Ed's Review Dot Com

Parallel Media, Flipzide Studios, HS Film,

Adrien Brody, Sean Marquette, Matt Bush, Colin Hanks, Adhir Kalyan, Mykelti Williamson, Michael Chiklis, Curtis Armstrong, Cody Longo, Luis Chávez, Max Van Ville, Mary Birdsong, Julia Ling, Camille Mana, Brett Kelly, George Back, Joseph Julian Soria, Kevin Yon

Henry Burke (Matt Bush) has it! He’s the school valedictorian by just a few hundredths of a point, but he’s got it. But a random drug test at the same time as Henry takes his very first hit of pot risks his scholarship and his future. The school pothead Travis (Sean Marquette) feels guilty for getting him into this, so he helps him devise a scheme to spike the brownies at the bake sale so the entire school will fail and eliminate the problem. Of course everything goes wrong and things get worse and worse as one lie piles up upon another until it’s all about to come crashing down by the principal who suspects and the police who are anxious to bust the case.

I hated this movie. Adrian Brody showed up looking shaggy and unkempt as the big time drug dealer, mostly to have a “big name” on the marquee. He truly could have (and maybe did) mail in his part as there was nothing for him to do here but mumble and try to look menacing. The school principal is the biggest a**hole principal since “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, but he’s not funny in the least. There’s just not much going on here. They twist the story around to offer some gratuitous nudity that does nothing to offer anything to the story, and I have to say that girl with the tattoos scares the hell out of me! They try to pull off some kind of Cheech and Chong thing, or maybe more like Jay and Silent Bob, but it just doesn’t work. The whole thing is just really stupid and there’s no action, suspense, comedy, or real story. Even Sebastian (Adhir Kalyan), who is pretty funny as Timmy in Rules of Engagement, is dull here as the rival for Valedictorian who is trying to bust these guys, but just can’t seem to pull it off. The whole thing is a mess and I don’t recommend it. I wanted to enjoy it, but the further it dragged on, the worse it got.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Insight Film Studio

Kim Basinger, Lukas Haas, Craig Sheffer, Jamie Starr, Leonard Wu, Luis Chavez

While She Was Out (available on NetFlix Watch Instantly) is a thriller.  It’s a small movie, but it has it’s points.    This reminds me of  I Spit On Your Grave, although not near as graphic, yet it does have some interesting kills in it that would do Friday the 13th proud!   (If you want to be truly shocked by a movie, I Spit on Your Grave is the one to do that!  It’s hard to find, but how it managed to get released in the U.S. is amazing to me)

Della (Kim Basinger) is an abused wife with a loser jackass of a husband.  Christmas Eve she has to make a last minute trip to the mall.  No parking anywhere to be found, and some jerk in a piece of junk car is taking up two parkings spaces.   She’s got to set this right!   So she writes the driver a note and sticks it on the windshield.   Now, I’ve wanted to do that lots of times, but never quite had the guts to pull it off.  But she did it.  When she came back, she found the parking lot is almost empty, the mall is closed, and the “0wner” of the car knows who she is.

From this point we find out what a bad-ass she is, and it’s a cat and mouse game of tag, you’re it, that goes on for the rest of the movie.  Sometimes she’s meek and afraid and sometimes she’s a wildcat!

It’s not a wonderful movie, but it’s got it’s moments.  It’s not terrible either.  It’s just a middle of the road thriller with a few clever effects.   It’s filmed in British Columbia, but it’s not got spectacular scenery.  It’s rainy and muddy and pretty darn ugly really, but that’s to fit with the mood of the movie.  It’s a chase to the end, and Ms. Basinger is not a wimp by any means.

There is an ending that I thought was very obvious, but since it isn’t shown, many people were baffled by what happens at the very end.  Let’s just say,  “What did you buy me?” was probably not the right question.

I was amused throughout the movie, but never blown away, so if you want something great to watch, this isn’t great, but if you want something to kill some time with, and you’re a fan of slasher flicks, you could do much worse than this one!