator to the film. But there isn’t much going on here. The rural south setting is nicely done, and it does have a creepy swamp type of feel, but the story was really strange to me. I didn’t really care about any of this, and I didn’t care whether Hillary was guilty or not. Nicole Kidman’s character is really strange, and I never did figure out what she was going for. John Cusack is usually pretty decent, but he was sorely miscast in this film, as he had no clue how to play the menacing killer he was supposed to be. All in all, the movie just left me flat.

I really just wanted this to end. Most of the time it was really boring, but then ever so on it would make you so angry at the characters that you really hate them. I didn’t enjoy it very much, and I can see why it was mostly overlooked. I can’t recommend this mess. I didn’t really enjoy it at all.

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