Ed's Review Dot Com

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.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Sense and Sensibility Ventures,

James Cromwell, Bailee Madison, Jackson Rathbone, Alicia Witt, Andrew Sensenig, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Frankie Faison, Madison Burge, Louanne Stephens, Leslie-Anne Huff, Drew Waters

Ida (Bailee Madison) is a young girl growing up with her single Mom. She’s a very independent little girl, but she naturally has many questions about her father. Her Mom refuses to discuss it, so armed with just a name, and the info that her Dad is a rodeo rider, she heads out to try to find him. She bumps into “The Sweethearts of the Rodeo” a group of trick riding girls led by a famous ex-rodeo rider named Terrence Parker (James Cromwell).

You know there’s nothing like a good Country and Western movie! It seems there’s never enough of those. This story is probably a little too cutesy for some people. But the little girl (Bailee Madison) is really cute. She’s a pretty good little actress and she carries the lead role good enough. James Cromwell is always great. He’s one of the best of the crotchety old man actors who really revs it up in this movie. The trick riding is well done, and the shows are good. It’s like a sports movie that’s not so heavy on the “big game”. There are a couple back stories on some of the characters that makes it pretty good. I guess the only one who comes off badly is poor Mom, but she does appear to be somewhat of a pain! I’m talking child abandonment, as this poor kid is left alone night after night while Mom’s out dating and stuff. All that doesn’t matter though. Like a Disney “Wonderful World of Color” two part Sunday Night show, this nice little family film takes us through the challenges of a little girl dreaming about who her father is. Will she find him, or is he long gone? It doesn’t really matter in the end, as the story is about the adventure getting there and watching Bailee’s character grow up before our eyes.

Not a heavy story, it’s family fare, for sure, but it’s a worthwhile diversion, and a enjoyable story. I am glad I watched this.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Summit Entertainment, Sunswept Entertainment, TSBD Canada Productions,

Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Peter Facinelli, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz, Jackson Rathbone, Elizabeth Reaser, Nikki Reed, Billy Burke, Maggie Grace, Jamie Campbell Bower, Michael Sheen, Anna Kendrick

Bella (Kristin Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) get married, and take off to a private island where the Cullins family has a resort, vacation home. Bella becomes pregnant, but immediately the baby is bad for her, as she is still human. This also alerts the Quileutes of the danger this baby is to them. They set out to destroy this baby and possibly the whole town of Forks.

Ok. Here I go making enemies of all the die hard Twilight fans. I’ve never read the books, and I’m not invested in the story where it rules my life. I have stayed up with the tale since the beginning, but I’m not one of those who camps out for 3 days outside the theater to be the first in line to see the movie, obviously, since I waited till it was out on DVD. I truly feel the films have been getting weaker and weaker as the series moves on, and this one was rather pathetic as adventure movies go. There is nothing happening here that makes much sense. Bella gets pregnant, as a human, by a vampire. Now, according to the story, this is supposed to be impossible. Well I guess so. Vampires are dead. They’re cold, and they have no heartbeat, and I guess no blood or other bodily fluids, yet she’s able to get pregnant. Then, of course, because of the superhuman powers of the vampire, a perfectly looking human baby is fully developed and born in one month, cutting the standard time of gestation 9 times. Now this is a fantasy, so we have to suspend the normal laws of science, I understand. There really aren’t sparkly people. But if we do that, then how are we supposed to get involved in the drama of the difficulties of this miraculous pregnancy anyway? And there’s not much action here either. Yeah, the Wolf people are a bit ticked off, but nothing really happens. Besides, as tough as the wolves are, it’s hard to believe that they’re much of a threat to vampire people with ultra human strength (If a wolf tries to bite you, you’re not going to bleed, and you can just thrown them into the next county! And if all else fails, you climb the highest tree in five tenths of a second anyway, and wolves don’t climb trees. All in all I found this to be by far the weakest story of all, and though I know many people are truly invested in the beautiful wedding and love story between Bella and Edward, I didn’t find that worthy enough of a huge blockbuster film like this.

I guess that the film maker had a tough call, as they could probably have made the story better by compressing part one and part two into a single film and cutting out the fluff, but there are two major reasons not to do that. First, the Twi-hards are going to be extremely pissed off if they skip any of the canoodling between Edward and Bella as they’ve been waiting for that forever, and secondly, mega-$$$$$$$$$.

