Netflix Pick for 3/30/15 – ‘The Master’

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From the director of modern classics “Boogie Nights” and “There Will Be Blood” is this movie about a Scientology-like “religion” and its most charismatic leader, a man whom many people love to follow and go to for solace and succor, a man who can be referred to by the film’s title, “The Master.”

Played by Philip Seymour Hoffman brilliantly, this would be 100% his movie if it wasn’t for the fact that Joaquin Phoenix plays one of the most mesmerizing, interesting and unhinged characters ever in a movie, a fella who needs as much as help as he can get, and even then that likely won’t be enough.

From my original review of “The Master,” written only after I had a second chance to see this dense film:

Maybe it was just the second viewing being of much service, but the scenes are strange at first and seem odd and out of place at times, but there is a definitely a larger picture that is being tended to and formed and developed and when you step back and take a look at the movie as a whole, the character arcs and motivations and stories come into focus and make more sense. It really is quite brilliant, considering how non-conventional the story seems initially, but turns out to actually be pretty straightforward. Anderson takes some pretty big jumps in time, cause really we don’t know how much time passes between events, and really sometimes it seems like quite a bit of time has passed. It’s like a Rorschach, you step back, you squint your eyes, and you see what you see, and while it might seem like a bunch of disparate and disjointed images and scenes, it really makes for a complete picture if you just know how to look at it.

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#116 – Not Braised Peaches, Poached Pears

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In episode 116 (not 115, as Chris kept saying), Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn review It Follows and Wild Tales, and special guest Anthony “The Black Hasselhoff” Davis from FoGetDatYo Radio reviews Insurgent.

Also discussed in this episode:

Hugh Jackman as Wolverine one last time.

A Key & Peele “Substitute Teacher” movie.

How did Furious 7 get made after Paul Walker died? a

A Transformers cinematic universe.

The Magnificent Seven remake. p

Plus much more!Continue Reading …

Review: ‘It Follows’

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A film that focuses on atmosphere and sustaining a sense of pure dread, “It Follows” is the most interesting and well made horror movie since 2012’s “Cabin in the Woods.” Imagine knowing that you are always being stalked by an unknown, unnamed thing, something horrible that brings only doom with it, and you keep running but it always catches up eventually, always there, ready to get you, and no matter how long you prolong it, you know that it will get you eventually. That is “It Follows.”

Jay (Maika Monroe, “The Guest“) meets Hugh (Jake Weary) and after a few dates, they have sex. This kind of thing happens. But what happens immediately after this? Not so common. Very shortly after the sex, Hugh informs Jay that there is some sort of thing out there, a supernatural entity that can take the shape of any person, and it will start coming after Jay, slowly yet steadily walking towards her at all times. She can even get in her car and drive far away from it, but it will eventually show up again, stalking her wherever she goes and if it ever catches her, it will kill her in some absolutely horrific way. This happened as a direct result of her sexual encounter with Hugh, who “passed it on” to her, and he instructs her to sleep with someone else to pass it on, hoping that this thing keeps going right down the line.Continue Reading …

Book-to-film adaptations 10 – ‘Drive’

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“Drive” (2005) by James Sallis is a lean L.A.-based crime novel about a young, rudderless man with exceptional talents who accidentally gets himself involved with the local mafia and must resort to violent means in order to save himself. Told with a sure vision, emphasizing character and location, and combining a knack for brevity with a monstrous vision of a person pushed too far and reacting in kind, this is a pretty great little book that anyone appreciating such genre treats will enjoy.

“Drive,”(2011)  written by Hossein Amini and directed by Nicholas Winding Refn, is a lean L.A.-based crime film about a young, rudderless man with exceptional talents who accidentally gets himself involved with the local mafia and must resort to violent means in order to save himself. Told with a sure vision, emphasizing character and location, and combining a knack for brevity with a monstrous vision of a person pushed too far and reacting in kind, this is a pretty great little movie that anyone appreciating such genre treats will enjoy.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 3/23/15 – ‘Total Recall’

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Remember that Colin Farrell-Kate Beckinsale-Jessica Biel sci-fi action movie from 2012? Neither does anyone else. And that’s fine, because the original “Total Recall” from 1990 is still a glorious insane splattery mess of a movie and here we are in 2015 and it remains as the best Martian-set, is it a dream or is it reality, sci-action movie ever made.

