Ed's Review Dot Com

Blumhouse Productions, Wyolah Films,

Missi Pyle, Luke Evans, Juliette Lewis, Octavia Spencer, Allison Janney, McKaley Miller, Dominic Burgess, Diana Silvers, Corey Fogelmanis, Andrew Matthew Welch, Gianni Paolo, Victor Turpin, Skyler Joy, Kyanna Simone Simpson, Katira Banks

Sue Ann (Octavia Spenser) is a small town assistant to the town Veterinarian Dr Brooks (Allison Janney). But in a small town, people stick around and issues from decades ago still hang around. Erica (Juliette Lewis and her daughter have just moved back to town, and her daughter joins a bunch of local kids who make friends with Sue Ann who allows them to party in her basement in exchange for some friendship with the youngsters. But as things go from bad to worse, they begin to regret their decision to make friends with Sue Ann who askes that they call her Ma, as she may have some deep issues to resolve at their expense.

This is not the movie you see in the trailer, and I really hesitate to put Horror as a category for this film, as it’s not really in any way a horror film. Oh yeah, the some blood and gore, and a lot of real terror, but this is a psychological drama to the nth degree. By way of well placed flashbacks spaced throughout the movie, we find out the story of what happened to make things the way they are today, and we do get a chance to understand Sua Ann and why she does the things she does. The story was unfairly hit by the critics who didn’t get what the film is really trying to do, and a lot of people went to see this with unrealistic expectations and they may have been disappointed. But I do believe over time the value of this film will win out in the end. It is a very good psychological thriller and very well constructed. There may be a few missed opportunities to turn up the heat a lot more on some aspects of the story, but I think they way they chose to do this is really very realistic. No one is all black or all white, and there’s not way you could ever come out of this not feeling something for Sue Ann simply because of the gravitas Octavia Spencer naturally brings to any role she chooses to do. I think she did an absolutely outstanding job in this role, and she really deserves a lot of praise for her performance here. I bought it 100 per cent and am amazed at her talent. Kudos to the director and producer of this film, as I personally think it was very well done, and quite impressive and very touching. This, unlike a slice and dice run of the mill slasher film, will stick with me for a long time. I really found this film chilling.

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Mandeville Films, Walt Disney Pictures,

Emma Watson, Dan Stevens, Luke Evans, Kevin Kline, Josh Gad, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Audra McDonald, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ian McKellen, Emma Thompson

This live action version of the classic Disney feature Beauty and the Beast stars Emma Watson as Belle, the beautiful daughter of Maurice (Kevin Kline) who is captured and imprisoned in the cursed enchanted castle of The Beast (Dan Stevens). In order to break the curse, the Beast must learn to love, but also be loved in return. Naturally we all are cheering with the hope that love once again conquers all.

This is a film that could have come out completely different. Disney wanted to NOT make this film a musical, and tell a story without the songs. But the songs are far too amazing to be left behind, and it would have been a huge disaster. As it is, there is a lot of time, a lot of additional backstory, and the correction of a few error that makes this as familiar as ever, but with much more richness and beauty to add and make it a must see. The story is handled with loving care, and the things that are added to it only made it better. Emma Watson is beautiful as Belle, and a lot of her personal strength and attitude went into it as she added few changes to the role that fixed the story. It is stunningly beautiful, from the ugly castle, to the snowy forest filled with wolves, to the ballroom scene. This version of the mandatory Be Our Guest song is wonderfully done. SO many things could have gone wrong to ruin this movie, but it is perfect. This certainly came together well and will ensure Disney has enough money to shoot themselves in the foot again in the future, but this time they came through unscathed. And from the audience reaction to the trailer for the next “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie, it seems that one is a lock too. I completely loved this film and will definitely add this to my list of memories I will never lose. This was a very good movie, and one I encourage everyone to get out to see while you can! It’s definitely worth it.

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Amblin Entertainment, DreamWorks SKG, Marc Platt Productions,

Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Rebecca Ferguson, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Édgar Ramírez , Laura Prepon, Allison Janney, Darren Goldstein, Lisa Kudrow

This new thriller is the story of three women and a man named Tom (Justin Theroux). Rachel (Emily Blunt) is a very sad alcoholic woman who has not been able to function since her husband left her for their neighbor, Anna (Rebecca Ferguson). Every day on the train to the city, Rachel sits on the same side of the train to look and see what is going on in the perfect house with the perfect woman who has the perfect life that Rachel misses dearly. She is obsessed with the woman who lives in her house filled with all the things she used to own. Even worse is the new baby that Anna has that Rachel wanted so bad. Anna has a nanny who lives with them named Megan (Haley Bennett) who takes care of the baby so that Anna can do the charity work that she longs to do to fill the empty life she thinks she has. Megan is a tramp who is deeply disturbed and seeing a shrink to try to find some meaning to her life. When suddenly Megan disappears, things get very confusing as their lives are about to come crashing together as everyone is a suspect. Problem is, that Rachel can’t remember what happened the night Megan went missing.

