Author: Matthew Liedke

Journalist and film critic in Minnesota. Graduate of Rainy River College and Minnesota State University in Moorhead. Outside of movies I also enjoy sports, craft beers and the occasional video game.

REVIEW: ‘Cinderella’

Director:
Kenneth Branagh
Cast:
Cate Blanchett
Lily James
Richard Madden
Helena Bonham Carter
Rated: PG

If you’ve seen the original animated “Cinderella,” or any of the other adaptions of the fairy tale, this will be very familiar territory. This live action version starts off with Cinderella(James) as a young girl and the movie introduces the audience to both her mother and father.

The film goes into the upbringing of Cinderella and shows how her mother died, how her father found a new wife and how life was like after her father passed away. From there, it works like the other adaptions, Stepmother (Blanchett) comes into the picture, forces Cinderella to do work, a ball comes up and the two stepsisters are brats.

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Run All Night review

Director:
Jaume Collet-Serra
Cast:
Liam Neeson
Ed Harris
Joel Kinnaman
Boyd Holbrook
Rated: R

“Run All Night” follows former mob hit man Jimmy (Neeson) who doesn’t exactly have the best luck in life. Jimmy is an alcoholic, poor and is estranged from his own son. The only person in the world who even gives him the time of day is his former boss and friend Shawn (Harris).

Problems increase for Jimmy, though when Shawn’s son gets involved in some bad crime and ends up killing another drug dealer. Jimmy’s son Mike ends up seeing the killing while on duty as a limo driver. This sets in motion a plot where Mike is on the run from Shawn’s cronies and needs the help of his father if he has any hopes of surviving.

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REVIEW: ‘Chappie’

Director:
Neill Blomkamp
Cast:
Sharlto Copley
Dev Patel
Ninja
Yo-Landi Visser
Jose Pablo Cantillo
Hugh Jackman
Sigourney Weaver
Rated: R

“Chappie,” like Director Neill Blomkamp’s first film “District 9,” takes place in the South African city of Johannesburg. The city is over run with crime and gangs seem to be everywhere. Because of this problem, a large weapons manufacturing company develops a new droid humanoid robot to add to the police force.

This is where we enter one of the film’s protagonists, a software developer for the robots named Deon (Patel). Deon has his sights set on creating the first artificial intelligence and pulls off the feat and uploads the program to a damaged police robot. Problems arise, though, when the robot ends up in the hands of a trio of gangsters (Ninja, Yo-Landi Visser, Cantillo) who begin teaching the impressionable droid criminal acts.

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Whiplash review

Director:
Damien Chazelle
Cast:
Miles Teller
J.K. Simmons
Paul Reiser
Rated: R

Miles Teller plays Andrew in “Whiplash,” a young college student with aspirations of being a highly successful musician, more specifically, a great drummer. Opportunity eventually comes knocking when he is brought into a skilled jazz band taught by a man named Fletcher (Simmons).

Andrew soon finds out, though, that Fletcher is one of the toughest instructors he has ever gone up against and it will take all of his will power and talent to meet the massive expectations placed upon him as a member of the band.

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Still Alice review

Director:
Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland
Cast:
Julianne Moore
Kate Bosworth
Alec Baldwin
Kristen Stewart
Rated: PG-13

Alice Howland (Moore) is a college professor who has just turned 50 and appears completely fine and healthy. Away from her career, she lives in a nice home and has a great family life. Her entire life begins to change, though, when she starts having small lapses in her memory.

After visiting a neurologist on a few occasions, she is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s Disease. From there, the film explores her struggle with the disease and the effect it has on her family.

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Boyhood review

Director:
Richard Linklater
Cast:
Ellar Coltrane
Patricia Arquette
Elijah Smith
Lorelei Linklater
Rated: R

The way this film was made was revolutionary, but I doubt many other filmmakers will jump on the bandwagon.

Richard Linklater, who has previously directed the films “Before Sunrise,” “Before Sunset,” “Before Midnight” and the hilarious comedy, “Bernie,” took on a tremendous task with “Boyhood.” Instead of setting up a certain period of time to complete filming over a year or two, Linklater decided to shoot the movie over a 12-year period.

The 12-year story shown in the movie is perfectly summed up by its title. “Boyhood” follows the adolescence of a boy named Mason, played by Ellar Coltrane, as he goes through life from ages 5-18.

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American Sniper review

Director:
Clint Eastwood
Cast:
Bradley Cooper
Sienna Miller
Kyle Gallner
Rated: R

After a few stumbles like “Jersey Boys” and “Hereafter,” Clint Eastwood has once again found his directing groove with “American Sniper.”

Real life Navy SEAL Sniper Chris Kyle’s life is explored in the film, which mainly focuses on Kyle’s four tours of service in the military during the Iraq War. While the movie gives a full look at what Kyle experiences in battle, there is also a view of how it affects him when he goes home.

The movie transitions back and forth between Kyle’s life overseas and how it affects him when he returns to his family in the states and has to deal with post traumatic stress disorder.

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Top 10 Worst Movies of 2014

10. Hercules
Before anyone asks, no, I did not have the, um… pleasure of seeing “The Legend of Hercules,” but this Dwayne Johnson version didn’t have much to offer either. Nothing was memorable and while being over the top, the movie wasn’t very fun.

On top of the film’s story being predictable, the battle scenes came off as boring and uninteresting. The worst part is that the movie throws away an interesting premise. The film tries to explore what it would be like if Hercules wasn’t really a demigod, but does it the wrong way.

This premise could have been clever if it had followed how Hercules and his crew built up this fake legend. Unfortunately, all we have is a lame villain, a poor plot twist and a movie that isn’t worth seeing ever again.

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Into the Woods review

Director:
Rob Marshall
Cast:
Anna Kendrick
Daniel Huttlestone
James Corden
Emily Blunt
Tracey Ullman
Meryl Streep
Rated: PG

Based on a Broadway musical of the same name, “Into the Woods” is a crossover of sorts which features characters from the stories of Cinderella (Kendrick), Jack (Huttlestone) and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood (Crawford) and Repunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy). The stories are all brought together by a couple, the Baker (Corden) and the Baker’s Wife (Blunt), who are trying to lift a curse that was set on them by the local Witch (Streep).

To do so, the couple needs to collect items from all of the famous fairy tales. The film tells the story from multiple angles and much of the plot is told through song.

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