Ed's Review Dot Com

Production Co: Keep Your Head, MICA Entertainment, MadRiver Pictures,

Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, Tom Holland, Angus Macfadyen, Ian McDiarmid, Franco Nero

Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) was a British Colonel and explorer who became enamored with the idea of discovering a hidden city in the South American Amazon jungle. He was convinced that the city existed, but his first expedition had to turn back. After fighting in World War I, he insisted on making another expedition to find this ancient city once and for all. Raising the funding himself, he and his son set out to find this city, along with his native guides and helpers, but disappeared in 1925 and neither were ever found. Based on the true evidence, the docu-drama based upon the book by David Grann and as much real evidence that could be found. Additionally there was much additional evidence discovered since then which is very interesting to see which is presented to us. This adventure is an exciting story based on the true events.

This film covered an interesting adventure story based upon the true events that occurred in the early 20th Century. This is a story that I had not heard before, and I really enjoyed the facts of the story, and did some additional research after the fact that I found quite interesting. The look of this movie is stupendous, and the photography is absolutely stunning. Director James Gray is well noted for very beautiful films, but the sad part is that the story could have been much more interesting than it was. I found myself very bored with the story as it plodded along, and I think it was a missed opportunity. Mr. Gray wrote the screenplay based upon the book, and if he had some assistance in making the story a little bit more intense, it would have ended up being a much better movie. As it was, the acting suffered as result of the script, and though all the actors put in a lot of effort, I feel that the lack of excitement in the script ended up hurting the film. This is a story filled with interesting facts, this is not very well presented. It’s too bad, but this is what we have. I gave this movie a middle of the road rating due to the shortcomings compared with the interest I had in the subject. I hope someone can come along with a better version sometime in the future, but unless you are very interested in the subject, I can’t highly recommend this film, although the cinematography is really good too, so that might make it worth it to see. For myself, I’m glad I saw it, but I was disappointed as I was waiting for this one for a long time.

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Prospero Pictures, Sentient Entertainment, SBS Productions,

Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska, John Cusack, Robert Pattinson, Olivia Williams, Evan Bird, Sarah Gadon

The Weiss Family, Dr. Stafford Weiss (John Cusack), shrink to the stars, Benjie (Evan Bird), spoiled rotten child star, wife Christina (Olivia Williams) stage mom of epic proportions, and Agatha (Mia Wasikowska), estranged psycho sister, come together in this most dramatic, dark, comedy you’ve seen in a long time. This is a parody piece making fun of the Hollywood lifestyle while doing it in a seriously warped dramatic way. This family is desperate to maintain their celebrity status no matter what it takes. Throw in a washed up film star Havana Segrand (Julianne Moore) and Limo driver wannabe actor Jerome Fontana (Robert Pattinson) and you have the wacky cast that might bring down the entire Hollywood system as they crash and burn everything and everyone they touch.

A few minutes in to this cockeyed movie you realize you’re being put on. This is told like a true life story until it becomes clear everyone is connected to everyone else in ways you could hardly expect. Very frank and in your face brutal from the language to the really explicit scenes to the actual story, everything is rude and crude. There is a fairly good deal of humor in it all, but it’s like an inside joke for those in one the inside, unless you’re a Hollywood Celebrity yourself, it may not really make a lot of sense. Much like my review of “Birdman (or the unexpected virtue of ignorance)” this feels like you’re an outsider at at insider party and you are not welcome. Perhaps I’m wrong, but this is how I felt through this whole thing. It was used to watching news on TV, but when my wife started turning on “Good Morning ” I hated it. It felt like a party was going on and I was watching in through the window. A lot of jokes and dancing and laughing going on and I didn’t know any of it. That was the feeling I got in this movie. Perhaps I’m being a little bit harsh, as it wasn’t really terrible, but I just didn’t really get into it. I never found myself “in” the story and it was mostly just over my head. I gave this a 3 star review because of the quality of the performances of the actors in this film, but I don’t really recommend it unless you are interested in the subject or the actors.

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Porchlight Films, Lava Bear Films, Blue-Tongue Films,

Guy Pearce, Robert Pattinson, Scoot McNairy, Anthony Hayes, Gillian Jones, David Field, Susan Prior, Nash Edgerton

Summit Entertainment , Temple Hill Entertainment , Sunswept Entertainment,

Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Ashley Greene, Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning

So Bella (Kristen Stewart) is now a vampire and getting used to her new powers. Of course naturally she’s the strongest vampire in the whole north woods because, uh, we don’t really know, she just is. Her half human baby, regrettably named Renesme, is growing at an alarming rate, and Bella is extremely upset to learn that Jacob (Taylor Lautner) must stay close to “Nessie” because he imprinted on her. So someone sees Nessie, and assumes she is “immortal” and has been turned by the Cullen’s so she’s off to tell the Volturi that the Cullen’s have broken the law of the vampires. Volturi’s are very tough, so they’re coming to kill the Cullen’s and put an end to the abomination. So the Cullins travel all over the world to call in all their friends to vouch for them, and they set out to explain to the Volturi that Renesme is not immortal. But just in case, all the vampires and werewolves prepare for a battle royal.

This movie sucked worse than the Part 1 did. Honestly, I don’t think there was near enough material to break this into two movies, and it’s just the greed motive that caused it. Nothing at all happens in this film. We’re stuck with an hour of people standing around and talking. Werewolves and Vampires are friends now, and the Volturi who are supposed to be so bad assed, are simply standing around with everybody else. There’s a huge battle scene that means nothing, and they take it all back anyway. To make matters worse, I could see the movie was completely out of gas, but when I looked at the DVD time left, it showed over 18 minutes. They used to be able to do a whole TV show in 18 minutes, but I couldn’t possibly imagine what else they had to show us. Well, the answer to that is that someone proposed that the movie was way to short, so they ought to put the names of everyone in each and every film in the entire series in the credits which literally ran over 18 minutes. Holy cow, what a way to give the custodial crew time to clean up the theater before the next showing! Honestly, the only thing going for this final episode is that the scenery in British Columbia is really beautiful. This film is almost 100% shot in the woods.

