Ed's Review Dot Com

Fox 2000 Pictures, Scott Free Productions, Nick Wechsler Productions,

Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Cameron Diaz, Penélope Cruz, John Leguizamo, Goran Visnjic

The Councelor (Michael Fassbender) is a successful lawyer, but still a little on the greedy side. He decides to dabble part time in the drug business, but quickly finds himself sucked into a wicked plot, involved with a man, Westray (Brad Pitt) and he finds that getting in is a lot easier than getting out, and doing a quick drug deal and getting out is much harder than he thought.

This is a great cast. This is a good premise for a movie. So what went wrong? Well, I guess there are a few major flaws that keep this from being a spectacular action film. First of all, there’s not much action. Secondly, it’s very choppy feeling. We jump around from place to place and situation to situation with really nothing much tying it together. When it’s over you find yourself wondering what you missed. It’s kind of like channel surfing. You land upon something that looks interesting, but you only catch a little piece of it, and you’re on something completely unrelated. How it all fits together in the end is still a mystery to me. So the strong points is certainly the cast, and they do their best to bring us their best performances. But maybe it’s editing or something that makes it so hard to follow. At any rate, as a top notch action thriller, it just didn’t cut it for me, and I found myself pretty disappointed. There are so many movies like this that are so much better put together, that it’s hard for me to really recommend this one. I feel like I’d be doing a disservice if I did. It’s just too hard to follow for my taste.

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Herzog & Company, Scott Free Productions,

Tom Hanks, Regen Wilson, Billy Campbell, Jesse Johnson, Geraldine Hughes, Graham Beckel, Shawn Pyfrom, Greg Cooper, Andrew Collie, Jeremy Ambler, Joe Inscoe

This documentary, based on the book by Bill O’Reilly, tells the story of the conspiracy and the execution of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States. This movie narrated by Tom Hanks, mixes the most accurate information about the events, as well as a stunning recreation of them.

There are basically two ways of doing a documentary. One is by telling the story, showing the information, interviewing people, and presenting photographs and data. The other is to act out the story with actors and deliver the story by acting it out. This docudrama, as Bill calls it, absolutely mixes the best of both worlds. Too much talking and narration, even by someone as fantastic as Tom Hanks, can really bog down and make the most exciting story boring. Likewise, if you try to recreate everything, it’s very easy to mix fiction into the story. The way they did this story is really a fantastic mix of both styles. This made it a very interesting story. But also, there is one more thing that added a lot to this film. The book insisted on verifying every fact. There are so many stories and anecdotes that are very hard to prove (and some that are easy to disprove). There are other events that were claimed to be true, but there was no way to absolutely verify it, as there were no other witnesses. Everything like that was left out of this story. Everything that is here is absolutely accurate. There is a special feature interview that discusses the problems in verifying some of the facts that had to be left out. Tom Hanks narration is fantastic, and limited, and the recreations are especially well done. It was clear the book was crafted very carefully with attention to every detail, and the film followed the same mantra, and this is guaranteed to be the most accurate and factual account of the death of Abraham Lincoln that you will ever see. The timing is great with last years Lincoln blockbuster. Watch that one, then follow it up with this one for “the rest of the story”. I gained a greater respect for both Lincoln, as well as O’Reilly and Hanks. Great job, everyone. Best documentary I’ve seen in a long, long time.

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Fox Searchlight Pictures, Indian Paintbrush, Scott Free Productions,

Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode, Phyllis Somerville, Harmony Korine, Lucas Till, Alden Ehrenreich, Jacki Weaver, Dermot Mulroney

India Stoker (Mia wasikowska) is a young lady who is reeling after the loss of her father in a tragic accident. She’s trying to grieve, but her mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) isn’t able to step up to help as she’s very unstable herself. Suddenly her Uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) shows up and moves in with the family. India never knew he existed, but even though he’s very dark and sinister she thinks he may fill the void in her life. It soon becomes clear that he has ulterior motives and instead of being shocked by his actions, she finds herself more attracted to him. Who is this stranger in her life, and what does he have in mind for India?

This is actually a pretty creepy suspense thriller. This is the first English film for director Chan-wook Park from South Korea, and a pretty good first effort. It’s not one of those films that will wrap everything up in a little package, and it’s not going to resolve all the questions before the closing credits. This film will make you think for a long time after it’s over. The characters are all flawed, but very complex, and it has a lot of loose ends that will give you a lot to work on for a few days after the film is over. Mia does a wonderful job as India, a very strange girl, and Nicole Kidman does another fine job of playing the detached, not all together there Mom. This is not a horror film by usual definitions, but it’s definitely very suspenseful and will keep you on the edge of your seat. It’s a unusual work, and definitely one that will make you wonder what it all means. This is a screwed up family, and if nothing else, at least you’ll appreciate your own family a lot more afterward.

This is an intense film, and not everyone’s cup of tea, but if films like “Silence of the Lambs” is your type of suspense, then this is an interesting little film. It surely made me wonder what’s wrong with this bunch!

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Brandywine Productions, Dune Entertainment, Scott Free Productions,

Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Logan Marshall-Green, Charlize Theron, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall

A team of scientists studying ancient cave writings notices a strange similarity in different cultures in a depiction of stars and planets, and are eventually put together with a team of astronauts on a journey to possibly discover the beginnings of life on earth. When they arrive, they find some startling discoveries that indicate there is life of a sort on the planet, and it was not welcoming as they expected. In fact, it was not at all like they expected, and as they began to struggle to save their lives, the soon realize that the struggle was to save all of mankind in this prequel to the Alien series.

This movie was a real enjoyable experience for me. I found it unlike the Alien series in a lot of way because this film is not just screeches and scares and bloody murder. The Alien movies were truly terrifying a great deal of the time. This movie is much more cerebral than the others, and it does give us a good look at what the heck was going on in the other movies. It looks a lot deeper into the theories of the beginning of mankind, as well as faith and belief. There is a lot more thoughtful parts in this film that I didn’t find in the horror films of the Alien series. So I enjoyed it a lot more. Still, the Alien series was very good in its genre, but I enjoyed the story line of this one a great deal.

The actors were pretty good. There are a few parts that were left open, and I sure wish they had gone more into some of the sub plots, but it was pretty long as it is. Perhaps this would have been good to split this into 2 films. So there are a few parts that I wish there was more about. We don’t really get to know enough about Charlize Theron’s character, Meredith Vickers. She is “kind of” in charge of this mission, and we find out who she is related to, but it doesn’t give us enough background to know what she’s about, and why she is like she is. But all in all it’s a suspenseful mystery with lots of action and adventure, and it’s scary enough at times for the horror fans, so I feel it was a job well done, and I enjoyed it very much. This is a good one to see on the big screen if possible.

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1984 Private Defense Contractors, Liddell Entertainment, Scott Free Productions,

Liam Neeson, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts, Joe Anderson, Nonso Anozie, James Badge Dale, Ben Bray, Anne Openshaw

John Ottway (Liam Neeson) is in Alaska working for an oil company. His job is to watch out for wolves, and take them out if any come too close to the camp. But Ottway is having a personal crisis. He’s missing his wife, and severely depressed. On a flight with a bunch of the men from the camp, the plane is in distress and crashes out in the middle of nowhere. When Ottway wakes up in the freezing cold, he puts together the few survivors and makes a plan to survive by marching across the snow. But there are packs of wolves in the area, and they’re very defensive of their territory. It’s a huge struggle to get across the plain to search for civilization, and along the way, they’ll all find out what they’re made of.

This is a wild epic film with beautiful scenes of mountains and snow, and intense suspense and downright horror. But it’s not only a grand adventure, it’s a close introspection of self, what you believe and what you doubt, and what you’re made of. Ottway is determined to survive, at any price, yet it’s hard to figure out why. But in extremely harsh times, someone steps up and takes the lead, and that falls to him. He has the only experience with wolves, and therefore knows more about what it takes to survive than anybody else.

If you see this on the big screen with a spectacular sound system, you’re in for quite a few jolts!!! My wife grabbed my arm so hard at one point, I thought perhaps I’ll have a bruise. I truly jumped several times. But additionally, this film does a better job of putting you INSIDE the movie than any I’ve seen in a long, long time. The plane crash is edited in a way that you’ll think YOU were inside the plane. It’s terrifying. The cold and wind and snow is so close and you are in the fight with the wolves from start to finish.

There are many critics of this film. Some people hate it. There are a couple reasons for this. One is that wolves just don’t act like that. Well, ok, perhaps that’s a fact. Certainly you can’t dismiss Jaws because sharks don’t behave that way either. In this case, I will accept that wolves probably don’t hunt humans for sport, but that’s not important to this film. I don’t want the wolves to get a bad rap here, but the story is about survival, introspection, faith, and true grit. It’s not about wolves hunting people. The other reason is that some people claim that it’s a superficial story and the writers and director are too “full of themselves”. I dismiss this. This is really great work by Liam Neeson, and his supporting cast, and it’s a very exciting and suspenseful movie. So the job of writers and directors are to bring exciting and suspensful…and entertaining films to the screen. This is what they did, and they did a great job.

This is way too intense for youngsters, so please follow the guidelines for R rated film. It’s R because of the violence and intense FEAR in this movie, and it would provoke nightmares in kids, so please please don’t frighten your kids. But you want to see an extreme adventure with very intense, edge of the seat suspense, and downright terror, this is a great ride. I completely enjoyed this film, completely forgot that I was watching a movie, and felt as if I was in the middle of the terror. It is an excellent terror filled thriller!

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