Ed's Review Dot Com

Dentsu, Fuji Television Network, Illumination Entertainment,

Louis C.K., Eric Stonestreet, Kevin Hart, Ellie Kemper, Lake Bell, Jenny Slate, Bobby Moynihan, Hannibal Buress, Albert Brooks

Max (Louis C.K.) has a great life. He’s been with his owner since he was a puppy, but when she brings home Duke (Eric Stonestreet) Max is really annoyed. He wants to setup Max to get rid of him, but things get real when Max and Duke both are kidnapped. The rest of the pets in the building ban together to rescue them. They want to rescue them and get get back home before the owners get home in this rollicking animated film full of talking animals! Well, they can talk to each other, but not to the people. But these are some clever pets.

I got to take my Grandson and his Dad and Mom to see this at Downtown Disney while taking a break from catching Pokemon in Pokemon Go. (Yeah, we caught a lot). I really enjoyed this film, although there are a couple little problems with it perhaps. I didn’t see those, and it was only after talking to other people that I realized what they were saying. This is a PG film, not a G rated kids film, and there is a good deal of fighting and angry yelling and stuff. There is a band of gang members who are lead by killer rabbit Snowball (Kevin Hart) and the voices of the gangstas could make you think it’s a bit racist and stereotypical. But aside from that, everything ends nicely and everyone gets along in the end. The best part of this is the intense action sequences which are really fun to watch, the one liners that these characters are always spitting out that made me laugh out loud numerous times. Really! This keeps the grown-ups interested throughout, and the kids will be blown away with the really funny and cute animals representing a plethora of species. All in all, I really enjoyed the story, and was easily about to look past the obvious racial and gang stereotypes and I really enjoyed the movie. I recommend it for all but the youngest children, but I think you ought to watch it with them and be available im case there are questions.

Two final comments: There are some really, really funny animated cameos that are really delightful, and the cartoon at the beginning was worth the price of the movie by itself!

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Columbia Pictures, Annapurna Pictures, Atlas Entertainment,

Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Jennifer Lawrence, Louis C.K., Jack Huston, Michael Peña, Shea Whigham, Alessandro Nivola, Elisabeth Röhm, Paul Herman, Saïd Taghmaoui, Matthew Russell, Thomas Matthews, Adrian Martinez, Anthony Zerbe, Colleen Camp

The story of Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and a fictionalized account of the early 1980’s ABSCAM scandal. Rosenfeld is a crook and a con man, but he’s roped into to trapping some government officials into bribery and crime with the help of a fake sheik and a bunch of other characters.

I can remember hearing about the ABSCAM scandals back in the day. It was New Jersey and Pennsylvania where it happened, and it involved hours and hours of secretly filmed meeting with congressional leaders and the like. It seemed to fill the news, but truthfully I was never really caught up in the real story. This film has a great array of wonderful stars. But like the real story, this movie just didn’t catch me. I wasn’t impressed with the performance of any of the actors, and it all was mostly boring to me. This film received a lot of buzz in awards season last year, probably mostly because of the dream cast, but I just couldn’t get into the story and found myself daydreaming away. Nothing really jumped out and caught me, and I was not roped in. It just was a waste of time. I really didn’t enjoy it very much, and as a result, I didn’t get much out of the story. Afterward I decided to research the ABSCAM scandal to see if I could make some sense out of the movie, and quit reading half way through the article too. This is a missed opportunity in my humble opinion, and it just did not reach out to me. I could have skipped this one.

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Perdido Productions,

Alec Baldwin, Cate Blanchett, Louis C.K., Bobby Cannavale, Andrew Dice Clay, Sally Hawkins, Peter Sarsgaard, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tammy Blanchard, Max Casella, Alden Ehrenreich

Jasmine (Cate Blanchett) was a Manhattan socialite, on top of the world. But when her world came crashing down, she lost everything, and she has no idea how to survive as a normal person. Flat broke, she head to San Francisco to move in with her sister. But though she tries to get a job and live a normal life, her hangups over her rich past keeps popping up to sink her.

This is a very neurotic film. Cate Blanchett does a really good job as the nutty sister. Surprise, this is a Woody Allen film, so it makes sense that it’s utterly neurotic and stars a lost soul who fails at everything she tries to do. I actually enjoyed watching this. I’ve not been crazy over Woody’s films, but this one is better than most of the ones I’ve seen lately. It’s like the typical Woody film, so if you’re not a fan of his films, you might have a tough time with this one. Woody does Manhattan very well, but I haven’t seen him nail the lifestyle in San Francisco as well as this. Andrew Dice Clay appears in a role as the boyfriend of Jasmine’s sister. He’s really good. The sister’s are both looking for love in all the wrong places, and it’s a typical Woody film with it’s share of chuckles, along with some serious problems. Not for everybody, but if you do enjoy Woody’s everyday paranoid and inferiority complex, this is one of his better movies in a long time.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog