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Review: ‘Foxcatcher’

“Foxcatcher” is a true life drama made by a director who seems to be making nothing but great movies based on real lives. First he nailed a great Truman Capote biopic, then he made a non-fiction book about sports statistics into the most commercially successfully baseball movie ever, and now here is Bennett Miller with the real story of John du Pont and his, shall we say, interesting foray into mentoring the U.S. men’s amateur wrestling team, which ended in what can only be described as tragedy.

John du Pont (Steve Carell, in a career changing, perception shifting performance) has the benefit of having the last name du Pont, you know, like the Du Pont family, the one that started that huge Du Pont company that makes everything? Yeah, he’s one of those old money, entitled assholes. But at first, despite being a somewhat creepy dude, he doesn’t seem so bad. He’s a philanthropist (though probably for tax reasons), a published ornithologist, and for whatever reason a philatelist, and above all else he’s a wrestling enthusiast. And that’s Olympic style, amateur wrestling, mind you. Not that Koko B. Ware versus Ricky The Dragon Steamboat fake rasslin’ shit. We’re talking about the real deal! And all he wanted to do in the mid to late 1980’s was help fund the U.S. men’s wrestling team and give them the resources needed to win gold medals. Can’t really argue against that, especially when no one else was stepping up to provide ANY support at all to the athletes hoping to represent their country in this most ancient of sports.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Wild’

“Wild” is an adaptation of a memoir by a woman who took a 1,000+ mile hike up the U.S. Pacific Coast without any experience or know-how, as a direct response to her life falling apart all around her, a desperate bid to find her center and to reconnect with the person she felt she once was and would like to be again. It’s a story of mistakes, bad luck, worse decisions, redemption, forgiveness…you know, all the stuff that makes us human.

Cheryl Strayed (Reese Witherspoon) starts her journey in Southern California and the first leg of her journey is a 100-mile trek through the Mojave Desert. And it doesn’t get much easier from there on out. She hits the trail and struggles mightily but keeps on pushing on and trying to make it, with a sense of stubborn determination that can only be admired. And as she walks by herself, her mind wanders and certain things trigger memories which then inform us as to who she is and why she is on this trip, why she felt so compelled to do something so drastic in order to shake up her life and the way she was living. Having suffered heavy personal losses, she was going down a very dark path, and she had to get out somehow, and throughout the movie we get to see her simultaneously get into trouble via flashbacks while she also hikes in the present one day at a time to personal redemption.

Being in pretty much every single scene (actually I can’t think of a single scene in which she does not appear), this is obviously the Reese Witherspoon Show, and she pretty much nails it. She had to run through a good array of emotional states throughout this movie and always pulled it off. I totally bought the hardship of the journey as well as her personal desire for a better path and a way to forgive herself, and this may actually be one of her better roles and performances. It also helps that the movie is directed well, with smart use of the varied geography Cheryl came across on her trip, as well as appropriating the free association memoir approach of the source material to tell the story, which keeps things energetic and interesting throughout.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 1/5/15 – ‘Nebraska’

Nominated for a slew of awards when it came out last year, “Nebraska” is another fine entry in the great body of work of Alexander Payne. Featuring a great Bruce Dern performance, wonderful black and white photography, and a great little story about family and love and dreams and regrets, this is a film definitely worth watching.

From my original review of “Nebraska:”

In classic Alexander Payne fashion (even though he did not write this screenplay), this movie bounces back and forth between humorous and melancholy, often times within the space of one scene. And the black and white photography is almost like cheating when it comes to heightening the drama of the movie. When everything is in black and white multiple shades of gray like this, everything becomes more dramatic naturally, and it actually makes this little movie seem a little bigger and more profound. Beautiful, natural photography coupled with a strong little character-based story and brought to life by great acting makes “Nebraska” a very good movie.

#104 – Happy Drew Year

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In episode 104, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn celebrate the show’s 2-year anniversary with returning guest Tom The Beer Guy from Orange Blossom Brewing.

Chris and Drew review The Imitation Game and Chris reviews Wild.

Chris reads some listener mini movie reviews. t

They talk a little of that beer talk.

Drew starts a whole new year’s worth of Drewster Cogburn vs the World.

We get the first Netflix Pick of the Week for 2015.

And much more!

Crespodiso Film School – Censorship in Hollywood

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In this month’s Crespodiso Film School BONUS episode, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn talk about the history of censorship in the movie industry, from the federal government’s first attempts to ban films through laws and the industry’s self policing throughout the decades, all the way up to the MPAA as we know it today.

Learn something!

Review: ‘Big Eyes’

“Big Eyes” is probably the least Tim Burton-y “Tim Burton movie” ever, a real life drama about fraud in the art world in the 1950s and 1960s, specifically, the story of the Keanes and the dispute over who created the series of Big Eye paintings.

Margaret (Amy Adams) got herself out of a bad marriage during a time when such a thing was not common at all, and she ended up in San Francisco, where she met Walter Keane (Christoph Waltz), a charming painter who took a liking to her and her paintings of small sad or scared children with big eyes. They fall in love, get married, and Walter tries to sell his schmaltzy paintings of French side streets along with his wife’s big eye painting, and only the big eyes get any traction. In giving Walter something of a benefit of doubt, this movie show Walter going along with a simple misunderstanding and then later feeling remorse for it openly, so it is not like he is some insane plagiarist monster from the get go. But that is what he becomes.