This is a very slow paced, but highly thrilling “who done it” mystery and suspense film. All three women in the lead roles are very good, and though each is different in many ways, they all are portrayed excellently. Actually everyone in this film is very good and the script is very suspenseful. It’s well scripted, for sure, and the dreary rainy suburban NYC setting is very appropriate and adds a lot to the mood. It’s based on the novel, naturally, and a good one it must be. I haven’t read it, so the movie was a new story for me. My only complaint is the male bashing typical all men are pigs theme that always shows up in this kind of film. For this reason, it’s not a great thriller for the guys to watch. It’s much more of a chick flick in that respect. Even the wise old police chief trying to solve the crime is female played by Allison Janey who is pretty good, but who seems to be the only one who isn’t out to blame everything on the men in the story. It is fairly slow developing, but the purposefully way they build the characters. One other notable thing is that the beginning of the movie is a bit confusing as it does go through each of the three ladies to introduce them to us, but they do it in a disjointed…… “Six months ago” “Two Weeks Ago” “Last Night” “Last Month” kind of way that was very hard for me to follow until I got the gist of who these people were. Emily Blunt was easy to follow, but I was constantly confused as to why she was watching Megan instead of Anna and since they were both blondes, until I got the whole story I was constantly confusing which was which as they jumped around from time to time. Once the story got going it was a lot better. I did enjoy it, and found it interesting, and I can recommend this as a decent mystery story, especially for the ladies.

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New Line Cinema, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), WingNut Films,

Benedict Cumberbatch, Cate Blanchett, Evangeline Lilly, Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage, Orlando Bloom, Luke Evans

The final chapter of J.R.R. Tolkien’s book, The Hobbit, the prequel to the Lord of the Rings series comes to a fine conclusion. As we left off, Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) has awakened Smaug, the mighty dragon that is guarding the castle filled with gold belonging to the rightful Dwarf King Thorin (Richard Armitage), and is on the way to burn the already suffering town of Lake-town. But even after Smaug is dealt with, it won’t be easy to take back this fortress as it is highly desired by everyone, from the Dwarves, to the Elf’s to the Orc’s to the Goblins. All amass outside the gates of the city to fight the mightiest war of all times in the Battle of the Five Armies.

This trilogy has been absolutely awesome. Years ago I read all 4 books of Tolkien’s series, the first 3 large books which made up “The Lord of the Rings” with Frodo, grandson of Bilbo Baggins, as the hero. But after writing the books, Tolkien realized there was a lot of things left out of the history and to explain why things the way they were, so he wrote The Hobbit, where Bilbo takes Frodo aside to tell him the whole truth of what happened decades before when he was young. The Hobbit is a smaller book and much easier to read, and I have always enjoyed it much better than the other three that I found so complicated and hard to follow that it was really difficult to understand. The movies helped a lot, but it was a breeze going through The Hobbit, and I enjoyed it by far the most of all. But each of the 3 Lord of the Rings Trilogy of films was a much bigger book, and and entire book in one film. In the Hobbit a much smaller book was turned and stretched into 3 movies. The most heard complaint was that there was too much filler, the battle scenes were far too drawn out, and it was a mistake to try to stretch this out to 9 hours of film. But I found that I enjoyed the Hobbit films as much, if not even more so that the first Trilogy, and I was glad to have so much to watch.

But with the long delays between each of the films in this trilogy, I found it hard to follow. Director Peter Jackson and the Studios found a solution to that problem as well. Plus the were able to make a small fortune by releasing a MARATHON of ALL THREE FILMS two days early. Not only that, but in IMAX 3D. So we did it. I found out about this months ago, and scheduled Monday December 15th, 2014 as a vacation day. I bought the tickets a month early. My wife and I, and three of my four sons arrived about 12:30PM to the HUGE original full size IMAX screen at the Edwards Theaters in the Irvine Spectrum. This is a HUGE theater, and it’s a few years old, so not the most comfortable theater in the world, but it is the hugest screen we could find, and real IMAX picture and sound. The first film “An Unexpected Journey” kicked off at 1PM, and was done a little around a little after 4:00PM. Then the second film, “The Desolation of Smaug” started about 4:30, and finally we got to see the final film’s premier at 7:45. We finally finished up a little after 10:30, and we had a full day of Hobbit.

