Emily Blunt

Sicario

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Sicario
  • IMDb: link

Sicario

How far are you willing to go to achieve justice? At want point do you draw a line you will never cross? And what happens when you are forced over that line by forces beyond you control? These questions are all at the heart of Sicario, a drama from director Denis Villeneuve and screenwriter Taylor Sheridan that stars Emily Blunt as idealistic FBI Agent Kate Macer stationed in Arizona. Kate volunteers for a joint DEA task force after the discovery of dozens of corpses in Chandler, Arizona, all tied to a Mexican drug cartel in a house rigged with explosives that takes the lives of two fellow officers.

Completely unaware of what she’s getting herself into, and lied from the beginning by the head of the task force (Josh Brolin) and his mysterious consultant (Benicio Del Toro), Kate follows the pair down the rabbit hole leading to a kidnapping in Juarez, Mexico (where she has no authority) and the torture of Mexican citizen, as she struggles with the end game of finding drug lord Fausto Alarcón (Julio Cedillo). Along the way she will discover the power of the Mexican cartel and their reach which extends into law enforcement on her side of the border.

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Anne Hathaway’s Wrecking Ball vs. Emily Blunt’s Piece of My Heart (Lip Sync Battle)

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Lip Sync Battle
  • IMDb: link

Still full of far too much filler and not enough actual content, last night’s Lip Sync Battle raised the bar a bit by pitting good friends Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt against each other. The two verbally sparred back and forth for most of the evening but Hathaway stole the night with her performance of Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball” (watch Blunt’s reaction in the background to her performance).

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Into the Woods

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Into the Woods
  • IMDb: link

Into the WoodsBased on the stage musical of the same name by Stephen Sondheim, Into the Woods offers a fairy tale adventure featuring a host of well-known characters whose stories all begin to intertwine over three days in the mysterious woods filling the space between their various homes. The story begins when the Baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) learn their inability to have children was caused by a curse put on his family by an evil Witch (Meryl Streep). The Witch, however, offers the couple a way to break the curse if they can gather an odd assortment of items before the blue moon in three days time. And that, as you might expect, is where the other characters come in.

To gather the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, and the slipper as pure as gold the Baker and his wife will come into contact with Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) and his mother (Tracey Ullman), Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy), Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), and a pair of princes seeking true love (Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen).

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Edge of Tomorrow

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Edge of Tomorrow
  • IMDB: link

Edge of TomorrowAdapted from the Japanese graphic novel All You Need is Kill, Edge of Tomorrow stars Tom Cruise as military recruiter Major William Cage forced into service on the front lines of a war between humanity and an unstoppable alien race known as Mimics. Despite dying rather early on his first day in the field, Cage finds himself somehow still alive reliving the previous day’s events over and over, each time more aware of events and what what must be done to win the war.

With the bad taste of Oblivion still fresh, I wasn’t expecting too much from Cruise stepping so quickly back into a sci-fi film. With a structure which will get it compared to Groundhog Day and Source Code, Edge of Tomorrow delivers a smarter-than-expected summer flick which relies heavily on Cruise and co-star Emily Blunt as the kick-ass face of the United Defense Force who alone understands what his character is going through. Although I think the end is a bit too cute for its own good (much like Source Code) director Doug Liman balances action, suspense, and horror with a surprising amount of humor.

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The Wind Rises

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Kaze tachinu
  • IMDB: link

“All I wanted to do was to make something beautiful.”

The Wind RisesOver a lifetime in animation Japanese film director Hayao Miyazaki has made a name for himself as one of the premiere filmmakers of his generation. Although I haven’t always loved his films, I found Princess Mononoke too bizarre for my tastes and a bit unwieldy with its 133-minute running time, it’s impossible to come out of any Miyazaki film without a profound respect for the talented man who brought them to the screen.

For his final film Miyazaki delivers a love story to aviation in the fictionalized biography of Japanese aircraft designer Jiro Horikoshi (Hideaki Anno), a young man with dreams of building beautiful flying machines who would design the Mitsubishi A5M and Mitsubishi A6M Zero which Japan used during WWII. Adapted from the novel by Hori Tatsuo, The Wind Rises may not quite be the all-ages adventure some might be hoping for, but it beautifully captures the fire of imagination that drives Jiro in his designs and the lively but ill Naoko (Miori Takimoto) whom he falls desperately in love with. As he approaches his life’s ambition he feels the other great love of his life slowly fading away.

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