Director Paul Verhoeven was coming off of the amazing “Robocop” and Arnold Schwarzenegger was fresh off of the smash hit “Twins” and they teamed up to tell the story of a man who gets a memory implant to make him think he was on a spy adventure on Mars, but then it turns out that maybe he was already a spy on a Mars and they may have awoken a sleeping agent by accident, or else he had a schizoid embolism and the rest of the movie is all a dream anyway, and it is just all insane. Mutants, an evil corporation, rebel factions, Sharon Stone and three-breasted prostitutes…this movie has it all. Schwarzenegger is great, Ronny Cox plays his second villain in a row for Verhoeven, the special effects are awesome and weird looking, “Total Recall” is fantastic.Continue Reading …

#115 – Double Tie Breaker

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In episode 115, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn are joined by Etchie from the show Answer Pants on RampantRadio.com.

Chris and Drew review Red Army and The Gunman.

Billy D gives us one to avoid and the Netflix Pick of the Week is an 80’s sci-fi action classic.

Discussed in this interview:

Are there movies that shouldn’t be remade?

Dredd 2 is dead.

Mad Max: Fury Road is rated R.

There’s a Fraggle Rock movie being made.

A 300-style Romeo and Juliet movie is being made.

And much more!Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Red Army’

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“Red Army” is a documentary about the nation-wide hockey program of the USSR of the 1970’s and 1980’s, but of course this movie is about so much more, it is about the people within this system, the ones who ran it, and how it reflected the Soviet system overall as well as the Cold War between the Soviets and the capitalist West.

The focus of the film is Viacheslav Fetisov, which I am sure upsets him a little because as the captain of the USSR national hockey team and a product of dozens of years of Soviet-style teachings starting with him at a very young age, he has totally bought into the socialism, “there is no I in team” mentality, but he does deserve to be singled out among the rest of the team because of his insanely long list of accomplishments and rewards. Starting at 8 or 9 years old, he was entered into the Soviet hockey program, which found and cultivated the best players throughout the entire country and brought them up to eventually play for the National team. And on top of that the government practically made it mandatory for all men to at least attempt to play hockey, seeking to root out the best of the best, and using the sport as an opportunity to prove that their model of governance was the best one.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Gunman’

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Sean Penn is all like, “hey, Liam Neeson can’t be getting ALL the tough old man parts, is he?” but he was also like “If I’m going to do an action movie, it has to be ABOUT something, amiright?” and that is how we have “The Gunman” which is about people’s sins coming back to haunt them and is also kind of about the pilfering of natural resources in Congo and how that was made worse by a civil war and political corruption and whatnot but mostly this is a movie about Sean Penn’s biceps.

Gunman (Penn) is doing some contract security work in Congo in 2006, which is really a cover for him being on some team of assassins, and a job he does forces him to leave the country, leaving behind the woman he apparently loved without giving her an explanation. Eight years later, some guys are trying to kill Gunman and he knows this is somehow connected to the Congo job, so he tries to find out who wants him dead and why, and this brings him back into the life of the woman he left behind. Complications and murders ensue.

Not only is this yet another entry into the tough old guy subgenre of action movies, it is directed by the guy who directed “Taken,” the film that really kick started this current trend of flicks that would have starred Charles Bronson in the 70’s and 80’s. And much like that movie and this fella’s other old man action movie “From Paris With Love” with a bald headed John Travolta, “The Gunman” is a reasonably watchable movie, with good actors slumming it in dumb action movies, although this time around this movie tries not to be so dumb.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘What We Do In The Shadows’

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From Kiwi comedians (as well as writers, directors, performers, etc.) Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, “What We Do In The Shadows” is a mockumentary in the same vein as the great Christopher Guest films “Best in Show” and “For Your Consideration,” films that follow around a very specific group of people and explores their weirdness, especially in comparison to the rest of “normal” society. But instead of dog owners or bad actors, this is a movie about centuries-old vampires, who also happen to be flatmates.

“What We Do In The Shadows” centers on Viago, Vladislav (the Poker), Deacon and Petyr, who all share a flat together in Wellington, New Zealand. Most of the movie is them hanging out and building up to the masquerade ball held every year for undead folks like them, zombies and witches (though are witches really undead? Anyway…), but before we get there, it really is more like a slice of life kind of thing, what do these guys do with their time, what are they thinking, how they do coexist, and so on. So we get scenes like the one in which three of the flatmates sit together to go over the rules of the flat again, as one of them has been neglecting their chores, and obviously the humor of this kind of scene comes from the fact that they are having a very basic, standard argument among people who live together, just with the exception that they are vampires, so an argument could devolve into them flying in the air and hissing at each other.Continue Reading …