Then another thing I just didn’t get? What was with the horrible music in the soundtrack? I made the mistake of turning on captioning, so I got to see the words to these strange pieces of music. What they hell was that?

For example, this is the lovely lyrics to the beautiful wedding scene:

I was a quick wet boy, diving too deep for coins
All of your street light eyes wide on my plastic toys
Then when the cops closed the fair, I cut my long baby hair
Stole me a dog-eared map and called for you everywhere

Have I found you
Flightless bird, jealous, weeping or lost you, american mouth
Big pill looming

[ From: http://www.metrolyrics.com/flightless-bird-american-mouth-lyrics-iron-wine.html ]
Now I’m a fat house cat
Nursing my sore blunt tongue
Watching the warm poison rats curl through the wide fence cracks
Pissing on magazine photos
Those fishing lures thrown in the cold
And clean blood of Christ mountain stream

Have I found you
Flightless bird, grounded, bleeding or lost you, american mouth
Big pill stuck going down

Now if I were getting married, this would certainly not be a prime choice for the wedding dance. 🙂

Some other great musical moments:
And if I was you
I’d use the loo
Before the long drive
We compliment each other
Just like Satan and Christ
I wear my hair fizzy
I don’t copy no style
Cause kissin and a scrubbin
Has consequences
You’re on the bus again
Past big ben
With your rip off oyster card
Tell your A.S.B.O. friend
To sling his hook and “go make your girl smile”

Then one last complaint, and then I’ll shut up. I was shocked at the closing credits. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, one of the great jokes is how the people who created the credits have been sacked, and the people who were responsible for sacking the people who created the credit have also been sacked. What we’re left with is crappy put together credits that look like any 5 year old could have put them together. This is what the closing credits looked like to me. It was like they spent 3 dollars on creating these red and yellow text flash cards. It was like one of the old 1960’s spaghetti western credits which were done in English to overlay the original Italian credits or something. I thought it really weird.

So basically I’m going to stop and open the gates for the people who love Twilight to attack me for not getting this, and I probably deserve it, but I have to admit that I was really sorely disappointed after watching the last two Potter films to see this as the end of Twilight. I could have skipped it and not missed anything worthwhile. Sorry.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Nickelodeon Films, Paramount Studios, Blinding Edge Pictures

Noah Ringer, Dev Patel, Nicola Peltz, Jackson Rathbone, Shaun Toub

The Last Airbender, long awaited as M. Night Shyamalan’s latest blockbuster? Well we’ll see.   Meanwhile, I must say up front that I had never heard of the Nickelodeon Series, Avatar, The Last Airbender as my youngest child is now 18 and way past the Nickelodeon stage (unless you want to count “Degrassi” which is her last hold on her childhood).  So I was not familiar with the story, and was dragged to the theater by a wife who heard how great it was.

It’s Night Shyamalan, so I never have an idea what to expect when I walk into a Shyamalan picture.  I have a habit of catching his movies opening weekend so that I don’t have any pre-conceived notions of the story, and let him surprise the heck out of me.

Sixth Sense,  Ok, I had no idea of the twist in the end, and felt like a fool that I missed it completely.  What fun!  The Village, That one blew me away, too.  I was convinced of a bunch of 17^th century pilgrims dealing with imaginary monsters (those things couldn’t be real!) but what if they were?  When Ron Howard’s kid walked out of the compound and into the future my jaw dropped.  What a surprise!

But this time, it’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax.  This time it’s more like an anime, or kung fu movie or whatever.  That being said, the actors did a pretty good job.  I feel for Aang, “The Last Airbender” though, as he sounded like they were giving him lines just before he had to say them. I thought he was not a great actor, but he handled the emotions and physical activity just fine.   No big stars is a plus for this story.  Of course one movie covers one year of the series, so we’re obviously in for more of these if this one makes a few bucks.

I must admit that I did watch the series (which is out as instant view on Netflix), and I must admin I really enjoyed the movie more.  The 20 episodes (10 hours) of cartoons had a lot more depth, but the movie covered all the highlights and the cinematograpy and special effects were spectacular.

Ok, so this is no Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter or Twilight, but again, it’s not that bad.  It was a really nice evening at the movies with some popcorn and nachos, and was a great escape.  The scenery is breathtaking and the effects are awesome.  3D was a nice effect, but didn’t add a great deal to the movie, and after a few minutes you get into the story and forget it’s even 3D.  Nice escape, but not an epic picture, but when the sequel comes out, I’ll be buying a ticket.  🙂