Ed's Review Dot Com

Mockingbird Pictures, Dominion Pictures,

Bryan Cranston, Jennifer Garner, Jason O’Mara, Beverly D’Angelo, Ian Anthony Dale, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Isaac Leyva, Victoria Bruno, Ellery Sprayberry, Tracey Walter

Howard Wakefield (Bryan Cranston) has a good job, a loving wife in Diana (Jennifer Garner) and two little girls. He lives in the suburbs and it appears like his life is in order, but internally he’s falling apart. One night he follows a racoon up into the little storage room above the garage, and he just snaps. He watches the family from the little window above the garage and just can’t get the gumption to go inside. Finally he falls asleep, and when he wakes in the morning, he decides that going inside now will cause lots of problems explaining where he was all night, so he hangs out. Days turn into weeks and weeks into months as Howard hides out watching to see what will happen to his grieving family. As time passes, the danger of being discovered grows and it gets harder and harder to determine what in the world to do, but his fantasies bloom as he imagines what would happen if he were to return.

This is a dream I imagine most men have had many times. We all daydream about how to disappear off the face of the earth without a trace just to be able to start over again. But it would also be tempting to hide out and simply watch how your family and friends deal with it. Just like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn hiding out in the balcony and watching their own funeral, I think we’ve all dreamed about that. This is a very unusual movie. Very few characters, and most of the time is dealt inside Howard’s head as he works through his failure in life and what in the world to do get out of the mess he’s made, or if he even wants to get away. Cranston gives this his very best, and he does a great job. Jennifer Garner also pulls all the heart strings as she waits for him long suffering though the whole ordeal. The suspense builds as we know there is no way to get out of this, although I must admit the ending was a bit of a disappointment. But this is a film about the experience, damn the consequences, and not finding out what happens makes the ending more poignant. It makes you think about what would happen if you were discovered, or returned, or simply never went back. It gives us all a lot to think about. There are a few other minor characters that offer a lot to the story, but this is basically a story of Howard and Diana, and it doesn’t stray far from the main story. This was an interesting film, and certainly one I have never heard of before, but found quite entertaining and thought provoking. Another hidden gem of a film. I feel for this guy!

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

Lakeshore Entertainment, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment,

Katherine Heigl, Jason O’Mara, Daniel Sunjata, John Leguizamo, Sherri Shepherd, Debbie Reynolds, Debra Monk, Nate Mooney, Patrick Fischler, Ana Reeder

Stephanie Plum (Katherine Heigl) has lost her job and is broke, so she approaches her cousin and insists he giver her a job as a bounty hunter. Her cousin is a bail bondsmen, and one of his crack trackers is out sick, and so reluctantly he lets her chase a few escapees. But the big score is ex-cop Joe Morelli (Jason O’Mara) who jumped bail, but is her ex. The two hate each other, and the set off on a chase where she thinks he’s capturing him, and he thinks he’s proving his innocence while trying to keep her off his back. In fact, they need each other, and it turns into an intense chase with a lot of humor thrown in.

This is a rather standard cops and robbers, bounty hunter, romantic comedy type film. It follows a lot of the plots of other similar films. I was a bit surprised by it, as I expected it to be a funny rom-com and it was much more serious than I expected. The truth is that most of the film was police/ex-police chasing the bad guys down against all odds and as an outlaw. That too has been done a lot of times. Not a terrible film, but just mediocre. There’s nothing wrong with picking this up at the RedBox for a quiet evening, but don’t go into it expecting too much. I didn’t hate it, but it also did not have much going for it either. Outside of Katherine Heigl, the rest of the cast was so-so. I guess this comes from a series of books, and perhaps they took too many shortcuts just trying to following the book without being too original on their own, but there are definitely some problems. But as I said, it was relaxing watching it, and I had a decent time watching it.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog