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Review: ‘Mud’

Jeff Nichols started pretty small with the little blood feud Southern-fried drama “Shotgun Stories,” and then followed that up with “Take Shelter,” an oh so slightly bigger Southern-fried movie about a man suffering from visions of an impending apocalyptic storm. And now he’s back with something a little bigger in scope, a Southern-fried coming-of-age drama called “Mud,” which makes Jeff Nichols three-for-three in terms of well-made movies.

In “Mud,” 14-year old Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and his buddy Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) stumble across a dude named Mud (Matthew McConaughey), a fugitive chilling on an island in the Mississippi River in the Arkansas Delta area. Not too many movies made about this region of the world (and as a matter of fact, according to the interwebz, this $2 million movie is the biggest budgeted film ever shot in Arkansas). Mud convinces Ellis and Neckbone to help him fix up a motor boat so Mud can reunite with his girlfriend Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) and get the hell out of dodge.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Conjuring

Okay, folks, I am a day late and a dollar short on this one, but “The Conjuring” proved to be so popular and generally well liked that I just gotta get something down, on the record, so to speak, as I have finally gotten around to seeing this supposedly “based on a true story” horror movie and there are a couple of things that might be worth noting. You know. For posterity.

So in case ya haven’t heard, “The Conjuring” is on real-life paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) and is loosely based on an investigation of a haunted home in the 1970’s in which a family was terrorized by what was deemed to be a demonic spirit. Good times. Directed by James Wan (Saw, Insidious, Death Sentence), this is a 1970’s styled horror movie, as it is mostly tension built through atmosphere and mood, but with the modern favorite of loading the whole thing with jump scares to keep things moving along, resulting in a pretty decent horror film that has a few things going for it.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 8/12/13 – ‘Rosemary’s Baby’

Who says you need over the top violence and gore and jump scares to make a scary movie? Why should all horror films have zombies or slashers or Rube Goldberg machine loving psychopaths? “Rosemary’s Baby” is proof that all you need is a proper atmosphere and tone, committed acting and sure handed direction to make a horror movie devoid of all the trappings one would normally expect from the genre.

Roman Polanski’s first US-made film, he came up with a doozy, adapting the thriller novel Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin into this tense, nightmarish movie about a pregnant woman (Mia Farrow) suspecting her husband of making a deal to sacrifice their unborn child to an occult for his own success (a little Illuminati reference there maybe? Blood sacrifice? You know what I’m talking about…), but then eventually finding out that the truth is so much more horrifying that it’s not even comparable.Continue Reading …

#31 – Back From Vacation

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In episode 31, Chris and Drew review the movies Elysium, Mud, Admissions and The Numbers Station, they have a new Netflix Instant Pick of the Week, they recap the weekend box office, and they play another round of Drewster Cogburn vs the World.Also in this episode:

Is bad Denzel Washington better than good Mark Wahlberg?

Why did they make another Percy Jackson movie?

Are animated movies really a cash cow?

What’s the deal with We’re the Millers?

New movies on DVD include Olympus Has Fallen, Emperor, The Big Wedding and The Company You Keep.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Elysium’

Anyone looking for a dose of political allegory mixed with some intense action and a few outbursts of surprising violence? Want to see Matt Damon in a cybernetic exoskeleton suit? Do you desire an action movie that is more than just chases and gun fights but also includes thoughts and ideas? Then get thee to a movie theater and check out “Elysium,” because this flick is smarter than the average fare (see that? See what I did there?).Continue Reading …

Talking Trailers: Ridley Scott’s ‘The Counselor’

Acclaimed author Cormac McCarthy has hit novel-to-movie adaptation pay dirt lately, what with his books No Country for Old Men and The Road both being made into films, and recently someone got him to write his first straight up screenplay, an original story meant only to be made into a movie, and that movie is Ridley Scott’s “The Counselor.”

When boiled down into a log line, “The Counselor” seems very simple: a lawyer (Michael Fassbender) decides to get into the drug dealing business to make a little extra money, and of course things go wrong. But then again, a quick synopsis of either “No Country For Old Men” (a man finds a briefcase full of money) or “The Road” (a man and his son try to survive in a world destroyed by nuclear weapons) would make it seem as if those movies are very simple stories, when we all know that they both have a lot to offer, especially the fantastic NCFOM. So while the plot synopsis is simple, the below recently released trailer hints at a wild movie in which Fassbender’s lawyer character will go down the rabbit hole of danger, betrayal and who knows what else.Continue Reading …

Talking Trailers: Spike Jonze’s ‘Her’

Any year we get a new Spike Jonze movie is a good year, which means when November 20, 2013 comes around, this year will officially be “good,” because that is the scheduled release date for “Her,” Spike Jonze’s new movie about an anti-social fella who falls in love with a voice on a computer.

This anti-social fella is played by Joaquin Phoenix, who took a short break from acting so he could “retire” and focus on being a hip hop artist (all shown in the Casey Affleck-helmed mockumentary “I’m Still Here“), and now he’s back in full force it seems, especially after that incredible performance in last year’s “The Master,” and it looks like he has another one under his belt, as the below trailer for “Her” is very compelling and pretty much looks like what one would expect from the maker of “Being John Malkovich” and “Adaptation.”Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 8/5/13 – ‘End of Watch’

“End of Watch” is the opposite of most movies featuring the Los Angeles Police Department at work, as it portrays LAPD police officers not as crooks or corrupt or racist or terrible, but instead as normal people just trying to do their job, a job which happens to be very dangerous and rather underappreciated.Continue Reading …

#30 – Extra Large & Extra Sexy

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In episode 30, Chris and Drew review a plethora of movies including The Wolverine, 2 Guns, Only God Forgives, Grave Encounters and Europa Report. They also go over the Netflix Instant Pick of the Week (End of Watch), Chris has a double round of Drewster Cogburn vs The World for Drew, they talk about the new movies coming out on DVD and in theaters and more!

Also discussed in this episode:

Drewster is back from his trip to NYC.

Ellen hosting the next Oscars.

David Yates is directing the Scarface remake.

DC/WB announce a Flash TV show for the CW.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Fruitvale Station’

Starting out as a “slice of life” type of movie and ending as a brutal tearjerker (a two-hanky movie, they used to call ’em), “Fruitvale Station” is a small movie about a big issue, and the timing of this particular film couldn’t be any more perfect. Just as a gigantic mirror has been held up to this great nation so we can see just how racist we still are as a whole, this movie comes along and openly questions the perceived value of the life of a black youth in today’s America.

You have two choice right now: you can do a Google search on “Oscar Grant” and read about the tragic event that this movie is based on, or you can just go into the movie and let the shocking events fold right in front of you. Now, while I am sure it would be interesting to watch this movie play out without really knowing what the story is really about, I think it actually does the movie a great service to know ahead of time how the story is going to end. And since “Fruitvale Station” starts with real-life cell phone footage from a very fateful and horrendous night on a train station platform in Oakland, California in the early morning of New Year’s Day in 2009, it is apparent that writer/director Ryan Coogler knew this and wanted to make sure the audience indeed knows what this movie is going to end up.Continue Reading …