Ed's Review Dot Com

DC Entertainment, LEGO System A/S, Lin Pictures,

Will Arnett, Zach Galifianakis, Michael Cera, Rosario Dawson, Ralph Fiennes, Mariah Carey

Batman (Will Arnett) is a loner, but we find he’s just really afraid of being a part of a family again after the terrible thing that happened to his family, but the Joker (Zach Galifianakis) is up to his usual tricks and is planning to break the entire city apart (literally) by joining up with all the other bad guys. Batman finds he can’t do it on his own, no matter how stubborn he is, and may have to accept a little help from a gaggle of friends willing to help out.

This darn movie really surprised me a lot. I really didn’t think it could be anything but cheesy, but dang, I think this is perfect fodder for the grown up little boy in me. Granted, my grandkids who love both Batman and LEGOs really loved it too, but I found the PG-13 in it gave us really funny over their heads zingers that made it really entertaining (and did I say funny) to me as well. This was really well done. With some really fine voice actors including The ‘Puter voice played by Siri herself. I mean there must be a dozen top stars and great talents in this movie along with a lot of other interesting characters that I couldn’t identify. It was a laugh fest from start to finish, and very well animated. I never had the patience for putting LEGO projects together, but I sure had a lot of fun watching the quirks and characteristics these plastic people gave me along with their plastic world. They play it so straight with tongue firmly in the cheek and I found myself laughing out loud many times. I’m sorry I missed seeing this with the grandkids in the theater, but it was sure enough fun watching the DVD at home. This is one of the nicest animated films I’ve seen in a while. Great job guys!

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Atlas Entertainment, Cruel & Unusual Films, DC Entertainment,

Gal Gadot, Chris Pine, Robin Wright, Danny Huston, David Thewlis, Connie Nielsen, Elena Anaya, Saïd Taghmaoui, Ewen Bremner, Lucy Davis

Introducing Diana Prince, daughter of the queen of the Amazon, we see Diana (Gal Gadot) as a little girl, growing up on an island of powerful women hidden from the world. But it’s clear she’s a special girl, destined to be a fighter with powers that she doesn’t even understand. But it’s clear she has a history that is amazing and is going to be become a superhero for sure. Distraught by the horrors of War, Diana heads out to help thwart the Germans from developing a most horrible chemical weapon that will allow them to rule the world, but it’s not going to be easy as only she understands who the real enemy is, and only she has a chance to stop him.

This is not the Wonder Woman we watched on TV each week as kids. The Diana Prince in a suit working for the government. But that’s okay, as a whole new generation of people need to meet Wonder Woman in order to bring her into the future Justice League films which will probably be an awesome thing to see. They need to meet the original Wonder Woman before she was domesticated and this movie does the trick. I have a couple minor complaints with the film, but I did see it in 3D and I really enjoyed the movie. The story is fun, and the fight scenes are awesome, with some really great chases and explosions all over the place. Suspense level if very high, and though it feels really long, almost 2 1/2 hours, it was quite entertaining. It’s just the they went a bit overboard on the CGI. It was so very fake looking and I felt it took away from the experience a bit. I think I enjoyed movies a bit more back when the CGI wasn’t so all in your face. I feel sorry for the actors spending weeks and weeks in front of a green screen. How boring it must have been to react to all the imaginary stuff that didn’t exist yet. All in all though, Gal Gadot did an excellent job, and was brilliant as Wonder Woman and she really pulled it off. Chris Pine backed her up really well, and the evil “take over the world” plot of the Germans was believable. The final battle was a bit anti-climactic, as if all the planning went into the CGI and they really didn’t know how to end it, but all in all it was a good film, and well worth the ticket prices.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Warner Bros. Animation, DC Entertainment,

Matt Ryan, Camilla Luddington, Jason O’Mara, JB Blanc, Ray Chase, Enrico Colantoni, Roger R. Cross, Jeremy Davies, Rosario Dawson, Brian T. Delaney, Alfred Molina, Jerry O’Connell, Colleen O’Shaughnessey, Jeff Parise, Laura Post, Nicholas Turturro

The Justice League, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. band together to fight a group of evil super villains, including John Constantine, Zatanna and Jason Blood also known as the demon Etrigan, who are using magic to create evil and chaos. It’s an all out battle of good and evil.

