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Review: ‘Straight Outta Compton’

“Straight Outta Compton” is the kind of movie that manages to serve multiple purposes. On the surface it is a normal biopic, the stereotypical rise and fall (and sometimes rise again) story of a musician or group of musicians, but it also gets into deeper societal issues that unfortunately still resonate today. Racial tensions, unfair policing, government censorship, the power of The Truth, it is all here in this tale of a group of rappers who tapped into a raw nerve in this country and became one of the biggest things going on in all of pop culture.

The opening scene of “Straight Outta Compton” is a grabber, as Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell) is involved in what appears to be a gun deal going south, and just as the tension becomes unbearable, here comes a fully militarized police squad knocking down the door of this drug house in the hood, and Eazy has to ghetto parkour his way out of that house before the police catch him, and as he gets away, the title card SLAMS on to the screen in huge letters, saying “Straight Outta Compton,” immediately telling you that this shit is serious.

This is what makes this movie really work because they take the time to really establish their neighborhood and the nature of their lives, the poverty, the struggle, the self doubt, the crime, this is all important to understand, so that when Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins) and O’Shea “Ice Cube” Jackson (O’Shea Jackson Jr.) start talking about “reality rap,” we know what reality they are talking about. When we see them get harassed and almost arrested by the police foe the umpteenth time for literally standing while black, and then the very next scene is Ice Cube showing everyone his lyrics for “Fuck the Police,” we totally get why he would go that route, we all know what has compelled him to express himself in such a manner.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Wolfpack’

“The Wolfpack” is a deeply fascinating documentary, a look at a family situation that is almost impossible to fathom, totally unbelievable if it weren’t for all the filmed evidence on display, a tiny social experiment gone awry, which resulted in a story that has to be seen to be believed. What happens when people are locked away from society for their whole lives? And what happens when those same people are taught about the world via thousands of movies? What does that do to someone? How does that change a person, make them in to what they are? And is that a good or bad thing? This is the essence of “The Wolfpack.”

The Angulo family lives in a four-bedroom apartment in a government housing building in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. And despite living deep in one of the liveliest and most vibrant cities in the world, the Angulos never left their home. The father Oscar was afraid to let his children and wife leave the apartment because he didn’t want anything bad to happen to them, so he obsessively locked everyone away in side the apartment, taking everyone out on only on supervised visits, and forbidding them to talk to anyone at all when they did manage to get outside. Some years would go by and the family would be lucky enough to get out of the apartment nine times, and once there was a year when the family didn’t make it outside at all. This is how Oscar Angulo raised his family, which consists of seven children, six of whom are brothers, all of them locked inside their small bit of public housing like a prison.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Gift’

“The Gift” is the kind of movie people like to say don’t get made anymore, an original film aimed at the adults, not relying on gimmicks, tricks, huge budgets or some preexisting source material, but instead built on a tight, lean story about actual characters who are more complex than they initially seem. It has much more in common with Alfred Hitchcock than Michael Bay, in the best way possible. It takes the audience on a ride, building up to a pretty wild conclusion, never dumbing down or pandering but instead challenging and engaging, exactly the kind of film that works as a nice palate cleanser after a summer of huge blockbusters.

Simon (Jason Bateman) and Robyn (Rebecca Hall) move back to Simon’s hometown so he can work a new job, and shortly after coming back to town, Simon is seen and approached by Gordon (Joel Edgerton, who also wrote and directed), an old friend from high school. Gordon quickly latches on to Simon and Robyn, dropping by during the day to visit Robyn when Simon is at work and constantly dropping off gifts for them, going out of his way to be kind and giving, which Robyn doesn’t mind too much but Simon gets weirded out by. It becomes obvious that Gordon being back in Simon’s life is upsetting him, even though from the outside Gordon does seem to have the best of intentions. But we know this is a movie, and shit is gonna get intense and so it goes. Simon tries to break off the one-sided friendship with Gordon, and Gordon starts stalking and terrorizing them in small, impossible to prove ways.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Fantastic Four’

Okay, right off the bat, let’s address the elephant in the room, the fact that according to Rotten Tomatoes, “Fantastic Four” is the worst reviewed comic book movie of all time. OF ALL TIME. This movie is not liked by just about everybody. And I feel like I have to write about this movie with this framework in mind, because while I would never defend this movie as being “good,” there is no way it is as bad as people like to say it is. Quite simply, there are too many good ideas and interesting decisions made to simply write this off like it is some sort of Nic Cage January movie release about whether or not witches were real during the Crusades.

Reed Richards (Miles Teller) is a young scientist and inventor, who I believe in this movie is a senior in high school. That’s one thing in this film that can be chalked up to typical movie wonkiness, in that most of our main characters are played by actors in their late 20’s or early 30’s, yet are consistently referred to as “children.” So Reed and his buddy Ben (Jamie Bell) have worked together to figure out how to transport matter from point A to point B and then make it return back to point A. By doing this, they unknowingly found a way to rip a hole in the fabric of space-time and opened a portal into an alternate dimension to another world parallel to ours. This experiment gets them noticed by the Baxter Company, and they are recruited to help with a larger scale version of the same machine. Reed joins Sue Storm (Kate Mara) and her father Franklin (Reg E. Cathey) to make the experiment work, and they are joined by original project mastermind Victor Von Doom (Toby Kebbell) and Franklin’s son Johnny (Michael B. Jordan), who isn’t that smart seemingly (not like the others anyway) but is great with his hands and “can build anything.” In a manned experiment to the other dimension gone horribly wrong, everyone gets powers, Victor gets stranded, and shit generally hits the fan for the rest of the movie.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 8/10/15 – ‘Fruitvale Station’

Do you know the story of Oscar Grant? If not, you may want to read up on this particular instance of police violence against an unarmed citizen (which you can do here) or if you don’t need your facts to be 100% correct and don’t mind some embellishments for the sake of emphasizing an artistic point, then you need to watch the expertly made, powerful and emotional film “Fruitvale Station.”Continue Reading …

#135 – Dutch Oven Book

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In episode 135, Chris Crespo starts off the show with a big announcement.

Chris and Drewster Cogburn are joined by first time guest Nikki Wilson, who tells us about her new film Dutch Book, playing September 5th at the Central Florida Film Festival.

Chris and Drew review The Gift and Fantastic Four.

Also discussed in this episode:

What really happened behind the scenes with Fantastic Four?

A new Dungeons & Dragons movie.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation’

“Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation” is the fifth in this film series started in the mid-90’s and based on a television show from the 60’s and 70’s, and it is kind of surprising how long this particular piece of spy-based entertainment has stuck around, and by most accounts, continues to age like fine wine. Cool gadgets and effects, great stunts and action scenes, fun stories with interesting outcomes, the M:I movies have come along way since dangling Tom Cruise on a rope in an all white room almost twenty years ago, and have become a reliable source of serialized, big screen entertainment.Continue Reading …

Spoiler Bonus Episode – Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation

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In this SPOILER bonus episode, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn talk about everything that happens in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. Everything.

Who dies.

Who doesn’t die.

Who dies but gets brought back to life.

All of it.

So enjoy the spoilery goodness, rogue style.

Netflix pick for 8/3/15 – ‘The Killer’

From 1989, “The Killer” is a hugely influential Hong Kong action movie, itself influenced by master filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Jean Pierre-Melville and their respective films “Mean Streets” and “Le Samourai,” and not only did this movie establish John Woo as a director of note, but it also went on to inspire people like Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino to push the action movie genre as far as it would go.

Starring Chow Yun Fat, “The Killer” is the story of a professional hitman who accidentally blinded a girl in a public shoot out, and develops a serious sense of remorse for his actions. So he helps this girl as she grows up without ever letting on that he was the one responsible for her blindness. And when she has the opportunity to undergo a procedure that would restore her sight, he takes on “one last job” in order to secure the money needed for this surgery.Continue Reading …