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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 …

Review: ‘The Babadook’

“The Babadook” is the kind of horror film in which a family is tormented by some sort of supernatural being, like a haunting kind of deal, but with the added benefit of the horror being directly tied into the emotional needs of the main characters and their relationship to each other. So there is some scary stuff about monsters in the shadows, but then there are also the monsters inside of us as well, ooooooooo, get it? The real monsters?

Amelia (Essie Davis) is a single working mom, and she is single because her husband died in a car accident on their way to the hospital, which they were heading to so she could give birth to her son Sam. And as they approach Sam’s seventh birthday, Amelia is reminded again of her dead husband. What a bummer. Meanwhile, Sam has been acting out more and more, scared of possible monsters under his bed and in his closet, and feeling more and more isolated from his schoolmates, and his tantrums and seemingly paranoid fixations are just weighing down on Amelia more and more. Her personal life, what little of it she has, is a wreck, her son is off his rocker, and she struggles to even get some decent sleep. And just as all of this is going down, a mysterious book enters their lives.

Having a nightly habit of reading a book to her son before he goes to bed, one night he pulls a red book off the shelf called “Mister Babadook” and it is a short pop-up book about a ghostly creature thing trying to come into a home to be all scary and stuff and how you can’t get rid of him, and the art and the wording freaks out Amelia as well as Sam, who then starts believing that the Babadook is in their house trying to get them. Well, really trying to get Amelia, which makes Sam scared because he wants to protect her. And Amelia doesn’t believe him at first, but then weird things start happening around her, and before long, shit really starts to go crazy for her.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 12/22/14 – ‘House of Flying Daggers’

Zhang Yimou is one of China’s most famous and maybe one of their best film directors, as he has made his fair share of lush, gorgeous, impeccably directed films with only the biggest Chinese movie stars available. Following up his hugely successful and internationally loved 2002 kung fu epic “Hero” is another intricately designed and gorgeous kung film, the 2004 “House of Flying Daggers.”

Starring Zhang Ziyi and Andy Lau, “House of Flying Daggers” is about a rebel group living in a bamboo forest up against the imperial government of the time. But really it is a love story about the group’s sexy, blind leader (Ziyi) and a police captain who fakes being a rebel himself in order to infiltrate their group, only to fall head over heels for this strong and sexy vixen. So now this guy has to figure out to whom he is loyal, his fellow agents of the government, or with the leader of the rebels who his has been tasked with killing? So while this is still a big martial arts epic, it is also an intimate love story, which makes it good for the dudes AND for the ladies. Can’t go wrong there.Continue Reading …

CCN – December 2014

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In this month’s Cinema Crespodiso CCN BONUS Episode, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn do a year in review.

So get ready to re-live a lot of the horrible sh*t that happened in 2014, along with some of the cool stuff as well.

Mahalo!

#102 – Cresmas Time is Here

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In episode 102, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn are joined by returning guest Soul Brother Kevin from The SBK LIVE Show (www.sbklive.fm) for this year’s Cresmas episode!

Chris and Drew review The Babadook.

Discussed in this episode:

SONY shelves The Interview.

MoviePass in AMC Theaters.

Robert Rodriguez making live action Fire and Ice.

Crimson Peak details.

Mark Wahlberg will be back for Transformers 5.

David Fincher has two HBO projects.

And much more!