A few people showed up in costume, bringing Hobbit style snacks of veggies, milk, cheese, and fruit (How they got that past the usher I don’t know), but the majority were just big fans of the film. Lots of nerds like us were into it. There was a trivia table set up, and really good food from the snack bar. We got to see a couple special features, though very short. Between the first movie and the second, we got to see a short showing the London premier of “Battle of the Five Armies” featuring a great many of the characters in the film giving their thoughts and memories about filming these movies. But between the 2nd and the 3rd Movie Peter Jackson appeared on screen and talked about his feelings (He says he likes the third film the best) about the movies and congratulated us for being the first people on the planet to get to watch all 3 Hobbit films back to back to back. Then he said next time we will have to do all six.

I thought this experience was unique enough to speak a bit about, as I have never spent 9 hours in a movie theater before, although at one time years ago I did see a marathon of all three Star Wars films back to back to back. But the imagery in IMAX 3D was incredible. This is one AMAZING series with unbelievable special effects and CGI. The story is spell binding, and we are so familiar with the characters of the first two movies, that this was an incredible way to refresh everything and end the story while it’s all in mind. Basically, this is nearly a perfect film, perfectly cast, and perfectly filmed. There were several 3D moments that really made me jump with their realism. If you have seen the first two films in this series, RUN, don’t walk to the theater and see it. If you have not seen the first two, they’re on DVD, so watch them, and then get to the theater for Part 3 before it’s too late. This was the ultimate ending to the story, and left me thirsting to go back and watch the Lord of the Rings Trilogy once again before too much time passes. I LOVED it. This was a very memorable day!

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Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), New Line Cinema, WingNut Films,

Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Richard Armitage, Benedict Cumberbatch, Cate Blanchett, Evangeline Lilly, Orlando Bloom, Luke Evans, Manu Bennett, Hugo Weaving, Lee Pace, Andy Serkis, Aidan Turner, Christopher Lee, Billy Connolly

Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) are accompanied by an odd collection of characters in the continuation of their journey to defeat the horrible dragon Smaug and return the kingdom of Erebor for Thorin (Richard Armitage) the rightful King. In the first part of the trilogy, “The Hobbit:An Unexpected Journey”, Bilbo tricked Gollum out of his ring, a powerful ring that gives the wearer the ability to be invisible. Bilbo uses this to help the crew as the make their journey toward the mountain to face Smaug.

Another marvelous piece of “The Hobbit” a book by J.R.R. Tolkien which was written after, but is a prequel to “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. The “Lord of the Rings” was three books, and a true trilogy, whereas “The Hobbit” was a single book. “The Hobbit” is much easier to read and must simpler to understand what is going on. Many people were angry that Peter Jackson chose to break this book up into 3 movies, but this segment is over 3 hours long, and I don’t see where there is much to cut out of it. There’s no way they could have fit all the richness of this story in a single movie, and previous attempts to do it have been ok, but lack the depth and dimension of this series. I am sorry to have to wait another year to see the final one. Tolkien always suggested that new readers of his books start with this one to put things in chronological order, but there’s more to it than that. By reviewing this story first, you are well aware of the different races, peoples, and lands of the major trilogy, and you get to know many of the same characters. Though very violent, with lots of battle scenes complete with graphic beheadings and stabbings, this would be ideal for the older kids who might have trouble following the main trilogy. I agree with many people that “The Hobbit” is Tolkien’s best work.

The scenery in New Zealand where this is filmed provided a beautiful and pristine landscape for a background and it’s unbelievable beautiful. It also allowed him to keep his cast captive, and limit the problems with cast defections. There wasn’t much to do there but make the movie! The scenery is not only breathtaking, but the story is one of the richest known to man, so it’s hard to go wrong. The special effects are stunning, and though very involved and complicated, do not overshadow the story or the adventure and action. The animation of Smaug alone is well worth the time spent watching this film. It is truly spectacular. I had the privilege of watching this in IMAX 3D which was technically marvelous. All in all there is nothing really to find wrong with this film, and it’s a solid 5 star blockbuster well worthy of all the praise and $$$ being heaped upon it. This is group theater experience too good to miss out on. Wonderful film.

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