Legendary Entertainment, Tencent Pictures, Warner Bros.,

Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson, Tian Jing, John Ortiz, Terry Notary, John C. Reilly, Toby Kebbell, Corey Hawkins, Jason Mitchell, Shea Whigham, Thomas Mann

A team of scientists convince their congressman that there is an urgent need to visit and document a hidden island, behind circle of constant storms, to document what exists there. They agree to send a team to visit the island first, but insist it must be lead by military leader Preston Packard who is sad that the Viet Nam war has been shutdown and he has nothing to do. But the island is more dangerous than they realized, and the wild creatures that live on the island wre extremely aggressive and the team is in big trouble from the very start, and trying their best to just stay alive, when the learn the king of the island is a giant ape known as Kong.

This is not really a Kong movie, and has very little to do with the giant ape. Kong only has a cameo or two and is a bit player in this story, but the other wildlife on this island are the key to the story. This is basically a military story much more than a giant ape story! Samuel L Jackson as Preston Packard is absolutely nuts as the driven soldier who naturally pushes too hard and is very stubborn and unwilling to listen. John C Reilly is a standed WWII soldier who has been stranded on this island for decades who is a major add to the story. The action in this movie is excellent, the battles are very exciting, and the acting is pretty decent, considering the non-stop action. Truthfully this movie is much more like The Battle of Los Angeles or Battleship than it is a Kong movie. They surely borrow some of the story from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s THe Lost World, more than anything. So as long as you’re looking for monsters and action rather than a King Kong movie sequel, you won’t be disappointed. Granted you have to suspend belief and threat this as science fiction, but the action is good, the monsters are realistic, and it’s a lot of fun.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

 

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CBS Films, Closest to the Hole Productions,

Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Bacon, John Goodman, J.K. Simmons, Michelle Monaghan, Alex Wolff, Themo Melikidze, Melissa Benoist

April 15, 2013 at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, two pressure cooker bombs went off shooting shrapnel into the crowd of people watching the race and even the participants in the race. All of the law enforcement agencies came together to put together the pieces and to quickly identify the terrorists as the Tsarnaev brothers, home grown terrorists who wanted to bring mayhem and death to the city. When they realized law enforcement was closing in on them, they made an attempt to escape to continue their mayhem in the largest city in the United States, New York City. The whole crew pulled out every trick in their arsenal to try to defeat these two.

A very well told story of the horror and the brave first responders who cane together to bring the city together is very well told. It stars some great actors like Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Bacon, John Goodman, and J.K. Simmons to tell the story clearly and completely. We heard the story in the news as it was happening, but this movie gives us the opportunity to get to know the men and women who worked together to solve this case. With the help of the public and with all the tools at their hands, and a little luck we get to see how the teams work. Of course, I don’t know how accurate this all is, but it seems a great deal of effort was put into making this as truthful as possible. The pace of the story is fine. It takes it time to set the stage, then show the explosions and the horror after the bombs went off. Then it goes through the efforts of each of the teams, and the difficulty of determining who’s in charge at what time. The acting is really good, and the reenactments are very well done. All in all this is an exciting and inspiring story that seems to fairly show the difficulty in trying to prevent things like this from happening. Very well done, and I am glad this film was released to see in the theater, but if you haven’t seen it, it’s now available on DVD and well worth watching.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

 

 

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Paramount Pictures, Bad Robot, Spectrum Effects,

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, John Gallagher Jr.

Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) has just left her boyfriend and is driving down a rural road in Louisiana when she suddenly spins out of control and blacks out. When she awakens, she is shackled to the wall on a mattress in a strange bunker. Not knowing what’s going on, Michelle meets Howard (John Goodman), the man who rescued her and brought her to the bunker to save her life. She soon learns of another resident of the bunker as well, but as Howard weaves his fantastic tale of a major attack killing everyone in the world, and only they are safe in this bunker. Howard is a conspiracy freak, and has been ready for years for an inevitable attack, and now it’s clear he is completely certain there is no life outside the bunker they are trapped in.

This science fiction/horror film is hardly related to the original Cloverfield at all. Other than the name, the movies are not very similar, and certainly not cursed with the same evil that was in the first film. By that I mean the shaky hand-held camera that would like to make you throw up after about 10 or 15 minutes. This one is much more steady, and professionally filmed, and is downright creepy. John Goodman plays the crazy (?) old man very well, and we’re not quite sure if he has any idea what he’s talking about. But neither do the characters. Surprisingly, there is really just the three people in the entire movie, and it is mostly done in the bunker, but an impressive bunker it is. The movie switches gears in the last half hour or show and becomes more of a horror film. The first hour is more a captive trying to escape type film. But the suspense is tremendous, and though it’s not classic horror, it has it’s moments. But it does ratchet up a notch at a time until you’ll find yourself on the edge of your seat. Marky Elizabeth Winstead did an excellent job in the lead. You could make an argument that John Goodman has the primary character, but I don’t think so. He is certainly good in his role, but this is Winstead’s movie to make or break, and she nailed it. Though this film is nowhere near as horrifying as the original Cloverfield, I would recommend this one many times over the original. Keep in mind though is it a psychological thriller first, and not really horror until the last 20% of the movie. But when it does come out of the darkness it is really good. All in all I found this a very nicely constructed movie and I can recommend this one for sci-fi/horror fans, for sure.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

 

 

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CBS Films, Groundswell Productions, Imagine Entertainment,

Alan Arkin, Marisa Tomei, June Squibb, Jake Lacy, Amanda Seyfried, Diane Keaton, Anthony Mackie, Olivia Wilde, Ed Helms, John Goodman

Love the Coopers (Shouldn’t this be Love, The Coopers?) is a Christmas Holiday film where, much like the Griswolds, the Cooper family brings four generations together for the holidays. Like all families, they have their problems and issues, but everyone is trying to make the holidays special. But a bunch of surprise visitors and unexpected events turns it all into turmoil until the family is able to right the ship and figure out how to get the ship back on keel to have a successful holiday.

Ok, I must admit (as if you didn’t know it) that I’m a sucker for Christmas films, even in February, but even so, I can see some issues with this movie. Still, the movie does have some flaws, but does that mean I did not like it? Hardly, as I really enjoyed watching it. One of the problems is too many family members to keep track of, and the characters don’t have enough time to develop more than a superficial way. Still since the cast is filled with fantastic actors all over the place, one of the high points too is to get to see them work things out. Diane Keaton and John Goodman are really good together, and I must say are two of the best around. Then aside from these two, star after star appears. The comedy is hit and miss. Some of it is really funny, and some of it is really touching, and that’s what you’re looking for in a Christmas film like this. It certainly would be more fun though to see it in November, and I’m not sure why it was released so early in the new year, except maybe with that title, it doesn’t look like a holiday film. I felt the actors did pretty good, and aside from their being a LOT going on which is hard to keep up with, the lack of time to develop each of the characters as much I would have liked, and the fact that this family is so inappropriate dropping all the family secrets to anyone who will listen, and finally, the unneeded narrator talking over everything, it did work. I really enjoyed it, and I liked it a lot. I know I make is sound terrible, and many critics didn’t like it, but since I did really enjoy it, I have to recommend it, and I do. It was quality work by top notch performers, and cleaning up the script a little would have made an awesome film.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

 

 

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Paramount Pictures, Winkler Films,

Mark Wahlberg, Jessica Lange, John Goodman, Brie Larson

This remake of the 1974 James Caan film stars Mark Walhberg as Jim Bennett, the man with two lives. As a College English Literature professor during the day, and an avid gambler who always seems to go too far and lose it all, he has a hard time keeping the two lives from crashing together. Son of a very wealthy mother (Jessica Lange) Jim borrows the money from her finally as the bad guys are about to come after him very hard since he is in to them for a great deal of money. But Jim starts a friendship with one of his students, Amy (Brie Larson) and together they make some really bad choices and find themselves back in the soup all over again.

Mark Wahlberg worked very, very hard for this film. He lost a TON of weight to play the skinny, down on his luck professor/gambler, and the action sequences, he said, took a lot out of him after losing all that weight. He promises himself he’ll never do that again. But furthermore, he sat through actual English Lit classes so that he would look the part of a professor. But with all that hard work and effort, the movie just doesn’t come together. I’m not sure Mark is the best choice for the role anyway, but it probably isn’t his fault. Actually there’s no real drama, as you don’t get invested in the characters and really don’t care whether he gets beat up or not. Jessica Lange’s role is small, and she’s pretty good at it, but it’s not enough to save the tedious parts of the movie. I guess I would have to blame it on the script. I haven’t seen the original, so I can’t really compare it in any way, but this one never really got going for me. I watched the whole film, but never really got into the story,and at the end, I was glad it was over. No matter whose fault it is, I can’t really recommend this one as I don’t think it’s interesting or captivating enough to recommend.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

 

 

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