This movie is mostly devoid of that Tim Burton weirdness. There is a touch of “Edward Scissorhands” in the depiction of Americana and suburbia and a little “Ed Wood” which can’t be avoid because it is another biopic written by the same people, but otherwise this could have been made by any old journeymen director. There is some extra lushness in the production design and in the way some of the shots are composed, but that’s about it. And that is not really a good or bad thing, it is just an observation. Could this movie have benefited from a little more Burton extravagance? Maybe it could have. Or maybe it was better to just let this wild story stand on its own, which is more or less the approach taken here.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 12/29/14 – ‘The Double’

“The Double” is a crazy little psychological thriller sorta comedy drama about an introvert who meets his exact double in appearance and physical features but who is also his complete opposite in personality and temperament. Featuring Jesse Eisenberg in the two roles, this is a wonderfully weird and interesting film about identity and the different ways we interact with each other.

From my original review from the 2014 Florida Film Festival:

What really sets this movie apart, besides from two great Jesse Eisenberg performances in one movie, polar opposite characters that he is able to portray so well, is the incredible sense of tone and style that Richard Ayoade uses to convey Simon James’ off balanced world, a world which consumes him in rumbling sounds and dirty grey walls, flickering lights and incredibly shitty service, a dark, desolate, depressing city, mostly populated seemingly with octogenarians, and also, I may be mistaken about this, but now that I think about, I don’t even remember one scene set in the daylight. It’s all indoors or outside at night. Gloomy, bleak and depressing as it gets. I mean, really, who has a funeral at midnight? Besides weirdos. And death romantics. (again, weirdos).

Huge chunks of the movie get played out without dialogue as well, which gives it kind of a silent film kind of quality (though there are plenty of sounds and music, etc, not REALLY silent film) – really this is cinema at its most basic, as a lot of character development is derived from just watching a person do something, the way he lives his life, without having to include a bunch of dialogue and exposition, and it is great to watch when someone does it well like here in “The Double.”

#103 – Drewster Cogburn’s Playhouse

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In episode 103, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn both review Foxcatcher, and Chris reviews Big Eyes, Unbroken and The Gambler.

Also discussed in this episode:

The most overpaid actors in Hollywood.

Justin Lin to direct Star Trek 3.

The new Pee Wee movie is in the works.

The Evil Dead tv show is gaining traction.

Chris and Drew’s most anticipated movies of 2015, and more!

Review: ‘Unbroken’

“Unbroken” is two and a half movies in one. It is the story of a World War II bombardier and the extremely long time he was stranded at sea when his plane went down, and it is also the story of the same guy doing through some hellish times in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. And also it is kind of about how he was an Olympic runner, but that’s really just there for some flavor, and to show how hard this guy worked.

“This guy” being Louis Zamperini (Jack O’Connell), a trouble making kid turned All-American high school athlete turned US Olympian turned second lieutenant in the US Army Air Corps, and this fella has a helluva story, one good enough to turn into a movie as they say, which is why some version of this story has been attempted by Hollywood since the 1950s, and here we are now in 2014 with “Unbroken,” directed by Angelina Jolie.

And Jolie directed this movie with the grace and reverence she felt the story deserved, as the film is pretty self serious, with only a little bit of humor throughout, as they instead focused on the intense hardship that Zamperini had to overcome, and sure why not, this is why we are here, right? This wasn’t a walk in the park for Zamperini. The long middle section of the movie in which he is stranded at sea on a life raft with two other guys could have easily been an entire movie all on its own. They had to go through some crazy stuff during that very long period in which they were pretty much dying little by little every day, including surviving huge storms and fending off hungry sharks, and if that was the whole story, it would have been a hell of a story already.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Gambler’

“The Gambler,” a remake of a 1970’s James Caan picture of the same name, is an entertaining couple of hours spent with a self-hating asshole who can’t help but “tell it like he sees it,” leaving himself prone to pissing off everyone he comes in contact with because he either doesn’t understand the basic rules of society and human interaction or he does understand and just doesn’t care. Actually, since he’s an asshole, it’s definitely the second one.

“The Gambler” is about The Gambler (Mark Wahlberg), and we are introduced to the guy crying at this dying grandfather’s bedside. Quick funeral, opening credits, then boom, The Gambler arrives at some shady, backroom gambling speakeasy with a good chunk of cash money and he starts a-gamblin’. But he has his style of gambling, which seems to be that he always goes all-in, double or nothing, hit a home run or strike out, and I have to admit, this is an exciting way to gamble. Making $10,000 into $20,000 in a matter of seconds and then immediately trying to push that to $40,000 must be a hell of a rush. Which then must make it a huge bummer when you inevitably lose and that huge sum of money disappears in one fell swoop. The Gambler doesn’t even bother taking one small marker for himself from the growing pile of winnings, he just keeps doubling down until he gets what he wants or he’s done for. And almost every single time, he does not get what he wants.

What does he want? What number is he aiming for? Well apparently he is trying to gamble his way out of a gambling debt, and right away we all know where this is going. He owes the gambling house (i.e. the South Korean mob guy who owns the place) a substantial amount, and he’s borrowing from them to gamble, just to lose that money, increasing his debt. Then he gets staked by another gangster (Michael K. Williams) and he loses that money right away and now he’s in debt to two bad ass dudes. So what does he do? He goes to another underground criminal type (John Goodman) for some possible debt consolidation. But oh boy does that not work out.Continue Reading …