Ed's Review Dot Com

Franklin Street, Myriad Pictures, Parkside Pictures,

Shirley MacLaine, Amanda Seyfried, Anne Heche, AnnJewel Lee Dixon, Thomas Sadoski, Tom Everett Scott, Philip Baker Hall, Alanna Ubach, Joel Murray, Adina Porter, Sarah Baker, Steven Culp, Basil Hoffman, Gedde Watanabe

Harriet is a retired businessman, and very wealthy woman. She is also the worlds biggest control freak and everyone hates her. She lives in a small town, and over the years was the primary supporter of the local paper due to her advertising revenue. One day, while reading the obituaries, she notices that the beautiful words describe people in the greatest light, even though she really didn’t like any of them. Then she got an idea. She decides to visit the paper and find the girl, Anne, a frustrated writer who wants to be so much more than an obituary writer. She informs Anna that she is now hired to write her obituary now, while she’s still alive, so that Harret can make sure it’s done well enough. She doesn’t want to leave it to chance. So she provides Anna with a list of all her contacts, her estranged daughter, her ex-husband, and everyone else in her life. Problem is that no one has anything good to say about Harriet.

This comedy is really in the wheelhouse for Shirley. She nails the grumpy old lady who has her way 100% of the time. No one can every do anything right in her eyes, and though she’s sweet at the center, the harsh exterior is played perfectly. It’s a great role for AManda as well and she works with Shirley very well. It’s a very interesting story, and very, very funny. This might have appealed to me more as a Senior Citizen myself, but I found it really funny. It’s very cleverly written, the script is excellent, and the acting is really well performed. All the cylinders are firing, and I found this to be a very pleasant surprise. I enjoyed this movie, and I recommend it for a bunch of laughs and a pleasant time.

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Andrea Leone Films, Busted Shark Productions, Fear of God Films,

Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried, Kylie Rogers, Aaron Paul, Diane Kruger, Quvenzhané Wallis, Bruce Greenwood, Jane Fonda, Octavia Spencer, Janet McTeer

Fathers and Daughters is a very touching heart felt film about a single father Jake Davis (Russell Crowe) who is also a well known author who is struggling with the accidental death of his wife while trying to raise his little girl and the light of his life, Katie (adult played by Amanda Seyfried, Young Katie played by Kylie Rogers). Told in intertwining stories of Young Katie supporting her Father who went through a stay in the mental hospital after the death of his wife, leaving her with an Aunt and Uncle who don’t feel inclined to let her go back to her dad, and the grown up Katie, now working as a child welfare worker, but suffering badly from the effects of everyone she loves leaving her alone. It is a very touching tale and an excellent relationship drama.

The three main characters in this story, Jake, and his daughters, Young Katie, the child, and adult Katie the screwed up woman trying to learn how to live her life with the strong desire to help others, but no idea how to help herself makes a very touching and tragic story. But it’s also very heartwarming. All three of these actors are superb, and all need to be congratulated very much for their wonderful performances. No surprise from Russell Crowe, although he pulls out a stellar performance of a man at his wits end doing everything in his power to keep fighting against all odds. But this is the best I have seen Amanda Seyfried, although she has done some very good performances in the past, she is absolutely excellent in this very troubled and difficult role. Great job! But Kylie was absolutely stunning in her role as Young Katie. This little girl pulled off one of the best child acting performances I have ever seen. The rest of the cast is outstanding as well. Though this is a tragic story, it is crafted extremely well, and kudos to the screenwriters and director as well for a stunning film. This is one movie I was really glad to see, and it touched my heart deeply. This is an adult story, some of the choices Katie makes are very bad, and though shown very tastefully, are not meant for little ones. The R rating is much more about what you feel than what you see. But adults and older teens ought to watch this film. It is like a work of art and a real masterpiece. I highly recommend this movie for mature audiences.

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CBS Films, Groundswell Productions, Imagine Entertainment,

Alan Arkin, Marisa Tomei, June Squibb, Jake Lacy, Amanda Seyfried, Diane Keaton, Anthony Mackie, Olivia Wilde, Ed Helms, John Goodman

Love the Coopers (Shouldn’t this be Love, The Coopers?) is a Christmas Holiday film where, much like the Griswolds, the Cooper family brings four generations together for the holidays. Like all families, they have their problems and issues, but everyone is trying to make the holidays special. But a bunch of surprise visitors and unexpected events turns it all into turmoil until the family is able to right the ship and figure out how to get the ship back on keel to have a successful holiday.

