Chris - Cinema Crespodiso - Page 102 of 151

Review: ‘Black Sea’

In “Black Sea,” we have a classic men on a mission set up, coupled with a “gold/green can change a man” story as well as some apparent anger over the haves and the have-nots, all of this done in the guise of a submarine-based thriller, which is a genre of movie making that is not nearly explored enough. The inherent tension of such a situation is already enough for drama, but then you add in a story involving gold and betrayal and murder and you have a pretty damn good movie.

“Black Sea” starts with Robinson (Jude Law) losing his job as a submarine driver for a salvage company. Getting laid off, with a meager settlement from the company and a lack of pension, leaves him reeling a little. Having already lost his family when his wife took his kids and left him because he was spending too much time on the job, the added pressure of losing his job and not being able to find another one is too much for him. So when a shady job comes around involving a downed Nazi submarine possibly filled with gold, Robinson is ready to take the risk to go get it. He gets an old shitty Russian sub and a crew of half Russians and half Brits (plus one American) and they all head into the Black Sea, in search of this buried treasure while trying to evade the Russian fleet above them.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Two Days, One Night’

“Two Days, One Night” is a small little character drama that still manages to pack a strong emotional punch, which seems to be the modus operandi for the Dardenne Brothers, who have built careers out of making small, intimate, smart dramas about characters that come across as very real people. These aren’t movies about crime sprees or superheroes or government spies, there are no car chases, or CG-filled set pieces. Their movies lack space battles and time travel and future wars. They just make movies about people, dealing with people problems, and they are almost always great, and this movie is no exception.

Sandra (Marion Cotillard) finds out on a Friday that a ballot was taken at her place of employment, and 14 out of 16 employees voted to retain their significant bonuses at the expense of her job, as their boss explained that they could not afford to have both. This devastates Sandra because her family depends on her salary in order to not have to go back to government housing (there is a real sense of shame and despair from several characters in this movie at having to go “on the dole“), and it also makes her feel unwanted and insignificant. This is particularly bad because she is still getting over a pretty bad bout with depression and it doesn’t take much for her to want to just curl up on her bed and try to ignore the rest of the world, so right away she has to battle her depression just to deal with the idea of losing her job.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 2/2/2015 – ‘Ernest Saves Christmas’

What better way to celebrate the month of February than a Christmas movie from 1988? More specifically, one involving a buffoonish character born from the world of regional television commercials who then went on to have a string of movies centered around him, including this one about finding a new Santa Claus. Even more specifically, I am talking about “Ernest Saves Christmas.”

A really smart person once wrote about “Ernest Saves Christmas:”

The movie is competently made, so there is no awkward camera work, bad lighting or overly bad acting. Whether or not the humor works for you is something else all together. There is definitely comedic gold when Ernest pretends to be someone else. Worrell seems to be some sort of idiot savant when it comes to disguises, especially since they work each and every time. The rest of the Ernest humor comes from his “wacky” slapstick, some of it funny and some of it not. There are a decent number of scenes dedicated to Chuck and Bobby, the Airport storage agents, who get sufficiently freaked out by the reindeer but then oddly get adjusted to them very quickly. The final scene of the movie hints that maybe a spin off movie (or TV series) could have been made of Chuck and Bobby dealing with various holiday -related icons come to life, but alas that will forever be a dream. The movie is simple and predictable but also kind of sweet and endearing, and as far as Christmas movies go, you could do a whole helluva lot worse.

#108 – Stupor Bowl Sunday

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In episode 108, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn review Project Almanac.

Chris also reviews Two Days, One Night and The Loft and Drew reviews Frank.

Also in this episode:

The Wet Hot American Summer prequel mini series on Netflix.

A US version of Black Mirror.

PRAT! PRAT! PRAT!

Star Wars news.

Cowboy Ninja Viking news.

Michael Keaton making a McDonalds movie.

George Lucas hates cat videos.

And much more!

Review: ‘The Loft’

“The Loft” is a twisty, turny thriller trying to be like a mix of Alfred Hitchcock and Brian De Palma and definitely falling short. If you like movies that have multiple plot twists because 2 or 3 just aren’t enough, then this is the movie for you, if you don’t mind some hyper editing and weird camerawork and overall silliness.

Vincent (Karl Urban) is a successful architect with a doting wife, four friends and a spare loft. He tells his friends that the five of them can share the loft and they can use it for their secret extramarital trysts. One morning, they find a dead woman in their loft and no one knows how she got there. Are they being set up? If so, then by who? Or is one of them lying to the others? As the five of them stand over the body and accuse each other of stuff and yell and scream and cry, we also get flashbacks of their whole story, starting with the introduction of the loft into their lives and then the different ways these guys used the loft, and how all of that may have possibly led them to their present moment of discovering a murder.

This movie might have been okay if they took a more straight forward approach to both telling the story and the visual approach of the movie. The whole flashback structure seems unnecessary. It may have been more interesting if they just told the whole story in chronological order, so that the murder is discovered about halfway through the movie. The constantly cutting back and forth feels very 1990’s, like splitting up the timeline would somehow make the whole thing more interesting or exciting, but really it is just kind of hacky. And then there are a lot of close ups of characters and a camera that moves around a lot, with lots of quick editing, and none of it was impressive or improved the story or helped tell the story visually. It just seemed like a lot of stuff designed to make the movie seem cooler than it was.Continue Reading …

Best of 2014 Bonus Episode

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In this BONUS episode, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn proclaim their picks for the best movies of 2014, with additional picks from NYC senior correspondent Billy D, and they finish the show with the worst movies of the year.

Enjoy the opinionations!

Top 25 Movies of 2014 – 5 through 1

Here we are, these are my five favorite movies of 2014. And they probably are not your favorite movies. And you know what? That’s fine. Because this is my site, and these are my opinions, this is why we are here, so while these may not be the universally regarded best features of 2014, there are my favorites for sure, and if I was giving out all of the film awards, these are the movies that would be getting them.

Top 25 Movies of 2014 – 10 through 6

Now we are getting into the nit and the grit, the top ten of 2014 is underway. Movies that can either take us to whole other galaxies or just bring us right back here to Earth where shit that happened fifty years ago is still happening today, films that can tell us a real story of a psychotic person or make up a story about a fake psycho and still have it ring true in a weird way, here we are with numbers 10 through 6 of my top 25 of 2014 (that’s a lot of numbers).

Review: ‘A Most Violent Year’

“A Most Violent Year” is a NYC-set crime drama, but not like the ones we all think of when we hear this phrase. Way less “Goodfellas” and “Donnie Brasco” and much more like the genre-inverting films of Steven Soderbergh, this is a film about a guy who is trying his best NOT to become a mobster, despite the fact that he is surrounded by them, does business with them, and even seemed to marry into it. There is a difference between the right path and the path that is “most right,” and our hero of this story seems to ignore the distinction between the two. Is he a moral businessman? Or is he just a gangster without a gun?

Abel Morales (Oscar Isaac) owns Standard Oil and he is an up and comer in the industry, making headway into rival territories and building up his company into something he hopes will be massive and hugely successful. But he has a problem, and his problem is called New York City circa 1981. Corruption was rampant throughout the city, and his own industry was under investigation for their less than honorable practices. To make matters worse, Abel is dealing with the problem of his truck drivers getting beat up and his trucks hijacked for the thousands of dollars worth of fuel in them. So the union head wants to arm Abel’s drivers with guns for self-defense, but the last thing Abel needs is for one of his drivers to get involved in a shooting. And with impending indictments coming from the city district attorney’s office, his plans to take out a massive loan with his bank are thrown into jeopardy, which in turn puts him, his company and his family at risk of massive financial ruin. To say that the pressure is on for Abel Morales is an understatement.Continue Reading …

Top 25 Movies of 2014 – 15 through 11

2014 saw some interesting things at the cinema, like the return of an ass kicking Keanu Reeves, and a product placement movie that was wildly successful commercially and critically, and an under loved Tom Cruise sci-fi action flick that people really need to get on. Here we go with the continuance of my top 25 of 2014.