The Cast Of ‘Borderlands’ Movie Gets Even More Impressive With This Addition

We have talked a lot about the upcoming ‘Borderlands‘ film, which is based on the popular video game series.

The film, which is being directed by Eli Roth, is already set to star Kevin Hart, Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis and Jack Black.

And now we are learning Edgar Ramirez is also joining the cast. He will play a character named Atlas, a business titan and arms manufacturer, who is considered to be the most powerful person in the universe.

The story follows Lilith (Blanchett), an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past. She reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora and forms an unexpected alliance to find the missing daughter of Atlas.

So presumably, Ramirez will have a pretty big role in the film. Roth commented on the casting and spoke highly of the actor…

Atlas has to be a truly magnetic personality, someone with charisma and charm but that air of menace underneath it all. I’ve been a fan of Edgar’s since his early performances and he continues to amaze me with each dramatic turn. We want to create something wild, fun, and very different from anything they’ve seen from Edgar before. I am so, so excited to work with him.

No word on a potential release date for this movie, but we’ll keep you posted.

Movie Review: Point Break – It’s Exhaustion With No Investment

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Patrick Swayze is spinning in his grave. Sorry, I couldn’t find a more socially acceptable way to describe this travesty. Before I get started on the unnecessary remake of an awesome movie, I need to go off on a short rant.

Look, not all movies need to be remade. Sometimes, a movie is so friggen awesome the first time around, it could never be topped. Movies like Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, any of the Die Hards, etc. do not need remakes. If you must do a sequel, do a sequel. But when you remake an original, you’re pretty much saying one thing; “I think I can do this better.”

And on Point Break? No, you can’t.

The story is the same. FBI agent Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey) infiltrates teams of thrill seeking bank robbers run by Bodhi (Edgar Ramirez). Johnny works with the team through a series of stunts designed to gain their trust, before the inevitable showdown.

First time around? Shocking, compelling and psychologically gripping. This time around? An excuse to blow a couple million on stunts while missing the point of the original.

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See, the point of the original was to make us feel like Johnny, as he slowly starts to admire Bodhi for his ‘life to the fullest’ outlook. We’re supposed to dig the fact that he kind of gets away with it. This time around, Bodhi’s some kind of hippy who uses his stunts as a way to ‘honor the earth’’’’

Whatever the hell that means.

And as a result, we kind of hate the character, rather than just want to hate-screw him.

The director clearly wanted to up the ante on action, and as a result, lost the awesome story and the thing that made this movie good. It was unique in that Bodhi is an anti-hero. The fact that they jumped out of a damn plane didn’t make the movie special. It was the characters themselves.

In this one, they give us two subpar actors who aren’t that memorable and look homeless, though not in the cool, hipster way, but in the dirty “I Don’t Shave” way. These guys can’t act and you know that’s bad when I can actually say Keanu “One Facial Expression” Reeves did it better.

But he did.

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They tried really, really hard to make it thrilling, but they completely missed the charisma. I will say the action scenes looked good, but as I didn’t really care about either character, there was no tension for me. Just one loud scene after another.,

And there’s a lot of loud scenes. About 2 hours of them, in fact. Can someone explain to me why these guys took nearly the same amount of time to make this movie, while making it feel about 4 hours longer?

It’s exhaustion with no investment. The makers decided to focus on their extreme sports expertise while not spending a lot of time working the script. So if you’re considering Point Break, might I suggest you go back to 1991 and get the original? Because this one is not worth the watch.

WE GAVE IT: 2 Stars – Watch the Official Trailer and Official Movie Poster below!

2 Stars

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Movie Review: Joy (2015) – A Movie That is More Annoying Than Inspiring

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Great, another story about a struggling mother trying to make it in the business world. God knows we can’t have enough of those. Just the other night I was watching Lifetime (I was too drunk to change the channel) and only saw the storyline of Joy about 8 times in 12 hours.

But hey, I guess if you can get Jennifer Lawrence, you don’t have to put it on Lifetime, right? Wrong. My deep, and slightly Sapphic love of Jennifer Lawrence aside, I really did not find this movie watchable. It’s melodrama really made it only suitable for Lifetime.

Our heroine is Joy Mangano (Jennifer Lawrence) a chick who apparently peddles mops for a living. She supports her big, dysfunctional family including her mom Terry (Virginia Madsen), mom’s ex-husband Rudy (Robert Diner) Rudy’s girlfriend (Isabelle Rosalina) and a bunch of other people I can’t be bothered to name.

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So the whole thing is narrated by Joy’s grandmother, which gets particularly jarring at the midpoint, when she dies but continues narrating anyway and is about Joy beating all the odds and…selling mops.

No joke, with all the dramatic speeches made about mops, you would have expected them to friggen cure cancer. They don’t. They’re just mops. But hey, she gets those magic mops on TV and bam, they’re a hit.

Then, in the blink of an eye, she goes bankrupt…and I laughed and laughed.

Let me say this to start off. I do not admire those who make millions by peddling crap on the Home Shopping Network. I think those jerks are preying on the most vulnerable in our society by selling them junk they don’t need, because they’re so lonely they’ll pay to talk to someone on the phone. It bothers me and I don’t like seeing it glorified here.

It’s a tried and true, overly sentimentalized story about a woman overcoming obstacles to earn her rightful place as a billionaire…peddling crap to old people on public access tv. I found it more annoying than I did inspiring.

I will say that I felt Lawrence made every effort to make her character work, I just found all of the ‘land of opportunity’ speeches to be a bit too on the nose and irritating. So many times I wanted to scream at the screen “it’s just a mop!”

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It’s amazing to me that that a director who made Silver Linings Playbook, who partnered Lawrence with Bradley Cooer yet again, could have failed so badly, but this one fell flat for me. I just didn’t get why this woman was important. I didn’t get why the mop was so damn important.

I have a vacuum.

In short, I found this film a bit too silly and desperate to be real. Much like the melodramatic soap operas Joy’s mother loved so deeply, I didn’t buy the plotline. Much like I’m not willing to buy anything from the real Joy Mangano, I’m not buying this story based on her life.

Sorry Jennifer Lawrence. No hard feelings.

WE GAVE IT: 2 Stars – Watch the Official Trailer and Official Movie Poster below!

2 Stars

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Get Your First Look At Matthew McConaughey And Edgar Ramirez In ‘Gold’ (PHOTO)

Before you worry that Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey are teaming up again to create a sequel to Fool’s Gold, we should make it clear that’s not happening.

For those who don’t know, Mr. McConaughey is playing Kenny Wells in the upcoming film Gold, which is being directed by Stephen Gaghan, the writer behind Traffic. It’s his first feature film in several years, so everyone is excited to see it.

Edgar Ramirez also stars in the movie, which follows the struggling businessman Kenny Wells as he teams up with doomed geologist, Michael Acosta, to find gold in the Indonesian jungle. Bryce Dallas Howard and Corey Stoll also star in the film.

The “first look” photo you see below doesn’t really tell us much of anything. The only actors in the shot are Matthew and Edgar. We’ll have to wait until more photos (or the trailer!) are released to learn more about the movie. But honestly, I am already excited to watch it. McConaughey and Ramirez are two of the more talented actors in the business right now.

Before this film gets a release in fall of 2016, you can catch McConaughey in The Free State of Jones, which is scheduled to hit theaters March, 11 2016. You can catch Ramirez in the Jennifer Lawrence/David O. Russell film Joy this Christmas.

Watch The First Full Trailer For The Insane ‘Point Break’ Remake

Here we go again. The Point Break remake is here, and it looks like it will be even more extreme than the original 1991 film starring Keanu Reeves. It also looks like it’s going to be more serious than the original film, which is a little scary. We didn’t see a lot of humor in this first trailer.

But we did see several extreme sports featured. Surfing, snowboarding, rock climbing, high-speed motorcycling, and maybe even bowling without the proper shoes.

The film stars Luke Bracey, Edgar Ramirez, Teresa Palmer, and Ray Winstone, and is scheduled to hit theaters Christmas Day. Buy an extra ticket for your grandmother. It’ll be a great way to thank her for the awesome socks she gave you.

Check out the official synopsis and trailer below…

“In Alcon Entertainment’s fast-paced, high-adrenaline action thriller “Point Break,” a young FBI agent, Johnny Utah (Luke Bracey), infiltrates a cunning team of thrill seeking elite athletes, led by the charismatic Bodhi (Edgar Ramirez). The athletes are suspected of carrying out a string of staggering crimes that kill innocent people and send the world’s economy into a tailspin. Deep undercover, and with his life in imminent danger, Utah strives to prove they are the callous architects of these inconceivable crimes.”

 

 
 

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Felicity Jones And Aaron Paul Teaming Up For ‘Star Wars’ Spinoff Movie

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The rumors surrounding this 2016 Star Wars stand-alone film have been insane this week. There are obviously huge things happening behind that Disney curtain, and it looks like we now know who is behind that curtain with them.

According to multiple sources, Felicity Jones (The Theory of Everything) will be grabbing the female lead in the Star Wars spinoff from director Gareth Edwards. The Oscar-nominated actress will reportedly be starring in the film with Price Is Right contestant Aaron Paul.

But none of this has been confirmed. We have also heard reports that Edgar Ramirez (Deliver Us From Evil) could steal the male lead away from Paul.

It’s worth noting that the project hired a new writer last week. Chris Weitz will join the team to replace Gary Whitta, the writer behind the first draft. Speaking of the first draft, which characters will this stand-alone be focusing on? We have no idea.

Disney refuses to comment on the rumors; however, when news of the Star Wars spinoff was released, Disney CEO Bob Iger did mention they will focus on ‘great Star Wars characters that are not part of the overall saga.”

At this moment, the release date for this film is scheduled for Dec. 16, 2016.

Movie Review: Deliver us from Evil (2014)

Deliver-Us-from-Evil-2014-Movie-PosterFeels like two Clichés sewn Together

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Deliver us from Evil is a suspense movie currently performing at number 4 at the box office. It’s a unique crime thriller with a twist and is an enjoyable, if occasionally plodding watch.

The premise is this. New York police officer Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana), who of course has a bucket load of personal problems, is investigating a series of strange crimes. When those crimes take on a religious theme, he joins forces with an unconventional priest (Edgar Ramirez), who knows his way around an exorcism. Together, the two combat demon possessions that are terrorizing the city.

The movie plays a bit like a one hour procedural crime drama. It is based on Ralph Sarchie’s own real life cases, though I’m pretty sure they had little to do with demon possessions and more to do with people being psychos.

The movie starts excitingly suspenseful, though it follows the standard formula. The cop is a cynic who doesn’t believe in demons. The priest is desperate to convince him before it’s too late. When he eventually does, the movie fizzles out and starts to drag.

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You’d figure the action would pick up once the two decide demons are real and they need to fight them, but instead it slows down significantly. A twist to put Sarchie’s family in jeopardy feels rather forced and convoluted. It feels like the writer had a lot of time to write the first half of the movie, then got bored and phoned in the rest when it should have gotten better.

The actors do a commendable job and the priest with the checkered past is a great twist on an old school character. Bana does cynical and menacing like he was born for the part and Ramirez’ character is so well done you’d think he was real rather than an add-on character designed to flesh out the script.

Adding the Doors as the soundtrack was a stroke of genius, as this movie had that Doors dark and violent atmosphere that is underlined by the soundtrack perfectly. They really couldn’t have chosen a better score.

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The movie goes a bit too heavy on secondary plot lines in an attempt to creep us out, and there it gets confusing instead. There’s one part with a dead pedophile that I really didn’t get at all. I mean, yes, I know pedophiles are evil, but what does that have to do with demonic possession? Comments on PTSD (because the movie involves a lot of troops returning from Iraq) feel out of place as well.

The movie could have gone in an interesting direction, but instead, it relied on standard plot points for both the crime drama and exorcism genre, and feels like two clichés sewn together. The saving grace is the addition of a hard drinking, womanizing priest who is brought to life by Edgar Ramirez.

The movie is a watchable effort. It has some good scares and some good twists, but halfway through it plods a bit and struggles to regain its momentum.  Watch official trailer below:

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