Ok, I must admit (as if you didn’t know it) that I’m a sucker for Christmas films, even in February, but even so, I can see some issues with this movie. Still, the movie does have some flaws, but does that mean I did not like it? Hardly, as I really enjoyed watching it. One of the problems is too many family members to keep track of, and the characters don’t have enough time to develop more than a superficial way. Still since the cast is filled with fantastic actors all over the place, one of the high points too is to get to see them work things out. Diane Keaton and John Goodman are really good together, and I must say are two of the best around. Then aside from these two, star after star appears. The comedy is hit and miss. Some of it is really funny, and some of it is really touching, and that’s what you’re looking for in a Christmas film like this. It certainly would be more fun though to see it in November, and I’m not sure why it was released so early in the new year, except maybe with that title, it doesn’t look like a holiday film. I felt the actors did pretty good, and aside from their being a LOT going on which is hard to keep up with, the lack of time to develop each of the characters as much I would have liked, and the fact that this family is so inappropriate dropping all the family secrets to anyone who will listen, and finally, the unneeded narrator talking over everything, it did work. I really enjoyed it, and I liked it a lot. I know I make is sound terrible, and many critics didn’t like it, but since I did really enjoy it, I have to recommend it, and I do. It was quality work by top notch performers, and cleaning up the script a little would have made an awesome film.

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Warner Bros., RatPac-Dune Entertainment, Berlanti Productions,

Levi Miller, Hugh Jackman, Garrett Hedlund, Rooney Mara, Amanda Seyfried, Cara Delevingne

Peter (Levi Miller) is whisked away to Neverland where he teams up with hero Captain Hook (Garrett Hedlund) to fight the evil pirate Blackbeard (Hugh Jackman). This is the prequel to Peter Pan showing how Peter became the boy who never grew up, tells the early story of when Peter and Hook were still friends.

This is a film that is very beautiful. The look of this film is stunning. The sets and locations are splendid. The story, on the other hand, is somewhat flawed. There are great battles and awesome battle scenes. The action is really great. But Hook, the great Nemesis of Peter Pan is so un-Hook-like that it’s really hard to accept that he’s the same guy. They allude to the fact that later on Pan and Hook will be enemies, yet we never get any inkling of how that could happen. Basically, this could have been a blockbuster film, but I feel it missed on so many, many levels. It was certainly worth watching, but it really disappointed me in many ways. When I saw the movie “Hook” many years ago, I was completely blown away. Robin Williams and Dustin Hoffman were so wonderful in that film. But the story was extremely well done and perfectly crafted. This one, on the other hand was a nice try, but just missed the mark.

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Animus Films, Eclectic Pictures, Millennium Films,

Amanda Seyfried, Peter Sarsgaard, Chris Noth, Hank Azaria, Bobby Cannavale, Sharon Stone, Robert Patrick, Adam Brody, Juno Temple, James Franco, Eric Roberts

Obviously based on the 1980 autobiography, Ordeal, this is the story of Linda Lovelace (Amanda Seyfried) and her life, mostly in her short lived porn career. Linda was married to Chuck Traynor (Peter Sarsgaard) who allegedly abused her, forced her into prostitution and a porn career. Linda grew up in a highly religious and very strict home, and once she got out she went a bit overboard. She later made lots of claims that this movie investigates. A dramatized documentary of her life is what we have here. It’s debatable whether it’s all true or not, but it is her side of the story. No doubt, she did live a difficult life, that’s for sure.

This is not a really great documentary. I suspect it went through a lot of difficulty before it got made, and though there’s some big names in it, I’m not sure it’s really all that accurate. It’s titillating for sure, and the Deep Throat phenomenon was a really big deal at the time when it came out. I know everyone was talking about it, and since I was just a youngster at the time, I knew about it, but didn’t really know what it was all about. I still have never seen the film, as it’s probably so dated now that everyone’s pretty much talking about it. Porn was really back room stuff in those days, and this was the first film that ever made it into mainstream culture. People from all levels of society were talking about this film, but though the porn moguls (mostly really slimy guys) thought that they were going to break into the mainstream, it never happened. The public quickly figured out that there was no worthwhile story involved, and the hard to watch stuff got really old really fast. Once they’ve seen it, there was nothing new. Though they tried to top themselves, they quickly got turned by quick profits and shoddy product. There wasn’t a market for explicit mainstream films, and if anything, American films have gotten tamer rather than racier in recent years. Filmmakers quickly learned that X, NC-17, and many times even R ratings will kill a movie’s profits. They cut and cut to get a PG-13 at all costs. This movie is not really about the movie, it’s about the weird relationship of Linda herself, and it left me feeling like I was watching that Dorothy Stratten movie and I expected Chuck to kill her in the end. But this doesn’t go to the end. It pretty much ends with Linda’s foray into feminist anti-porn. All in all I didn’t find this film very interesting, and I am pretty sure this will be a curiosity movie that ends up in the 99 cent store bargain bin. This is a bit of a train wreck, just like her life was, so we should have someone standing outside saying “Move along, move along, there’s nothing to see here, move along!”

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