Independent - Cinema Crespodiso

Review: ‘Beasts of the Southern Wild’

“Beasts of the Southern Wild” is a fantastic movie, the feature-length debut of young filmmaker Benh Zeitlin, made in part with his New Orleans-based film group Court 13 Pictures, and it’s the type of unique and strong movie debut that makes people sit up and take notice, that this might be one of our next young exciting new voices in American cinema. And this wonderful thing, birthed outside of the studio system, outside of the box, independent in every way possible, exists as proof that imagination and new art and ambition is not dead, that we can still get something new and weird and great, something as strange and confident as “Beasts of the Southern Wild.”

The story centers on six-year old Hushpuppy (Quvenzhané Wallis) and her dad Wink (Dwight Henry), who live in a makeshift home in the ramshackle little town of Bathtub, located on an island south of the Louisiana coast. When a huge storm heads their way, they stay behind with a few other holdouts who choose not to evacuate their homes, and after an incredibly rough storm, the entire town of Bathtub is submerged underwater. The towns few survivors band together and try to continue living in their flooded home, refusing to seek aid or shelter elsewhere. These are people thoroughly accustomed to living on their own and getting by in their own ways, so to them a government run disaster shelter is its own kind of horrible hell.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Another Earth’

“Another Earth” is one of those little indie films that comes out of the film festival circuit with lots of buzz and good will and jury prize awards and what not, so by the time it hits the multiplexes (if it does at all), it’s already positioned as the new great film from some exciting new voices in cinema. Which makes it disappointing when the movie actually turns out to be kinda crappy, because if it were viewed without all of that positive word of mouth, then maybe it would have just been seen as an okay movie and a solid debut from an interesting young filmmaker. But instead, since it was positioned as the next Solaris or 2001: A Space Odyssey, expectations became too high and it gains extra scrutinization, and unfortunately “Another Earth” doesn’t hold up under the scrutiny.

“Another Earth” is the story of a 17-year old high school graduate named Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling, who also co-wrote the story), and the movie starts with her celebrating her acceptance into MIT, which shows she’s a very smart person with lots of potential and promise. Rhoda immediately throws all of this potential and promise out of the window when she goes drunk driving after her celebration and ends up plowing into another car, putting a successful composer named John Burroughs (William Mapother, Mission: Impossible 2) into a coma and killing his young son and pregnant wife. Jump cut to four years later with Rhoda getting out of prison. She takes a job at her old high school as a janitor, she secludes herself from just about everyone else, and she sets out to make amends with John the composer. But when she goes to his home to apologize to him, she loses her nerve and makes up a story about being from a maid service, offering a free trial. And John, who is apparently now a drunkard and suffering from some brain damage, allows Rhoda into his home to clean.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Swiss Army Man’

In “Swiss Army Man,” a young man, stranded on a deserted island, finds possible salvation in the form of a corpse, washed up on the shore in front of him, a lifeless body which may be imbued with specific abilities that seem hard to believe and yet can enable this young man to find a way to survive.

The absurdity of this movie is made apparent within the opening minutes, but so is the ambitious and particular vision on display, coupled with just the right amount of odd beauty, all coming together to make one of those movies – either you are along for the ride or you are not. And people who choose this ride may find themselves oddly affected by this strangely touching story of a lonely man and his multi-purpose dead body.

Hank (Paul Dano) drags around the corpse (Daniel Radcliffe), somehow finding out his name is Manny, and together they get off that deserted island and make their way through the woods, trying to find civilization before Hank dies. Along the way, Hank starts talking to Manny, and at some point Manny starts talking back to him.Continue Reading …

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: ‘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.

Review: ‘Grandma’

“Grandma” is the rare kind of movie, a film in which the lead character is a woman “of a certain age,” which is refreshing and wonderful because of the well documented plight of actresses in Hollywood and movies at large and how hard it is for women to get decent roles in good movies which amount to more than just “wife” or “girlfriend” or “prostitute.” Now of course this is a low budget film made outside of the system, but naturally often times the system must be fought from the outside, and this movie is a noble blow in that fight. Funny and heartfelt, this is exactly the kind of indie festival darling that has the power to break out and be seen by more people than expected, and deservedly so.

Widowed poet Elle (Lily Tomlin) starts her day by breaking up with her girlfriend of four months Olivia (Judy Greer) because Elle is incapable of saying whether or not she loves her, driving Olivia away, and before she can even recover from this trauma, she gets another surprise – her granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) shows up on her door asking for $630 so Sage can pay for an abortion later that evening. As Elle is broke and has no credit cards, she agrees to help Sage raise the money. And from there they go around town, visiting friends and acquaintances from whom they might be able to get the money they need. Meanwhile they naturally learn a little bit about each other and themselves along the way.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Cop Car’

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.

Review: ‘The End of the Tour’

“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 …

Review: ‘Dope’

“Dope” has a common and basic skeleton of a story that should be instantly familiar to just about everyone. We’ve all heard stories and read books and seen movies and TV shows about a “good” person stuck in a bad situation, who usually has to resort to something they normally wouldn’t do in order to survive. Whether its a kid growing up in a bad neighborhood or a person working for a shady company or a person stuck with their shitty family, this is a go-to story because it is quite common and often relatable. What sets “Dope” apart is the specifics, the details, the little things that all add up to give this particular movie its own identity.

“Dope” centers on Malcolm (Shameik Moore), a high school senior living in a stereotypically rough Los Angeles neighborhood, where he spends most of his time with his single mom and his two best friends, and with the latter he has a pop-punk kind of band, and they also spend a lot of time delving into 1990’s hip-hop culture, lamenting that this was the golden age of rap music (though the movie doesn’t state it, I bet Malcolm is not a Young Thug fan). After a long set up establishing who Malcolm is and what his normal day-to-day plight is like, we gets himself invited to a club for a local drug dealer’s birthday party which turns into a shoot out which turns into Malcolm unwittingly making off with a couple of bricks of powdered MDMA and a gun. He (and his two friends) then find themselves having to sell the drugs for a local drug dealing big shot so that Malcolm can get a solid recommendation for his Harvard application (long story), and also so they don’t die.Continue Reading …