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Review: ‘Morris From America’

“Morris From America” is both a coming of age story as well as a fish out of water tale, which actually compliment each other quite. It is one thing to have to go through the usual rigors of adolescence, what with the hormones and the puberty and the societal pressures from your apathetic and amoral peers, but it is something entirely else to do so in an environment in which you are automatically and definitively seen as The Other, the ultimate outsider, the stranger in the pack that the rest refuse to accept. Treacherous waters, indeed.

Morris (Markees Christmas) lives with his single widower father (Craig Robinson) in a town in Germany, where he struggles on a daily basis to fit in with the culture and people. His only friend is his German tutor Inka (Carla Juri), who encourages him to join a local youth center to help him make friends his own age. But the only person who shows any interest in 13-year old Morris is a 15-year old girl named Katrin (Lina Keller), and while he likes the promising bit of attention he gets from this older, prettier, more worldly girl, he soon finds himself twisted up by her, as Katrin proves to be way more complicated than his barely adolescent mind can handle. Throw in some casual racism from some people he interacts with and some simple culture clashes and you have a coming of age story filled with drama.

Review: ‘Hunt For The Wilderpeople’

“Hunt for the Wilderpeople” is the latest from Kiwi artist Taika Waititi, and it is a simultaneously irreverent and sincere movie about a lost foster child and an adrift widower coming together and helping each other out in ways that they didn’t even realize they needed helping. Hysterical and heartfelt, this is a great movie that shows how Waititi continues to grow as a filmmaker and shows so much promise for his future as a storyteller.

Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) is a young teen making the rounds in New Zealand’s foster care system, and the movie opens with him getting his last shot at a home when he is introduced to the very nice Bella (Rima Te Wiata), who wants very much to take this kid in and make a nice home for him. Much less happy to see him is Bella’s rough and rugged husband Hec (Sam Neill), but he puts up with Ricky because he makes Bella happy.

Of course when things appear to be clicking and this seems to be a great situation for everyone involved, Bella dies because this is a movie and we need drama. The state wants to take Ricky back, which causes him to pack up and try running away in an attempt to just hide out in The Bush, and when Nec goes looking for him, he ends up injured and unable to walk for weeks at a time, forcing them to camp out in the thick forest until he can heal. This causes a problem when child services shows up to Nec’s farm and sees they are gone. Suspecting that he kidnapped the boy, a national manhunt begins and both Nec and Ricky find themselves on the run, neither of them wanting to have a run in with the government for their own reasons.

Review: ‘Newman’

“Newman” is a documentary about inventor Joseph Westley Newman and the greatest challenge of his life, the invention and worldwide implementation of the Newman Energy Machine, a direct current device which would use a small amount of electrical energy from a source like a battery and would then convert that into more energy, not less. This machine proved to be controversial due to these pesky things known as the laws of thermodynamics, as well as the extreme resistance from certain people to Mr. Newman’s claims that his machine worked.

Review: ‘Cheerleader’

Every generation has their set of coming of age movies, films about characters that ring true and which speak to certain people in very profound ways, and for some out there, “Cheerleader” could be one of those movies. A coming of age type of story about a young girl trying to figure out her own way, this is a confidently made movie which dares to be great at times, almost like a 2016 version of “Heathers” but with the emotional truths of the best of John Hughes.

Review: ‘Hardcore Henry’

It was only a matter of time before we got our first ever first-person point of view action movie, and now that it is here in the form of “Hardcore Henry,” we have another example of all the gimmicks and stunts in the world not being able to make up for a complete lack of interesting story or characters. Not to say “Hardcore Henry” is a total waste of time, as it is an impressive technical feat of a movie, but when it is all said and done, it is also surprisingly boring.

Since the movie’s perspective is 100% from that of the main character, we learn about the other characters in the movie as the story progresses. Well “story” is a loose term used to describe the series of objectives given to Henry so he can move from scene to scene, all in an attempt to rescue his wife and also his inventor Estelle (J-Law lookalike Haley Bennett) from the clutches of some white-haired weirdo named Akan (Danila Kozlovsky) who has telekinetic powers that I am pretty sure are never explained at any point. When the movie starts, Henry “wakes up” in a lab and sees Estelle putting him together and she tries to explain to him what is going on, but before he gets the full story, they are attacked by this Akan fella and his goons, she is eventually kidnapped, and Henry finds himself meeting up with a guy named Jimmy (Sharlto Copley) who tries to help Henry along the way.

Netflix pick for 4/11/16 – ‘Uncle John’

As heard in episode 170 of Cinema Crespodiso.

Do you believe in coincidences? How about fate? Because just as we here at Cinema Crespodiso are busy covering the 25th annual Florida Film Festival, a past FFF selection has randomly popped up as this week’s Netflix pick, and that is a little indie drama called “Uncle John.” Featuring that guy who is NOT Judge Reinhold from the first two “Beverly Hills Cop” movies, this is the kind of indie movie that appears to be two different stories smashed together, and fortunately they do come together in the end, making for a well made crime drama thriller featuring some really strong performances.

First there is the titular Uncle John, played by John Ashton, and it is really cool seeing Ashton get a chance to be the lead in a movie, and he does well here as the small town carpenter that everyone likes and no one suspects. You see, very early on in the story, Uncle John has a dispute with a local guy that no one likes, and he kills him, and then he disposes of the body. The rest of the movie he tries to make sure no one suspects him, which is easy enough save for one person, the only person who did happen to like the murdered fella, and that’s the deceased’s brother (Ronnie Gene Blevins). Meanwhile, John’s nephew lives in the city and likes a girl at his job, and they strike up a friendship, which he tries to get to the next level. His attempts to break out of the friend zone end up sending the two of them to the country to make an unannounced visit to his Uncle John, which is obviously bad timing for John, but he makes due as best as he can.

Review: ‘Crush The Skull’

“Crush The Skull” is an indie horror-comedy, which is something that is pretty hard to pull off. Comedy always works well with horror, but usually when jokes and gags are used sparingly to help alleviate some of the tension built up by the film, but making a movie that is equal parts is much harder, because how do you make something scary while constantly making fun of the situation but also how do you make something scary if you keep deflating the horror with a bunch of silly jokes? Throw on top of that the fact that this is obviously a low budget movie with a somewhat ambitious idea, and you have a recipe for something that threatens to not come together and leave the audience dissatisfied.

Somehow “Crush The Skull” does manage to find a nice middle ground between the two genres. Ollie (Chris Dinh) and Blair (Katie Savoy) are a couple and they are also burglars. A screw up in the beginning gets them in some debt that they need to get out of quickly, which forces them to make a bad decision and agree to work a job set up by Blair’s incompetent brother Connor (Chris Reidell) and his one-man crew Riley (Tim Chiou). Very shortly after starting this job, the foursome realize that they unknowingly broke in to the home of a deranged killer of some sort, the type of creepy weirdo who apparently kidnaps girls and keeps them locked up in a dingy basement of torture and murder, and they have to try to get out of this makeshift prison before they become the killer’s next victims. A simple yet effective set up that is a blend of “The Collector” and “The Ladykillers,” this movie is mostly quite solid and entertaining, though it definitely isn’t perfect.

#170 – Barnacles Of Society

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In episode 170, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn review Demolition, Midnight Special and Hardcore Henry.

The Netflix Instant Pick of the Week is Uncle John.

Dr. Drew gives his two cents on supporting film festivals.

Billy D reviews Kill Zone 2.

The Crespodisco features a song from the soundtrack for The Thin Blue Line.

Chris and Drew talk about the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story trailer, and Chris talks about how he doesn’t like the title or the Men’s Rights Activists assholes who hate seeing female leads in movies.

Review: ‘Midnight Special’

“Midnight Special” is the latest evolution from writer/director Jeff Nichols, whose movies have slowly yet surely gotten a little bigger and a little more ambitious as he grows as an artist. Here he ventures into some science fiction territory to tell a story about faith and religion, but also about a father and son, and while having huge implications, this is still in many ways a small indie thriller road movie, just with a couple of bigger scenes thrown in for good measure.

Right when the movie starts, everyone is looking for an 8-year old boy named Alton (Jaeden Lieberher). He’s a special kid with some sort of powers, and he’s being tracked down by both the government and a cultish group living in a place simply called The Ranch. Taking him from a small town in Texas to a mysterious location is his father Roy (Michael Shannon) and Roy’s old friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton), and they are taking numerous seemingly cumbersome precautions in transporting this kid until you find out why they are doing what they do. This is the kind of movie that works in a lot of ambiguity and mystery and takes its time to explain things, even then only doing so with just enough information without being burdensome, still leaving enough up in the air to get the imagination to fill in some of the little gaps.

Review: ‘Embers’

“Embers” is thought-provoking science fiction, a mystery with no easy answers, and an accomplished film from a director making a feature-length movie debut. Everyone has lost the ability to make or retain memories, which makes you wonder how society would function in such a scenario? Would it even function? What do people do if they can’t remember anything? How can we even exist as people if we can’t remember who we are, or even why we are?

These are big questions, and “Embers” takes the best way to approach them, with small stories focused on a handful of characters. Instead of trying to portray an entire world grappling with this situation as it goes down (that would be the Roland Emmerich version of this movie), it is about a decade after it has all gone down, after a virus causes everyone to forget everything on a day to day basis, and we see how different people survive even a day in this horrible world. Because yes of course society can’t function and everything has broken down and people are forced to literally sift through the rubble.

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