J Edgar

Think of the movie masterpiece Capote where Phillip Seymour Hoffman captured the essence and depth of the character he was playing and won a well deserved Academy Award. Well now that’s not what you get from Clint Eastwoods’s J Edgar.
The culprit of this movie is poor editing and for those of you who had a hard time following this movie doesn’t feel bad because we were all were frustrated.
The story is about a man who led the CIA for 50 years. J. Edgar Hoover was feared and admired, reviled and revered. But behind closed doors, he held secrets that would have destroyed his career.
The secrets were what I was looking forward to (cross dressing, elicit affairs, his hate of Martin Luther King) but Eastwood only gives a high level overview and you are left with an empty suit of a man.
Back to the editing, the movie is very slow and there are too many flashbacks to the past. When you start to get captivated by a scene it flashes forward to the present then back to the past. The Lindbergh kidnapping, which was a key event during J. Edgar's tenure, is focused on too much in the movie.
This is far from Clint Eastwood's directing best. If DiCaprio wins an Oscar for this movie it will be like Al Pacino winning an Oscar for Scent of a Woman when he should have won if for The Godfather.

Verdict:
Think Jack Nicholson in Hoffa. if you didn’t see Hoffa then you don’t need to see this and if you did then you know what to expect if you see it.

This Means War trailer HD

Tower Heights

Everyone always ask why are Black comedians no longer funny after they become famous?
Let’s look at Richard Pryor, Chris Rock, & Eddie Murphy. They all are very similar yet when they went Hollywood they lost their funny. The reason for this is because they have lost their connection with the Street, the Hood, the Ghetto, whatever you want to call it. All of their comedic sketches and characters came from the street and when these comedians became rich they became detached from what made them funny in the first place.
With Tower Heist Eddie Murphy tries to recreate the magic that he had 20 years ago and it seems forced. It’s like a fighter trying to make a comeback and his timing is off.
It was a huge mistake for Murphy to play the criminal in this movie. The hit making idea would have been to have Ben Stiller play the criminal and for Eddie to try and stretch himself and be funny as the building manager. Director Brett Ratner has done this type of casting before with Money Talks and the Rush Hour franchise with Chris Tucker playing the criminal. I mean Chris Tucker playing Eddie Murphy, so now that Ratner had Eddie Murphy I guess he didn’t want to take any chances.
Don’t get me wrong, Tower Heist is an ok movie but it would have been a monster hit if the roles were reversed.

Verdict:
Go see Tower Heights if you must, then watch Eddie Murphy in the first Beverly Hills Cop movie (which HBO has been playing endlessly due to his upcoming Oscar hosting gig) and you will see one of the greatest comic actors ever. The move is not dated and it’s amazing to watch his performance because it’s natural not forced, and he is the coolest person in the movie. Reason why: He was still connected to The Streets.

In Time

The best thing about this movie is that it's not a reboot. It's an original idea.
The story takes place in the future where people stop aging at 25, but are engineered to live only one more year, having the means to buy your way out of the situation is a shot at immortal youth.
The worst thing about the movie is Justin Timberlake who plays Will Salis. Timberlake is multi talented but he still needs to work on his acting. This movie could have been a hit with Christian Bale, Leonardo DeCaprio, or Tom Hardy. Their grittiness and believability is needed to carry this film. Vincent Kartheiser from the AMC series Mad Men is perfectly cast as a baby faced Wall Street type bad guy. Amanda Seyfried also does a solid job but these 2 actors are not enough to carry the film. There are many questions that are not answered so you would assume that the Director was hoping for a sequel.
You can't make a sequel if the first movie flopped.

Verdict:
A waste of time.