FFF 2015 Movie Review: ‘Uncle John’

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The cop from “Beverly Hills Cop” that’s not Eddie Murphy or Judge Reinhold is “Uncle John,” a real salt of the earth kind of guy, who leads a simple life doing some carpentry work and getting coffee with the boys at the local diner out in the middle of nowhere in Wisconsin, and is it his fault that’s he’s also a murderer? Cause he’s a nice guy, no reason to paint him with this broad brush because of this one thing, amiright America?

The movie starts with the murder of a guy named Dutch, and we see that the murderer is John (a fantastic John Ashton). Thinking on his feet, he disposes of the body and does a pretty damn good job actually. And for the rest of the movie there’s an Edgar Allen Poe “The Tell Tale Heart” kind of vibe, as his friends speculate about the fella’s disappearance and possible death and he has to pretend that he hasn’t even seen the guy in years. And due to past history, Dutch’s grieving brother Danny (Ronnie Gene Blevins, doing his best sweaty Peter Sarsgaard) thinks (correctly) that John has something to do with Dutch’s disappearance, and that just lays a whole other layer of menace on top of everything for John.Continue Reading …

FFF 2015 Movie Review: ‘Nixon’s Coming’

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“Nixon’s Coming” is a 9-minute short film about a weird meeting between President Richard Nixon and a small group of drugged up student protesters in the early morning hours on night in 1970. Based on photographs from student activist (at the time of course) Bob Moustakas and recordings made by Nixon which were declassified in recent years, this little movie paints an interesting portrait of a strange visit to the Lincoln Memorial.

Due to Nixon’s weird penchant for recordings, he decided to record his own recounting of the spontaneous meeting at the Lincoln Memorial, and as a result of the declassification of this tape in 2011, we have a short film with a voice over from Nixon himself. Now do we want to believe him? It’s not like this was some momentous event or that historians would even care about such a small little thing, so why would he feel the need to lie about what happened there? So we can rest assured that what Nixon says happened, he at least BELIEVED it happened.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 4/13/15 – ‘School of Rock’

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“School of Rock” is a great 2003 movie in which Jack Black teaches a room full of grade school kids the important of ROCKING OUT. That’s it. If you need a movie to be about more than that, then you are asking for too much out of this world, because what could be more important, especially to the youth of this country, than ROCKING OUT? Nothing, that’s what.

Okay, sure, there are other things in this movie, like how Jack Black’s character of Dewey has to learn how to finally grow up and be a responsible adult, all the while his free-spirited nature rubs off on the kids in his class in the right way and he even gets the uptight school administration to lighten up a bit, but make no mistake, this movie about a fraudulent substitute teacher trying to turn his class into a band so they could win a Battle of the Bands competition is really about the immense power of rock and roll, and how cool it is to listen to Led Zeppelin while barreling down a wintery road in one’s all-white creeper van.Continue Reading …

FFF 2015 Movie Review: ‘Spearhunter’

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“Spearhunter” is a 14-minute short film about a man’s obsession with not only a particular form of hunting, but with the idea of securing his own legacy, one that would live on well after he would be dead.

Welcome to Alabama, where Gene Morris has honed his hunting skills to such a degree that he became bored with normal hunting techniques. Guns, bow and arrows, he was done with all of that. Instead he wanted more of a challenge, and hence set about to be the world’s great spear hunter. And he loved spear hunting so much that he constantly filmed and videotaped himself doing it and also talking into the camera and cutting promos like a professional wrestler, declaring himself to the greatest in the world. Whom he was addressing or expected to ever view these proclamations is never made clear, and maybe it never was to begin with.Continue Reading …

#118 – Moscow, We Have Problem

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In episode 118, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn are joined by returning guest DJ Baby Lac!

Drew and Chris review Results, The Desk and Welcome to Leith from the 2015 Florida Film Festival.

They talk about scary movies and Blockbuster video and the DVD Man at the Barbershop.

Also discussed in this episode:

Power Rangers, The Dark Tower, Aquaman, and much more!

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FFF 2015 Movie Review: ‘Welcome to Leith’

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“Welcome to Leith” is a fascinating documentary about a small town in North Dakota and how they reacted when a well-known white supremacist moved in with the intention of turning it into a safe haven for his fellow racists.

This old fella named Craig Cobb found this tiny town in North Dakota with only 24 residents, which includes the children, and yet this town named Leith still has a functioning government, in that there is a mayor and a town council and all that good stuff. And Cobb saw this little rundown town in the middle of nowhere and saw an opportunity to take it over. What he didn’t see was a small group of people who didn’t want anything to do with their brand of foolishness. What ensued was a six-month stand off, with Cobb and his hate-filled compatriots on one side and some honest people who just wanted to live their lives without having to worry about any of this bullshit on the other.Continue Reading …

FFF 2015 Movie Review: ‘The Desk’

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So what is “The Desk?” Apparently submitted to the festival as a narrative feature despite clearly being a documentary (a meta-documentary, but a documentary nonetheless), “The Desk” is part biography and part exposé, while also getting into the role of social media in journalism and in our culture as a whole, which brings with it a bit of an indictment on many peoples’ need to be outraged about…well, about anything. Combining footage from a failed short film about a failed television late night talk show with interviews, recreations from actors, cell phone footage and some audio from previous celebrity interviews, this movie is a hell of a ride as it documents a man’s fall from grace, a time during which just about everything goes wrong for the apparently very well-intentioned guy.Continue Reading …

Spoiler Bonus Episode – Furious 7

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In this BONUS episode, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn talk about the movie FURIOUS SEVEN, and it is spoilers ahoy because they get into all the details of the entire movie so there you go you have been warned.

SPOILERS!

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Review: ‘Furious 7’

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Seven movies into this franchise, we have all now come to expect a certain mood and tone for our increasingly over-the-top sequels to that little “Point Break” rip off from all those years ago, “The Fast and the Furious.” After safely driving cars off of cliffs in “Fast Five” and battling military tanks and planes in “Furious Six” (subsequently renamed “Fast & Furious 6“), the most extreme things that could be done with this new movie not only include dropping cars from planes and car chases down the side of mountains, but also adding the one and only Jason Statham as an iconic villain, something these movies have not had yet. And because “The Fast and The Furious Vs. The Transporter: Dawn of Justice” would have involved too many copyright issues, here we are with the simply titled “Furious 7.”Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 4/6/15 – ‘Three Kings’

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From the director of “The Fighter” and “Silver Linings Playbook” and starring legit movie stars and box office draws George Clooney and Mark Walhberg (as well as the cottage industry unto himself known as Ice Cube), it is kind of amazing to look back and see how Warner Brothers doubted this movie and barely had the nerve to fund it and see it through. But then again, back in 1999, director David O. Russell was a nobody auteur and he was making a movie with a guy who played a doctor on television and a rapper turned underwear model. It is kind of easy to put yourself in that mindset and see how “Three Kings” could have very well been a complete disaster.

And yet, it is not. Instead “Three Kings” is the movie that really launched Clooney’s movie career, helped legitimize Wahlberg, and gave Russell the experience he needed to build upon in order to become the award winning filmmaker he is today. A heist movie set during the first Gulf War, “Three Kings” starts out as a fun romp of a war movie and then gets surprisingly deep and even more interesting as the movie progresses and it becomes less about the heist and more about what it takes for a person to “do the right thing,” so to speak. Funny, unique, well directed and with an energy all its own, this is a pretty great movie, another fine cinematic entry from the rather amazing year that was 1999, and one that is standing the test of time as we get closer and closer to the twenty year anniversary of this flick being made.Continue Reading …