Truthfully, I know there are the young girls out there who really loved these books, but I do believe that every movie went downhill after the first one. I don’t know if this is true for the books too, as I haven’t read any of them, but the films started out with a half decent story of wolves and vampires that had a lot of interesting possibilities. But as it went on and on and on, it just had nowhere to go. The movie was not quite as bizarre as it was in Part 1, so that was perhaps the only improvement over the last one which was really strange. All in all, I didn’t watch this one for a long time because I knew it was going to be bad, but I had to give it a shot. It was clearly the worst ending to a story in a long time.

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Summit Entertainment, Sunswept Entertainment, TSBD Canada Productions,

Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Peter Facinelli, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz, Jackson Rathbone, Elizabeth Reaser, Nikki Reed, Billy Burke, Maggie Grace, Jamie Campbell Bower, Michael Sheen, Anna Kendrick

Bella (Kristin Stewart) and Edward (Robert Pattinson) get married, and take off to a private island where the Cullins family has a resort, vacation home. Bella becomes pregnant, but immediately the baby is bad for her, as she is still human. This also alerts the Quileutes of the danger this baby is to them. They set out to destroy this baby and possibly the whole town of Forks.

Ok. Here I go making enemies of all the die hard Twilight fans. I’ve never read the books, and I’m not invested in the story where it rules my life. I have stayed up with the tale since the beginning, but I’m not one of those who camps out for 3 days outside the theater to be the first in line to see the movie, obviously, since I waited till it was out on DVD. I truly feel the films have been getting weaker and weaker as the series moves on, and this one was rather pathetic as adventure movies go. There is nothing happening here that makes much sense. Bella gets pregnant, as a human, by a vampire. Now, according to the story, this is supposed to be impossible. Well I guess so. Vampires are dead. They’re cold, and they have no heartbeat, and I guess no blood or other bodily fluids, yet she’s able to get pregnant. Then, of course, because of the superhuman powers of the vampire, a perfectly looking human baby is fully developed and born in one month, cutting the standard time of gestation 9 times. Now this is a fantasy, so we have to suspend the normal laws of science, I understand. There really aren’t sparkly people. But if we do that, then how are we supposed to get involved in the drama of the difficulties of this miraculous pregnancy anyway? And there’s not much action here either. Yeah, the Wolf people are a bit ticked off, but nothing really happens. Besides, as tough as the wolves are, it’s hard to believe that they’re much of a threat to vampire people with ultra human strength (If a wolf tries to bite you, you’re not going to bleed, and you can just thrown them into the next county! And if all else fails, you climb the highest tree in five tenths of a second anyway, and wolves don’t climb trees. All in all I found this to be by far the weakest story of all, and though I know many people are truly invested in the beautiful wedding and love story between Bella and Edward, I didn’t find that worthy enough of a huge blockbuster film like this.

I guess that the film maker had a tough call, as they could probably have made the story better by compressing part one and part two into a single film and cutting out the fluff, but there are two major reasons not to do that. First, the Twi-hards are going to be extremely pissed off if they skip any of the canoodling between Edward and Bella as they’ve been waiting for that forever, and secondly, mega-$$$$$$$$$.

Then another thing I just didn’t get? What was with the horrible music in the soundtrack? I made the mistake of turning on captioning, so I got to see the words to these strange pieces of music. What they hell was that?

For example, this is the lovely lyrics to the beautiful wedding scene:

I was a quick wet boy, diving too deep for coins
All of your street light eyes wide on my plastic toys
Then when the cops closed the fair, I cut my long baby hair
Stole me a dog-eared map and called for you everywhere

Have I found you
Flightless bird, jealous, weeping or lost you, american mouth
Big pill looming

[ From: http://www.metrolyrics.com/flightless-bird-american-mouth-lyrics-iron-wine.html ]
Now I’m a fat house cat
Nursing my sore blunt tongue
Watching the warm poison rats curl through the wide fence cracks
Pissing on magazine photos
Those fishing lures thrown in the cold
And clean blood of Christ mountain stream

Have I found you
Flightless bird, grounded, bleeding or lost you, american mouth
Big pill stuck going down

Now if I were getting married, this would certainly not be a prime choice for the wedding dance. 🙂

Some other great musical moments:
And if I was you
I’d use the loo
Before the long drive
We compliment each other
Just like Satan and Christ
I wear my hair fizzy
I don’t copy no style
Cause kissin and a scrubbin
Has consequences
You’re on the bus again
Past big ben
With your rip off oyster card
Tell your A.S.B.O. friend
To sling his hook and “go make your girl smile”

Then one last complaint, and then I’ll shut up. I was shocked at the closing credits. In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, one of the great jokes is how the people who created the credits have been sacked, and the people who were responsible for sacking the people who created the credit have also been sacked. What we’re left with is crappy put together credits that look like any 5 year old could have put them together. This is what the closing credits looked like to me. It was like they spent 3 dollars on creating these red and yellow text flash cards. It was like one of the old 1960’s spaghetti western credits which were done in English to overlay the original Italian credits or something. I thought it really weird.

So basically I’m going to stop and open the gates for the people who love Twilight to attack me for not getting this, and I probably deserve it, but I have to admit that I was really sorely disappointed after watching the last two Potter films to see this as the end of Twilight. I could have skipped it and not missed anything worthwhile. Sorry.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog