Ed's Review Dot Com

Tashmoo Productions, Amber Entertainment, Belladonna Productions

Willa Holland, Amy Jo Johnson, Tatanka Means, Elise Eberle, Cynthia Stevenson, Lucien Dale, Forrest Fyre, Russell Means

Davey Wexler (Willa Holland) is a young lady still in school, and loves her life in Atlantic City with her parents and her little brother. But when her father is killed in a robbery, and her mother finds herself lost and in deep grief and taking too many pills, she decides to take Davey and her brother to New Mexico to live temporarily with her sister’s family. But her mother seems to be slipping further and further from reality and Davey is getting more and more frustrated and having a really hard time fitting in at the new school. Davey goes for a journey to the canyon, and meets a strange guy named “Wolf” (Tatanka Means) and they hit it off in a very beautiful friendship. Wolf is a secretive and has walls as high as Davey’s but he still manages to teach her to look at life from a different point of view and to face and overcome the many obstacles in her life and to change her point of view completely. This is a touching and classic book by world famous author Judy Blume and her husband Lawrence Bloom wrote the screenplay and directed this heartwarming story.

This is another of those films that I missed years ago in it’s release due to Netflix’s DVD throttling practices and it finally bubbled up to the top of my queue. What a wonderful story and very well done performances. A lot of it is filmed on location in the mountains of New Mexico. This is a perfect story for preteen and early teen girls, like most of Judy’s books, and is a perfect story for them, but the value of the softly told story, definitely not in your face, I found I really enjoyed it as well. It has much of the feel of a Wonderful World of Disney TV movie from back in the 60’s but is much deeper than those. Wolf is, of course, a native American who has a lot of love for his culture and heritage, and a few secrets of his own. He did a wonderful job in performing this role, and was perfectly cast. Willa is an amazing actress. I have to admit I was very impressed with her performance. She can portray pages of dialog with just her expression and when she’s wordless, is some of the best moments in the film. From shock, to pain, to frustration, to worry, to love and caring, it’s all there in the emotion her face can portray. She was superb in this movie and is building a large volume of work. The location and the majestic scenery is also stunning. All in all, this little film is an excellent hidden gem that I didn’t know about, but was very happy to stumble upon. It was a pleasure. This is one of those films, that, when it was finished, I went back and watched it all over again with the commentary by Judy and Lawrence Blume, which was every bit as good as the movie itself. The love and caring they put into this story, and the hard work and dedication the cast put into playing the part, makes this a very worthwhile film to watch. Look for it.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Belladonna Productions, Memento Films International, Uncorked Productions,

Bill Sage, Ambyr Childers, Julia Garner, Wyatt Russell, Nick Damici, Kelly McGillis, Jack Gore, Odeya Rush, Michael Parks, Annemarie Lawless

When Mrs. Parker suddenly turns up dead, the family decides to continue their long held tradition of eating human flesh. Papa Parker puts it upon his daughters to search for and prepare their “food” when the authorities start to suspect something isn’t right and start closing in on them. The children are forced to face their family traditions and determine whether to go along with Dad or not.

This is a very unusual horror film. It’s not really that superb, but it’s not completely awful either. I found that the subject matter was horribly gross, but yet it was not all that awful to watch. If a gore fest like this can be tastefully done, this is probably as good as that gets. There are some memorable scenes, like one in particular early on that takes place in the family cellar that is certainly one you won’t forget anytime soon. But the production values are low, it’s very low budget, but darn it, there are some really interesting parts. All in all, it’s just not up to snuff, but as a fan of horror films, I found myself watching the entire film, then the bonus features on the DVD that talk a lot about how it was made. To their credit, these folks had very little money to work with, and had to do with things as best they could, but they really love the genre and worked really hard to get this on film. So I have to give them credit for their devotion. It’s just hard for me to highly recommend a film with all the production problems that this one has. Now I found it way better than the latest Paranormal Activity:The Marked ones with it’s shaky cam found footage garbage. This is a real movie with actual photography being used. But fans of slick looking high budget horror just isn’t likely to enjoy this. I found myself on the fence and decided to ride on the fence. If you love horror, and are looking for a new viewpoint but don’t mind the low production values, then you’ll probably enjoy this as I did. But if you like production value in your films, then you’ll probably be disappointed. Watch the trailer and decide for yourself.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog