Ed's Review Dot Com

20th Century, Anonymous Content, Appian Way, Monarchy Enterprises S.a.r.l.,

Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter, Lukas Haas

Set in the 1820’s this is a story of some fur trappers guided by Hugh Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) who were attacked by the Indians who wanted to steal the pelts. Scouting ahead, Glass is attacked by a grizzly bear and when he is found, he is nearly dead and not expected to make it. Three men were left behind to take of Glass and bury him properly when he died, but they took off to collect the reward and left him for dead. But he didn’t die, and against all odds, sets out to find the man who left him behind.

This is an epic film, two and a half hours long and very moving. Nominated for Best Picture for 2016 it did not win it, but perhaps it should have. But it was good enough to get the best actor nod for Leo. He deserved that as well. This is a tale of extreme cold and misery with a little starvation thrown in, not to mention the horrible wounds his body suffered at this graphic attack by the bear. This was extremely well done, and today’s technology is a far cry from a guy in a bear suit. If you don’t totally believe Leo was mauled for real, I don’t believe you. The location is the 2nd biggest star of this film, and it was so realistic looking that it blew me away. This is definitely a BIG SCREEN movie so hurry to watch it before it goes away. Usually the Academy Awards lift will give it extra legs. Leo’s performance was unbelievable, and he really put his whole heart and soul into this movie. There were other really great performances as well including Tom Hardy as “Fitzpatrick” the real villain in the story, and Captain Andrew Henry (Domhall Gleeson) who add a great deal, but this is truly Leo’s movie. The effort that went into producing this blockbuster must have been epic as well. It’s quite long, but hardly long enough, and the action and adventure is over the top. This is definitely one of the best films in a number of years, and is one you really don’t want to miss. This is an exciting movie. Don’t miss it.

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Paramount Pictures, Red Granite Pictures, Appian Way,

Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Matthew McConaughey, Kyle Chandler, Jon Bernthal, Jon Favreau, Rob Reiner, Jean Dujardin, Joanna Lumley, Cristin Milioti, Christine Ebersole, Shea Whigham, Katarina Cas, P.J. Byrne, Kenneth Choi, Brian Sacca, Henry Zebrowski, Ethan Suplee

Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) was a Wall Street broker, who loved the lavish lifestyle and the living in the fast lane. But the sudden stock market crash put him out of business. Like a fish out of water, he couldn’t find work and was really lost until he ran across a shop that sold penny stocks. When he found they were not regulated, he put to practice his skills as a high pressure Wall Street guy in the penny stock market, and put together a bunch of rag tag wannabe’s led by Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill). Jordan spent 36 months in prison for defrauding his customers after joining with Shoe Designer Steve Madden.

This story is based upon a real story involving real people. This dramatized version of it is a mix of really funny comedy mixed in with the truth. Actually it is a humorous story, and it did garner a lot of praise for the awards season including Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role Leonardo DiCaprio, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role Jonah Hill, and Best Achievement in Directing Martin Scorsese. This is certainly one of the best roles I’ve seen Jonah Hill perform. He was good in Moneyball too last year, but this was a really great role for him. The story is pretty easy to follow and as I said, there is a lot of really funny scenes, especially when Belfort shows the gang of misfits what he can do. Guys who were used to selling $10.00 worth of stock at a time, were suddenly taking 10k or 100k orders. There is a lot of fooling around, a lot of drug use, and basically guys being guys, but the basis of the story is really pretty funny. I thoroughly enjoyed this one, and it was worthy of all the awards it won.

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Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures, A&E Television Networks,

Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton, Isla Fisher, Jason Clarke, Adelaide Clemens, Callan McAuliffe, Amitabh Bachchan, Elizabeth Debicki

The story of ex-military man, now writer Nick Caraway (Toby Maguire), who becomes obsessed with rich young playboy Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio) who is himself obsessed with lost love Daisy (Carey Mulligan) who is married to wealthy businessman Tom Buchannan (Joel Edgerton). The movie is basically the story of Gatsby as told by Nick who not only hangs out with him acting as sort of a houseboy for Gatsby who is writing a novel about the story as he sees it. He learns a lot more about this mysterious Gatsby, and where he came from and how he got where he is today. Meanwhile, Gatsby is after married Daisy at all costs which is destroying the empire he built for her.

This novel from 1925 by F Scott Fitzgerald is the basis of the story, which is remake of the 1974 telling of the story featuring Robert Redford which was a remake of the 1949 version starring Alan Ladd. Who knows if there are any other versions out there. I saw the 1974 version and really hated it. I also found it really hard to follow. This version is a bit easier to understand (or maybe I’m a lot more mature than I was in 1974 and able to catch the story this time), but I didn’t really like this movie at all. It’s funny, sometimes, how I’ve seen so many movies, but sometimes a movie will remind me of another movie, and later I found out it was done by the same person. This one, first of all, reminded me of Moulin Rouge which I absolutely hated as well. An old story with Bee Gees and Beatles tunes didn’t sit at all. Well, I hated the soundtrack of this film too as the songs made no sense with a story from 1925. Well, guess what, there’s a reason! It’s the same guy from Moulin Rouge as well as Romeo and Juliet (the DiCaprio one) that I literally could not watch. There are very few movies that I cannot watch, but that one was certainly one that I turned off.

So what was good about the film? Well, DiCaprio did a pretty good job of playing rich playboy Jay Gatsby who is a fake and is really, really shallow. This is right up Leo’s alley. Carey Mulligan was also pretty decent as Daisy. She also is a young spoiled brat who is not very deep either. Toby Maguire’s Nick, on the other hand, was awful. He was such a little love struck puppy dog that followed Jay around doing stupid mundane tasks for him, and taking it. I really hated this character, and I don’t think it fits the kind of guy Nick should have been at all. It also seemed like Nick loved Daisy throughout, but we never found out a bit of it. He gives us the puppy dog looks and stares, but it’s never addressed at all. I am ambivalent on Joel’s Tom, Daisy’s husband. On one hand is supposed to be the old money, respectable and dignified, but he went off his rocker a little too much. Gatsby’s mansion is beautiful. The Long Island setting is beautiful. But the set decorations and car chases are really cartoonish. It didn’t seem to fit at all. Finally, this has the feel of a modern story told about the Jazz age and the 20’s. But it was written at that time, so it was a contemporary story. Some people rave about this as the greatest American novel ever written. It’s kind of Dickens-ish in the way it preaches about honesty, wealth, the crimes of the rich against the poor, and the contrast between the rich people and the poor people. I suppose Dickens could easily have written this book.

All in all though, it’s a romance story most of all, so the real romantics will probably like it. Basically, I think there are lots of love stories to be told, and there wasn’t a screaming need to remake this 1925 novel once again. On one hand, I can never get enough versions of The Christmas Carol, but on the flip side, I think this is probably too many Gatsbys. If you do decide to give this a try (maybe cause you’re Leo fan, or remember the book fondly from your school days), be patient with the first half hour. It’s really the worst part of the film, and it does improve a bit the further along you go. But this is a long movie, nearly 2 1/2 hours, and personally I felt like I would like the 2 1/2 hours back to see something a lot more interesting that this was. At least now I know the story, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do with that knowledge. My honest opinion is to skip this one.

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The Weinstein Company, Columbia Pictures,

Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, Dennis Christopher, James Remar, Michael Parks, Don Johnson

Django (Jamie Foxx) is an escaped slave who is in trouble. He’s chained and being taken back for sale when German dentist/ bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christop Waltz) shows up looking for him and wanting to purchase his freedom. Django set out as a team to capture the bad guys and turn them in for cash, while Django’s ultimate goal is to find and rescue his wife who was sold to another slave owner and reek havoc all along the way.

This is a homage to the spaghetti westerns of the 70’s from the music and ambiance all the way down to the cheesy titles in the beginning. It truly succeeds at that. I fondly remember the days when these movies were really exciting. This film mixes that genre with the Kill Bill/Pulp Fiction style which is prevalent in other Quentin Tarantino films, and gives the film the unbelievable gun fights that make very little sense and the ultra slow motion views of bodies blowing apart and such. This is exactly what you’d expect from a Tarantino homage to the previously stated films. Jamie Foxx does a pretty decent job of playing the Clint Eastwood guy who’s supposed to be a hero, but that is one thing I think fails a little bit in this film. Clint Eastwood’s hero/good guy thing is perfect because he has a strong understanding of right and wrong, good and bad, and so on. Eastwood is a really hard guy, says little, and still you know and understand his sense of right and wrong. Django, on the other hand, is a little tougher to read. We understand that he’s had a horrible life, and has really been wronged. We also feel for him that he has a right to go after the guys that did him wrong, but somehow there’s just a little too much glee in the revenge angle. He had a bit too much fun killing these guys. Then again, it may be just a bit of resentment I bring to the movie after Jamie Foxx’s Saturday Night Live performance which was so over the line. The whole monologue bit about “I got to kill all the white people! How awesome is that?” bit kind of struck me as a bit over the line. I was a fan of Jamie’s since the In Living Color days which was one of my favorite comedy shows back in the day, but he’s gotten a lot more militant in his “I hate white people” rants in recent years. I’m sorry he hates me so much when I don’t even know him. So perhaps some of that has tainted my enjoyment of his glee in killing white people in this movie.

Christoph Waltz was really good in this film. He brought a lot of humor to the movie, and was a really good, yet quirky guy, that is perfect for the film. I think the homage to the westerns of old is very well pulled off. Certainly Jamie Foxx does a very good job of the hard edged, cool headed angel of death as well. The camera work was very well done, and the setting was very good. For Tarantino fans, this is every bit as good as his other top notch work, and I can see why it was up for so many awards. There is not a lot wrong with this movie, and it deserved all the nods that it got. Remember, however, that if you’re turned off by violence and gore, this, like any other Tarantino work is very graphic. But if you can look past it, this is very well worth watching.

I have not mentioned the original 1966 Django film starring Franco Nero. It’s a similar story, and one many attribute the entire spaghetti western genre. It is a totally different film though, and has no relation to this story at all (other than the general feel to it) so there is no reason to really compare the two. This is not a remake. However, Tarantino says he was researching the director of Django (Sergio Corbucci) and decided to make what he called a “southern” which is a “western” staged in the deep south. Franco Nero, who starred in the original Django actually had a cameo role in Django Unchained.

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Imagine Entertainment, Malpaso Productions, Wintergreen Productions,

Leonardo DiCaprio, Naomi Watts, Armie Hammer, Josh Lucas, Judi Dench, Dermot Mulroney, Lea Thompson, Miles Fisher, Ed Westwick, Jeffrey Donovan, Stephen Root

J Edgar Hoover (Leonardo DiCaprio) was certainly a very colorful and exuberant character for decades as head of the FBI. Rumors regarding him have followed him throughout his life. Was he a cross-dresser? Was he gay? This can be disputed forever and we’ll probably never know for sure, but this bio-pic doesn’t pay much attention to that aspect of John Edgar Hoover’s life. But it does delve into his beginnings as the primary fighter of the mafia and organized crime, and his team took down quite a few mobsters. It covers his dirty tricks in compiling files and doing downright illegal wire taps and questionable surveillance methods on ordinary citizens. He was a quirky character, and was known to fire long time agents because of what they wore or how they cut their hair. A tyrant in the office, and either a friend or antagonist to the person living in the white house at the time. This film covers the career of J. Edgar right up to his sudden death.

Leonardo DiCaprio started out as just a youngster in the acting game, and had very little depth or craft. Gradually through the years, he has learned the craft and become better and better. This must be his most ambitious project to date. True, few of know much about Mr. Hoover, but Leo shows us how much he has learned in this film. This must be the week for biographical films (I just finished The Iron Lady) but this is another good biography. A biography like this can get boring, but this film never did. We really get to look into the life of this secretive public figure, but it doesn’t give us all the answers either. But it is a great look at the life and times of a really mysterious leader, very powerful, but at the same time, insecure looking person. His whole life is a bit of a paradox. Very well filmed picture, fascinating to watch, and very interesting to watch. I enjoyed this film, and I recommend it to anyone who is interested in this unusual leader.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog