A weekly talk show hosted by film critic Christopher Crespo
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In this BONUS episode of TV reviews full of SPOILERS, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn take some time to talk about a TV shows. Specifically, they get into The Knick season 1, Sense8 season 1, Mr. Robot season 1, BoJack Horseman season 2, and season 1 of Daredevil And yes, there are many SPOILERS for each show so beware of SPOILERS!
SPOILERS!
Of course movies with twisty plots and lots of surprises and out of left field decisions and choices can be very fun and exciting, almost all of us enjoy stories with lots of characters and little subplots that add up to a bigger story that seems like it took months and months to craft into something so ingenious. However it is equally delightful when a movie comes around that is simple in story and execution and still leaves us feeling exhilarated from what we saw, maybe even more, and “Cop Car” definitely fits this latter category, as it is a short, simple tale, yet one that is involving and so well done that is becomes very suspenseful as well as quite funny, so when it is all said and done it feels like a lot still happened.
“Cop Car” is the story of what happens when two young kids in Colorado steal a sheriff’s cruiser and take it for a joyride, and what that Sheriff (Kevin Bacon) does to get it back, as well as why he wants it back so bad (outside of it being his police cruiser and him being the sheriff and all that). And that really is it. We learn pretty early on that the two boys are runaways, though we don’t know what they are running away from or why, and we really don’t learn all that much about the Sheriff either. We are told just what we need to know, which is enough, and it works pretty damn well.
“The Homesman” is a 2014 Western, directed by Tommy Lee Jones, starring Hillary Swank (among others), and it deals with the aspects of living in the Old West that a lot of other Westerns choose to ignore: the hardships, the loneliness, the desperate fight to survive against the elements, hostile people, illness, and just general bad luck, it was no picnic in the middle of America in the middle of the 1800s, yet people were out there and they had to survive. This particular movie is about how two people band together to help transport three mentally ill women across an unforgiving landscape so they can get some help. Simple yet effective.
From my original review of “The Homesman” from December 2014:
Tommy Lee Jones and Hillary Swank are both pretty fantastic in this movie, and the rest of the cast is filled with great, reliable actors like John Lithgow, James Spader, Meryl Streep, William Fichtner and Tim Blake Nelson, and some other roles are played by young, very promising actors like Jesse Plemons and Hailee Steinfeld, so there is no shortage of excellent acting. Tommy Lee Jones has a very simple and effective directorial style, no flashy moves or anything, just straightforward storytelling accompanied by excellent cinematography from Rodrigo Prieto. This is a well made movie in pretty much every way, it has some uncomfortable moments, some comedy, some tragedy, unexpected turns, and a poetic ending, and it all works pretty damn well.
Damn well is right. This is a strong movie, very simple but very effective, and I was surprised by how much I actually enjoyed it.
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In episode 140, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn review Cop Car, Chris also reviews The Visit, and he recaps his experience of being a guest on DOUG LOVES MOVIES.
Also discussed in this episode:
Billy D reviews “Goodnight Mommy.”
Dr. Drew gives his two cents on Chris being on Doug Loves Movies.
The Netflix Instant Pick of the Week is The Homesman.Continue Reading …
From the writer/director of “The Village” and the producer of “Paranormal Activity” should tell you everything you need to know about M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Visit.” Sort of a “found footage” horror movie (elaboration on that qualification to come), here we have Mr. Shyamalan’s foray into this particular brand of low budget horror film making, working in a genre that has inherent low expectations both critically and commercially. Once known as the guy who might be “the next Spielberg,” now we’d just like to see if he can make something better than “The Gallows” or “As Above, So Below.”
In “The Visit,” teenager Becca (Oliva DeJonge) and her younger brother Tyler (Ed Oxenbould) are sent to spend a week with their grandparents at their remote farmhouse, and this particular visit is a little weird for them because they never met their grandparents before, as their mother (Kathryn Hahn) hasn’t spoken to them since before she had the kids. Meanwhile, Becca wants to be a filmmaker, so she brings two cameras and her lap top and makes a documentary out of the whole thing. And after they arrive at the farmhouse, they soon realize that not everything is at it seems with their Nana (Deanna Dunagan) and Pop Pop (Peter McRobbie), and for a week they are stuck documenting and trying to figure out if everything is okay or not.Continue Reading …
The Wachowskis had to start somewhere. Before “Sense8” and “Cloud Atlas” and “The Matrix,” right after the Wachowskis got their start in the Hollywood machine via screenwriting, they managed to put together their $6 million directorial debut in 1996, and this bad ass little movie is called “Bound” and it is damn good.
With tons of style and made with the sophistication of people who have been directing for decades, “Bound” is a tight crime thriller about the girlfriend of a mob guy falling for the new lady next door and getting her new lover to agree to rip off this guy to the tune of $2 million in straight cash money. With a fine tuned plot and enough tension to make Alfred Hitchcock sit up and take notice, this is a fun, over-the-top violent and rather sexually progressive film (though should anyone expect anything less from the Wachowskis?). Starring Jennifer Tilly, Gina Gershon and Joe Pantoliano all doing awesome work, you are going to love this movie (if you don’t already).Continue Reading …
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In episode 139, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn are joined by returning guest Curtis Earth.
Chris and Drew review the documentary “Best of Enemies,” and Chris reviews “The End of the Tour.” Curtis also sings a song for the guys (see if you can spot the metaphor).
Also discussed in this episode:
Billy D reviews “Turbo Kid.”
Dr. Drew gives his two cents on “Mad Max: Fury Road” being released for home viewing.Continue Reading …
“The End of the Tour” is the exact kind of movie that people like to claim never get made anymore. Folks like to complain about superhero movies and blockbusters and spectacles and studios cranking out product instead of art, and the best is when they insist that nothing original gets made, oh woe is us, why can’t we get movies made for adults anymore, just people talking about ideas and the inherent drama that comes from different people coming together, why oh why can’t we get more movies like this? And then this movie comes along, and everyone is like “The End of the what? David Foster who? What Stone magazine? Just pass the Cheetos, will ya?” People, please, put down the fucking snack foods, shut off the reality television, get in your shitty car and go to the nearest theater showing “The End of the Tour” and do your part to support solid, well made, adult-minded entertainment.
Funny enough, “The End of the Tour” even goes a little into “good seductive entertainment,” the type of movies that DO involve action and spectacle and aren’t meant to change the world or even the way you look at the world (“Die Hard” gets specifically name dropped as an example) and this gets compared to eating candy and junk food and drinking soda, which is indeed pleasurable albeit not nutritious. We can consume this kind of middle of the road, for-entertainment-only type of movie (and television and music and literature and so on) but we can’t make it the basis of our diets, we can’t subsist on this alone and expect any sort of personal growth; on the contrary, we can only expect to die a very real death in a very meaningful way, which is how this movie describes what happens to a person when their primary sexual relationship is with their own hand and images on a computer screen as opposed to with an actual person. It all ties together in a way that asks basically what is this life all about and how can we all navigate this thing in the best way possible.Continue Reading …
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In this BONUS episode, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn preview all the movies coming out this fall, leading all the way up to the end of 2015.
This episode also reveals an interesting discrepancy between the desktop and mobile versions of IMDB, and Drew starts the show with a revelation of his own that is an absolute game changer.
What could it be? Only one (very easy) way to find out…Continue Reading …
“American Ultra” is “Cheech & Chong’s The Bourne Identity,” a mash up of genres and genre tropes, slammed together in a way that feels like an early draft of a screenplay that ultimately needs to be expanded and finished. It seems as if the filmmakers behind this thing thought that simply taking the “sleeper agent” government-trained killer storyline that we’ve seen a lot and adding a bit of marijuana use to the proceedings would somehow magically result in a movie worth watching, and while “American Ultra” isn’t bad, it never rises to the heights promised by the marketing and the concept.
Mike (Jesse Eisenberg) is a heavy marijuana user, often derisively referred to as a “stoner,” and he lives a simple, fairly shitty life in a small Virginia town where he gets harassed by the police and seems to be the only employee at an incredibly shitty convenience store. The only thing making his life bearable (besides the weed) is his live-in girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart) and he is planning to propose to her, except that his can’t really get his shit together long enough to do so. Meanwhile, over at CIA headquarters not too far away, an agent (Connie Britton) finds out that her government trained super killer in hiding is about to be killed by a rival agent’s (Topher Grace) own super killer program, so she goes to Mike and “activates” him with a pass code. From that point forward, whenever someone tries to do anything to Mike, he knows how to get out of the problem and also knows how to kill people with whatever is on hand. The rest of the movie is the CIA trying to kill Mike and Mike trying to survive with Phoebe.Continue Reading …