Ed's Review Dot Com

Tashmoo Productions, Amber Entertainment, Belladonna Productions

Willa Holland, Amy Jo Johnson, Tatanka Means, Elise Eberle, Cynthia Stevenson, Lucien Dale, Forrest Fyre, Russell Means

Davey Wexler (Willa Holland) is a young lady still in school, and loves her life in Atlantic City with her parents and her little brother. But when her father is killed in a robbery, and her mother finds herself lost and in deep grief and taking too many pills, she decides to take Davey and her brother to New Mexico to live temporarily with her sister’s family. But her mother seems to be slipping further and further from reality and Davey is getting more and more frustrated and having a really hard time fitting in at the new school. Davey goes for a journey to the canyon, and meets a strange guy named “Wolf” (Tatanka Means) and they hit it off in a very beautiful friendship. Wolf is a secretive and has walls as high as Davey’s but he still manages to teach her to look at life from a different point of view and to face and overcome the many obstacles in her life and to change her point of view completely. This is a touching and classic book by world famous author Judy Blume and her husband Lawrence Bloom wrote the screenplay and directed this heartwarming story.

This is another of those films that I missed years ago in it’s release due to Netflix’s DVD throttling practices and it finally bubbled up to the top of my queue. What a wonderful story and very well done performances. A lot of it is filmed on location in the mountains of New Mexico. This is a perfect story for preteen and early teen girls, like most of Judy’s books, and is a perfect story for them, but the value of the softly told story, definitely not in your face, I found I really enjoyed it as well. It has much of the feel of a Wonderful World of Disney TV movie from back in the 60’s but is much deeper than those. Wolf is, of course, a native American who has a lot of love for his culture and heritage, and a few secrets of his own. He did a wonderful job in performing this role, and was perfectly cast. Willa is an amazing actress. I have to admit I was very impressed with her performance. She can portray pages of dialog with just her expression and when she’s wordless, is some of the best moments in the film. From shock, to pain, to frustration, to worry, to love and caring, it’s all there in the emotion her face can portray. She was superb in this movie and is building a large volume of work. The location and the majestic scenery is also stunning. All in all, this little film is an excellent hidden gem that I didn’t know about, but was very happy to stumble upon. It was a pleasure. This is one of those films, that, when it was finished, I went back and watched it all over again with the commentary by Judy and Lawrence Blume, which was every bit as good as the movie itself. The love and caring they put into this story, and the hard work and dedication the cast put into playing the part, makes this a very worthwhile film to watch. Look for it.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog

Art Cine Productions,

Christian Camargo, Katie Holmes, William Hurt, Allison Janney, Cherry Jones, Russell Means, Michael Nyqvist, Jean Reno, Juliet Rylance, Mark Rylance, Ben Whishaw

The family gets together to celebrate the Memorial Day weekend at the summer house alongside a lake in rural New England. The period is in the mid 80’s. The family tries to get along, but there are many issues and many problems, and the weekend is a bit of an eye opener and game changer for the family as the fight and bicker their way through the long, long weekend.

This is a Russian story inspired by Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull”, moved to the U.S. It was terribly difficult for me to sit through. Generally I love “people” films and “relationship” films much more than most guys. But I simply despise films that have no purpose and no point. Just setup a camera, film a day or two in a family’s life where nothing much happens (to be fair their is a tragedy in the last few minutes of the story, but by that time nobody really cares). It just goes on and on and on with unlikable characters, no plot or purpose, no direction, it just happens. When I saw it produced by a company called “Art Cine” I knew what I would get. This film is trying so very, very hard to appeal to stuck up artsy folks, and as a result, leaves the rest of us far behind. I really tried hard to give this movie a chance. It has a really good cast, but with nothing for them to do. I’m not sure what made these folks accept this film, but I’ll bet there is a story behind it. I just can’t think anyone read it and said, “This will be a fascinating story”. I was NOT in a bad mood when I watched, neither was I tired or distracted. I went into hoping for the best and a bored nearly to tears throughout. In the end, there wasn’t anything worth recommending. I am not sure with the original story, but people rave about it. Maybe the transfer to America during the Reagan days, just did not work. Avoid it, unless you really like art house movies for some reason.

EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog