C.O.G.

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After seeing this flick I was lost to it's message, but knowing there is a message to be had. I have never read the essay from which the story is taken ... so I'm seeing this movie through unveiled eyes. What I see is a young man whose background is built upon an upper class controlled academic life who has idealistically thrown himself into a world of lower class marginally educated street wise laborers, to fulfill a dream he and a girlfriend(?) have cooked up to help him escape a family conflict. David is an innocent, yet sure the world is very like his book knowledge. Almost from the start he discovers otherwise. He is described as cocky and arrogant - not so. He is self assured and unafraid to speak his mind as we see on the bus and then with the girl that has deceived him by backing out of 'their plan'. David sticks with it and encounters a world unlike any he has experienced in his polite society upbringing. Certainly being polite and charming will win friends! He finds himself a loner, no friends, not even able to communicate with the Hispanic laborers he must work with. When he does find people to be friends or rather friendly with, he discovers they only want to use him (packing house man) or are seriously mentally unstable (the wildly fundamental Christian). Director Alvarez has chosen to leave the plight of David open with the closing of this movie .... you can fill in the blanks! Notice the expression on David's face as he passes the camera walking alone on that country road .... he's made a decision! This is a very good movie!

A rueful, seriocomic D. Sedaris memoir minus D. Sedaris—his unique authorial voice and his unmatched ability to see his goofus younger self as others must have seen him—doesn't sound like it would have much going for it, but "C.O.G." is actually a pretty good film. David, an East Coast grad student estranged from his family and otherwise at loose ends, has been persuaded by a flighty friend that this would be an excellent time for him "to get his hands dirty" picking apples in Oregon; when a tough-looking apple packer (Dale Dickey) says she'd like to "knock that f—r union rep from here to Tokyo," David asks brightly, "Have any of you actually ever been to Japan? It's a beautiful place." Clearly David's going to have some problems adjusting to life in the Hood River fruit-growing region. Writer-director Kyle Patrick Alvarez was well advised to lose the traditional coming-of-age-film voice-over; DS's unpredictable and thoroughly engaging storyline works perfectly well on its own, and the unSedarislike Jonathan Groff does just fine as David. Good work by all concerned, in fact, especially Corey Stoll and Denis O'Hare as strangers with candy. The Steve Reich percussion pieces are a little distracting at times, but mostly used to good effect.

As written in the instruction, this story starts out with a college(?) student, with a lot going on in his head, heading to an apple farm. The overall images and colors used were beautiful (although there were no graphics). Plus, in someway, the movie powerfully overwhelmed the viewer's emotions. However, as for me, its main idea is nontransparent and irresponsible. First of all, it is hard to understand the director's main point. There are too many messages in this film. From its beginning till end, it is filled with new topics in constantly changing environment. It concerns problems like family, education, love, society, identity and religion, each and every of them very sensitive and emotionally powerful. I was soaked in by those and the main characters feelings. However, as I was about to concentrate on one on them, it moved on to another. Second, even though one can figure out the film's point, it does not take any responsibilities. It just leaves out everything in the open, and does not give a closure. Although I admit that there can be a method of letting the audience think, this movie makes them feel hollow. What I mean is that, what good are any messages if they do not mean anything? It would be as meaningless as someone who is blaming one's problems rather than suggesting a solution or at least trying to find one.

Barely worthy of 4 stars - really. This movie started off pretty good. Samuel is running away from something and with all his smarts, he's really pretty stupid about life and people. But then things spiral to nowhere. Samuel's coming of age left me numb and wondering what was the point. The folks he encounters left me numb and wondering so? That's really about it. There's no wrap up at the end. There's no resolution or epiphany. There's just a long road. The only cool thing about the movie is the character's quote at the start about religion being for people who aren't smart enough to understand how the world works. It's a good quote, but after watching the whole movie maybe this guy really did need some religion.

I expected to last 10 minutes and then click off. I thought it would be a comedy. I wound up mesmerized. I approach all films with extreme caution, because I expect either a liberal message, or a Christian one, and I don't want to be manipulated. This one offered neither. One reviewer mentioned a "nihilist" viewpoint, but I'm not sure about that either, because there were some good people depicted in this film. Hence the world is not hopeless. The young actor and his older "mentor" were equally great. I rarely say that about anyone. No one could have played their parts any better. The Oregon scenery was breathtaking, and the music was effective in creating a sense of bewilderment. The decay of the human soul was set amidst the purity of pristine farms, pines, and fog. The world is a dark place. That doesn't mean everyone is dark and everything is hopeless and doomed. I guarantee you that some factory workers are decent normal people who take pride in their work ethic. Having said that, the types depicted here were real and do exist in abundance in the real world. That comes as a tough pill to swallow for idealists. We want to believe that the poor are humble and sweet. Actually, many are trash, which is why they stay poor. And yet we need their labor and their bravery in battle. It's twisted and ironic, but so is the world. I was expecting this film to trash Christians and Christianity and call them all hypocrites, but that's not what happened. The couple that housed the boy were lovely people, and the church congregants appeared genuinely peaceful and loving. I could have done without the gay thing, but I think I get it. His mom probably shunned him when he came out, and he felt guilty about who he was, so maybe he thought going out west would change him. Especially with his female friend. But the gay thing just added a layer of awkwardness to an already awkward situation. Even straight, he would have been a fish out of water. The final scene was brilliant. His mentor had good and bad within his soul, but ultimately arrogance took over. Christianity often attracts lost souls and sinners, and it's very hard to keep their true nature from rearing its ugly head. It was a terrific movie. Check it out if you have the patience for character/dialog-driven plots and can tolerate the bleakest view of human nature.

'C.O.G.': Four Stars (Out of Five) Comedy drama film about a young college graduate (from Yale) who travels to Oregon to takes a job (under an alias) as an apple picker and then a clock maker. He has to deal with a lot of really religious and poor folks who find him very awkward and odd. It's based on the autobiographical short story by popular humorist and author David Sedaris ('C.O.G.' was featured in his 1997 collection of essays 'Naked'). The movie was written and directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez and stars Jonathan Groff (of 'GLEE' fame). I found it to be darkly humorous and a pretty insightful look at human nature. Groff plays David (based on Sedaris) who travels to Oregon (the movie was filmed all on location in Portland), after he graduates from Yale, in order to work among common folks (using the name Samuel). He first gets a job as an apple picker, working for a farmer named Hobbs (Dean Stockwell), and is promoted to work in the factory there. After complications arise with a co-worker (Corey Stoll) he leaves his job suddenly and calls up an extremely religious Christian, named Jon (Denis O'Hare), he met on the street (handing out pamphlets). Jon calls himself a 'C.O.G' (Child of God). He takes David in to the house he's temporarily staying at and teaches him how to make Oregon shaped clocks with him, to sell at an upcoming fair. The movie is an interesting character study that is darkly funny but also pretty depressing; just when things are looking up (for our hero) they're always being turned around again and it's a pretty pessimistic look at life (in a lot of ways). It is based on Sedaris's actual experiences though. I really like Groff's performance, Alvarez's directing and the haunting music (which plays heavily throughout the film) by Steve Reich. I look forward to movies from all these three again as well as more adaptations from David Sedaris's writings! Watch our movie review show 'MOVIE TALK' at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gmBnRGZV8o

I'd never heard of David Sedaris, and this movie doesn't motivate me to change that. If he's anything at all like the David in this movie, he's a rich, spoiled, shallow, obnoxious, narcissistic, condescending, self-pitying, passive-aggressive jerk. Not the kind of person I want in my life. I might have liked this movie if only Curly (or Jon, or anybody!) had beaten that you-can't-get-mad-at-me-I'm-just-a-lost-little-boy smirk off his face, but it didn't happen. Too bad. Other reviewers talk about how he grew and changed in the course of the movie, but I guess they saw a different movie. He was a spoiled, self-pitying jerk in the beginning and he was still a spoiled, self-pitying jerk at the end. I thought I liked Jonathan Groff (he's what drew me to this movie) but the more he plays obnoxious characters like this the more I suspect it may be because he's like them. And Dennis O'Hare is so reliably good that it's surprising how bad he is here. The Christianity shtick in this movie feels completely false, sour and vindictive, like something shoehorned in only to let the writer settle a mean-spirited old grudge. I stuck with this movie all the way to the end, and the best thing I can say about it is that it did, finally, end. I hated it.

I really liked this film because the main character reminded me of myself at that age: a bit naive about the world, clueless about how privileged I was to have gone to college, and terrified of recognizing the fact that I was gay. Jonathan Groff is such a pleasure to watch, you could justify watching the film as an excuse to look at Groff for 85 minutes. But he really does perform the role well here. It's just a simple film in a way: a young man sets out to break away from the world he knows to see if he can make sense of it. And it appears his family has cut him off so perhaps he had no choice. There are some little moments that will go over the heads of straight people, some of whom watch the whole movie without catching on to the fact that Groff's character is gay (read the comments on YouTube and IMDb). Gays watching the film will figure that out from the bus ride at the beginning of the film and the way he responds to anti-gay slurs thoughtlessly tossed out by straight passengers. Even though there are so many un-likable characters in the story, it's kind of oddly beautiful to watch. I could watch this film many times.

the stupidities in this wimpy movie are just beyond any way to count. first, we see this wimpy guy on a bus which is more like a doomsday bus to hell instead of going to oregon. the exaggerate scenes of a female fellow traveler sitting beside him, keep yelling, cursing, screaming filthy dirty complaints to him, a total stranger, simply not probable at all. then we see two young people doing the sexual thing in public in front of him and other passengers is another absolutely impossible and exaggerated scene so dramatically arranged to give you some thought-to-be interesting episode on the bus is another crap the stupid screenplay trying to make you believe this film is such an unique crap. BUT IT'S NOT, okay? then we see this wimpy young man, a college graduate, trying to drag a huge and heavy empty gas tank into the remote town from the apple farm, that pathetic arrangement is nothing but stupid. then this guy meets a guy in town trying to sell him the idea of god, the so-called c.o.g. crap but he claims that he is an atheist....the stupidity, unnatural scenarios, improbable exaggerations are on and on. and you dare to tell me that you are more thoughtful and more philosophic that you can always appreciate something stupidities and transform them into profound precious living lessons? givemeabreak, will you.