As you know, I’m not a big superhero/comic book fan by any means. But I really hated sitting through this movie. It’s TV type low quality animation with low quality voices and dialog, and a very boring story. This is stuff that is typical Saturday Morning cartoon stuff but R rated. Sometimes the R rating is because the depth of the story is too difficult and mature for kids, but this is just a lot of swearing. There’s no reason why it needed tp be like that, as it’s simply wasted. So not for kids (boys) who might like it, and not interesting enough from adults, there may a few fans of this type of film, but it didn’t work in the least for me. I even found myself so disinterested in the film, that I turned it off and tried again the next day. After looking at the reviews of the guys that loved this, I thought maybe I was wrong, and I try to never review a movie that I haven’t seen start to end, so I watched it again yesterday. It was just a bad the second time through. I would suggest avoiding this like the plague.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Atlas Entertainment, DC Comics, DC Entertainment,

Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Jared Leto, Jai Courtney, Joel Kinnaman, Cara Delevingne, Viola Davis, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Adam Beach, Jay Hernandez, Karen Fukuhara

Our government is once again petrified that the next Superman that comes along may be a really bad guy who might be ready to wipe out humanity, so they figure they got to do something proactively to prepare in case a bad space alien shows up. So the plan is to put together a team of really bad folks with superpowers and keep them safely locked up and protected, but to hold something over their heads so that in case something bad happens, the will have a desire to do what is asked of them for their own greedy purposes. But when the super villains figure out that maybe they’re being used, many decide to go out on their own wreaking havoc and destruction everywhere as the rest try to contain them. What follows is an epic battle of evil vs more evil.

Each time I watch and review a movie featuring comic book characters, I mention the fact that I have never been a huge comic book/ comic book movie fan. But there have been some that have really impressed me and make me really glad I watched it. This one, however, isn’t one of those. I found this one really tedious, I’m sorry to say. But as I read other users and their comments, I figured out pretty quick that my feelings were felt by many other people as well which sort of validated my indecisiveness about this film. I was afraid it was my fault as a non-comics guy, but it’s more than that. I was bothered by Will Smith as DeadShot. He is a bit too recognizable to take on a role like that, and it bothered me all the way through that it was Will playing the part. There were a LOT of characters that are not really very recognizable, and it took a lot of effort to try to figure out all those characters and what their back story and motivation was so we could know where they were coming from. The battle scenes weren’t bad, but the feeling that I got was that it was all being done just to have something to do to fill up the time. The story did not catch me, and I was very apathetic as to whether they succeeded or not. The whole movie was just a bit chaotic for my taste and I sure got distracted all the way through. When it was over, I said, “That’s it?”, but then realized that I wasn’t playing that much attention to it. Not a great experience for me, so unless you’re a big Comic Book fan, there are many better choices that this one. Guardian of the Galaxy (which this movie obviously tried to cash in on) was a much better movie, for sure.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Summit Entertainment, Di Bonaventura Pictures, DC Entertainment,

Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Mary-Louise Parker, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Byung-hun Lee, Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren

Frank (Bruce Willis) is retired CIA, and happily married to Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) and no longer interested in CIA matters. He’s been classified though as “Retired, Extremely Dangerous”. One day he’s met by Marvin (John Malkovich), his former partner in crime, in a supermarket. Marvin informs him of top secret data released by Wikileaks implementing them in the loss of a top secret portable nuclear device that was hidden in Russia. All the different spy agencies are after them to find out where the various parts of the device are hidden, and Frank is sucked back into the business as he and Marvin put the team back together and try to locate the device before someone else does.

The first “Red” movie was really hysterical. I was blown away by it when I watched it. This one was a letdown. It is nowhere near as good as the first. That being said, it does have some really funny moments. It’s also a relatively decent adventure spy story. Malkovich is really good as an effective agent, but is so inappropriate sometimes, it’s hysterical. He says anything he thinks. Half of Frank’s job is to keep Marvin out of trouble for his big mouth. These guys breaking into the Kremlin is a good adventure, but when you put it up beside the first film, it pales in comparison. If you’re in the mood for a decent action adventure spy story, then go ahead and watch this. It’s certainly very watchable. Just don’t expect it to be as hilarious as the first one was.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog