Ed's Review Dot Com

Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Legendary Pictures,

Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, John Lithgow, Ellen Burstyn, William Devane, Michael Caine

Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) lives at home with his parents and the kids and is a farmer. It’s a futuristic world where the dust bowl has returned and all efforts toward technology and science has turned to survival by growing the only crop left, corn. But Cooper was trained as a space engineer and a pilot, and though he misses it, he grows corn. But accidentally he and his daughter stumble upon a secret NASA location and before you know it they are on the way to distant planets to discover if there is a safe place for what’s left of humanity to survive in and call home.

This is one excellent film. This one is right up my alley. (Is that a bowling reference? I always wondered what alley stuff is up and why). Anyway, this is a really good sci-fi thriller with some sketch science and lots of fiction. If it had been a bit more probable scientifically I might have gone for the 5 star rating I enjoyed this so much. But I bought into it when they flew a space ship out to an asteroid to blow it up with an atomic bomb, so why not a short cut through a worm hole? The casting is pretty good. This is not the role I would have picked for McConaughey, but he actually pulled it off pretty well. Also Anne Hathaway was really good as a book scientist without any practical experience. The main relationships of the movie are between Anne’s character and her father, Professor Brand, played well by Michael Caine. the second one is between Cooper and his daughter in several different time periods. This is truly an all star cast, for sure. This is a long film, nearly 3 hours, but it flies by and is very suspenseful. The story struggles at the end with some very insane “Lake House” type time warps but they pull it all together with love and understanding and trust for each other. As my daughter used to say when she was very little, “Another happy ending”. This is a praiseworthy sci-fi film, like we haven’t seen in a long, long time. Many attempts have fallen short, but this one is hitting on all cylinders. If you have any heart at all for Sci-Fi, pick this one out at your nearest Redbox and give it a look. It’s very satisfying.

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Columbia Pictures, Annapurna Pictures, First Light Production,

Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Ehle, Mark Strong, Kyle Chandler, Édgar Ramírez , James Gandolfini, Chris Pratt, Reda Kateb, Scott Adkins, Taylor Kinney

Maya (Jessica Chastain) is a CIA operative being trained in the harsh interrogation procedures handled by the CIA on the Al Quaida terrorists. But when she gets a lead on the possible location of Osama bin Laden. After convincing the CIA leaders to go after him, the story tells of the Navy Seals and the events of the day bin Laden was killed.

A lot of people really were blown away by this movie. I was not, and I’m not really sure why. Argo was a much better movie than this was, although Argo wasn’t nearly my choice as the best picture either. I’ve been really struggling with why I didn’t like this story. I guess there are really a couple of reasons. For one, this is a recent event, and it was covered thoroughly by the media, and debated heavily at the time. So the details are really fresh, and there really wasn’t much new here. The story plodded. It wasn’t really very exciting. We’ve seen much better computer animation on the History Channel, and A&E, as well as on the network news. Jessica Chastain’s Maya wasn’t a nice character. She kind of bugged me through the whole movie. She was playing a strong woman who knew she was right, but throughout she was a bit of nagging wench. Furthermore, when the moment of truth came around, it was shot in a Blair Witch kind of shaky, dark camera way, that it was hard to follow what was going on. All in all, it wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t that great either. I expected a great story told in a grand way, and I got more of a History Channel TV documentary. I was underwhelmed. I waited for it to get really interesting, but there wasn’t anything more to tell, I guess, than what we already knew. This was not the blockbuster film I expected. I think most people fell patriotic about the subject, and so the movie got a lot more attention due to the events that happened than by the actual movie. So if you’re interested, give it a go, but if you’re looking for something to blow your mind, I don’t think it will.

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Toma 78, De Milo,

Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau , Megan Charpentier, Isabelle Nélisse, Daniel Kash, Julia Chantrey

Something bad happened according to the radio. An executive showed up at the office, killed his two partners and his estranged wife and disappeared after kidnapping his two small children. After an accident, he finds a lonely cabin way out in the woods. Soon the girls are left alone, stranded for five years, but somehow manage to survive until they are rescued by their uncle and come to live with him. But they seem to have brought some evil back with them in this horror film.

This is a pretty scary film. I was impressed because there are a lot of levels to this film. It does have very scary parts, and very suspenseful parts. There’s a lot going on here, and it’s a roller coaster ride, for sure. The stars of this film are the two little girls, Victoria (Megan Charpentier) as the older sister, wise and nurturing to her younger sister, Lilly (Isabelle Neliesse) sullen and silent. Lilly was only one when they were left alone in the woods. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays the two brothers, Lucas and Jeffrey. He’s really pretty good as a caring uncle with only the best intentions for the troubled nieces. Jessica Chastain is Annabel, a rocker chick who plays the bass in a band, but gives it all up to nurture the troubled children. But when Jeffrey has an accident and is in the hospital and Annabel is feeling really overwhelmed and can’t deal with the horrible things that are happening to the family.

Very scary, and doing very well in the box office. This is a good film for the big screen, and ought to be enjoyed in the group environment of the theater. One of the better horror films lately, and a nice change of pace from the other stuff that’s been out there. I recommend this one for the horror lovers out there.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

DreamWorks Animation, Pacific Data Images (PDI),

Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Cedric the Entertainer, Andy Richter, Tom McGrath, Frances McDormand, Jessica Chastain, Bryan Cranston, Martin Short

At the end of #2 the animals were left in Africa (Remember: it was called Escape 2 Africa, right?). Now Alex and the friends want to get back to the United States, but have no way back. But serendipitously they bump into a traveling circus (which always has room for some new animals) and the join up to travel Europe, hoping to be discovered so they can get a gig back in New York City. But as usual, there are a lot of trials and tribulations along the way.

This is a nice little cartoon film that is very typical of this genre. I felt like they didn’t put a whole lot of work to this, just went the usual Dreamworks method of getting a gang of famous actors who don’t do voices, but just play themselves in their own voice. The story is not really unique, and not very interesting for those over 10. I’m sure the kids will love it, and you can certainly put it on the DVD to keep them entertained (and stop them from driving you nuts) on a rainy Saturday afternoon, but this is simply not classic cinema. Pixar they aren’t. Dreamworks has just not put it all together just yet. The Shrek series was very popular, due a lot to an very original story, but even that has kind of worn out and they’re struggling to find something fresh and unique again I’m sure, but things like Madagascar 3 are just holding the place to keep the animators (or are the programmers now?) working until that fresh and new idea comes along.

Lacking in excitement and wonder, this is just a Saturday Morning TV Cartoonish revisit to the characters with such original music as Katy Perry “Firework” and Edith Piaf’s 1960 “Non, regrette rien”. Not shabby songs, in their own right, but not very original. I say, unless you’ve got little ones who need some entertainment, give this one a pass, as there’s just not enough there to keep an adult interested in the meager plot.

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Miramax Films, Marv Films, Pioneer Pictures,

Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington, Jessica Chastain, Jesper Christensen, Marton Csokas, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Wilkinson, Romi Aboulafia, Melinda Korcsog

Rachel Singer (Helen Mirren) is a former Mossad intelligence agent. She is now reliving her grandest days when she and 2 other agents accomplished the capture of a Nazi war criminal back in 1965. Her daughter has just written a book praising the events of the capture, but it seems there is more to the story that was told, and now Rachel and her partners Stephan and David (Tom Wilkenson and Ciaran Hinds) have to relive what they did, and some things they are very ashamed of. The suspense builds as we jump back and forth from 1997 to 1965 and put the pieces of this mission back together and find the truth.

I usually enjoy a good World War II movie. This one, however, never grabbed me. It wasn’t hard enough to follow, granted, but I just never got invested in their adventures. I never felt an real suspense, nor did I really care of the outcome. The flipping of the two casts (Mirren, Wilkinson, Hinds) with the younger versions of themselves (Jessica Chastain, Marton, Csokasa, and Sam Worthington) was done about as good as they could, but I still found it annoying and disconcerting. I’m not sure if there was any other way to age the characters 30 years without resorting to hiring two separate casts, but I found this constant swapping of casts off-putting.

Then there’s the ending. When it’s over, you’re really not sure what you have just seen. I just didn’t get into it. Whatever happened, happened, and I’m not going to spend my days theorizing on what it all means. I know there are some who love this film, but for the mainstream, I don’t feel like it gave me enough to recommend it. Boring a lot of the time, and confusing the rest, and the constant flopping of characters makes it even more confusing. Then when the end comes and you don’t really know what happened, and worse, don’t really care very much, it seems like a given to just skip this one!

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog