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Review: ‘The Rover’

“The Rover” is an Australian western set in the future, but that doesn’t mean sci-fi in any way, as actually they go in the other direction, depicting a world totally collapsed and depressed, a harsh world with no amenities or benefits of technology, but instead a barren land of little food and less hope. This is the world in which this story exists, and it is a brutal world, one in which the rule of the land is merely survival of the fittest and nothing more.

And in a scenario like this, one must be wary of people like Eric (Guy Pearce), a man whose sole possession is his car, and who has nothing else in his life, and definitely nothing to live for. The movie starts with him sitting in his car in the heat of the desert as flies buzz around his face, and he can’t even be bothered to swipe them away, he just lets them land on his face and mouth and he doesn’t care at all. So when three dumb criminals steal his car and use it as a getaway vehicle, he sets out to find the guys and get his car back because he’s got nothing else, nothing to lose, no loved ones waiting for him, no place to go, he has all the time and hate in the world, so off he goes, looking for his car.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 6/30/14 – ‘Kill Bill Vol. I & II’

We all know that Quentin Tarantino is a voracious consumer of cinema, and a master of synthesizing all his favorite things about his favorite movies into his own movies, and “Kill Bill Vol. I” and “Kill Bill Vol. II” is a grand mash up of three of his preferred film genres: revenge movies, martial arts flicks and Spaghetti Westerns. And good golly do these three things go together quite well, especially thanks to Tarantino knowing exactly what he wants and how he wants it.

This is the epic story of a woman (Uma Thurman) left for dead by her former employer and co-workers (who all happen to be deadly assassins) seeking righteous vengeance against those that took her idyllic life and baby daughter away from her so violently. There are huge action set pieces and small character moments, and of course everyone talks in ways that only Tarantino can make people talk, another signature of his movies. The music is great, small roles are played by legendary actors, and it all just flat out LOOKS beautiful. The “Kill Bill” story, spread over two movies, is a joy of cinema and downright marvelous.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Jersey Boys’

Here is one of my patent-pending “a day late and a dollar short” reviews, cause I saw “Jersey Boys” a week ago and still haven’t gotten around to doing this, and by now enough has been written about this movie that is there really anything that I can add, or will it just be more white noise? In any case here we go, a quick little write up on an adaptation of an extremely popular Broadway musical featuring the music of the late 1950’s made by the guy best known for starring in Westerns and Cop films and directing muted films scattered over a wide array of genres.

I did not grow up listening to Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and I never saw the Broadway musical which this movie is based on (which itself is the “official” story of the Valli and the Four Seasons, as still living group members Valli and writer-producer Bob Gaudio produced the whole thing, hence telling their side of the story, so take that how you will), and as a matter of fact, I am the kind of person who just realized thanks to this movie that a bunch of songs I’ve heard over and over were actually written and performed by the same group. So this is all to say that I was able to sit down and watch this movie without any baggage of having to compare it to the musical or having any vested emotions into the group and what they meant to me (as in the long run they really mean nothing to me), hence there is nothing for me to get hung up on, I can just watch this movie as just that, a movie.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’

Well what the hell did ya expect? Michael Bay has made three Transformers movies of varying degrees of quality (said degrees ranging from “watchable” to “abominations”), so when he announced he would do a fourth one, did any of us think that it would be that much better or that much worse than any of the other films? If we did, we were foolish. Because “Transformers: Age of Extinction” is just another Michael Bay Transformers movie, with the only thing really separating it from the rest is the length, which is to say, this movie is long as Hell. So depending on your opinion of the other three movies, this new installment is either more of that same chaotic (Bay-otic) action and mechanical Sturm und Drang that you’ve come to love, or it is visual and aural torture akin to cinematic waterboarding, as you just feel like you are drowning in relentless action and noise.

Then again, you could fall right in the middle of these two reactions, because even for the uninitiated (for we ARE initiated), there are some things that can be appreciated in this story of humans trying to take their planet back from the alien robot beings that hide among them, whether or not these alien robots were formerly friends or foes of said humans. It is an us versus them scenario, with the only thing balancing out the aliens’ advanced technology being the humans sheer force of numbers, as well as their crafty and underhanded nature (as exemplified by shady government dealings with multiple parties).Continue Reading …

#77 – Magic Waggle Fingers

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In episode 77, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn review Transformers: Age of Extinction as well as Enemy.

The Netflix Instant Pick of the Week is a kung fu-western double feature. t

They talk about the new movies coming out on DVD and in theaters this week.

Chris and Drew break down their favorite movies so far of 2014 and they get into a bunch of movie news stories, including Gary Oldman’s Playboy interview, the possibility of a Rambo V, North Korea’s history of denouncing Hollywood movies, Predator getting rebooted by Black and Dekker and the first images of Mad Max: Fury Road, plus so much more!

Netflix pick for 6/23/14 – ‘The Usual Suspects’

Winning a slew of film fest awards as well as a pair of Oscars, “The Usual Suspects” is a classic film noir mystery movie from 1995 that effectively launched the career of director Bryan Singer. Featuring a tense story about a group of criminals and the evil mastermind behind them all (even without them really knowing it), this is a cool movie with great atmosphere, awesome actors and a classic final reveal that really packs a punch.

The cast alone is almost good enough to watch this movie, with Byrne and Spacey being their usual realiably great selves, Benicio Del Toro being delightfully strange, Kevin Pollack actually being menacing and criminal-like (which is something since he is known mostly for being a stand up comic who does a mean Alan Arkin impression), and Stephen Baldwin actually being decent. Throw in some Peter Greene, Chazz Palminteri and Pete Postlethwaite and you have a bunch of dramatic heavy hitters ready to breathe life into a cracker jack of a screenplay, one that ends in a whirlwind of information and delirium that shocked audiences all over in 1995, and now here we are almost twenty years later, and “The Usual Suspects” is just sitting around, ready to be watched, waiting for someone new to come along and have their expectations subverted by a great movie.Continue Reading …

#76 – Poor Stephen Baldwin

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In episode 76, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn review The Rover as well as the Fargo television show, and Chris reviews Jersey Boys.

They also talk about Star Wars Episode VIII, how much lightsabers mean to Disney, Fast and the Furious 7, Daredevil casting news, the real reason Jupiter Ascending was pushed back 8 months, the Wachowskis new Netflix series and much more!

The Crespodisco #9 – Kraft Singles

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In this BONUS episode, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn talk about five songs that they can listen to over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and…

Review: ’22 Jump Street’

The comedy sequel is a tough nut to crack. It is nearly impossible to recapture the magic that makes a comedy so memorable and fun to begin with, as if there is some sort of blueprint to making a great comedic film, and usually we are left with at best pale imitations of the great comedy that we all remember fondly or at worst an abomination of a film that would even make us question why we liked the original movie in the first place. So where does “22 Jump Street,” the sequel to the surprise comedy hit, fit on this spectrum of disappointing and sub par comedy sequels?

Well, nowhere really. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears, I wouldn’t have believed that a comedy sequel could have been so funny and enjoyable and downright comparable to the original, but I DID see it, I DID hear it, and believe me when I tell you that I did laugh. And I laughed and I laughed, because “22 Jump Street” is damn funny front start to finish.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 7/16/2014 – ‘Dutch’

“Dutch” is one of those John Hughes produced comedies from the 1980s – 1990s (specifically here from 1991) that kind of gets skipped over and forgotten, yet there it was the whole time, this little gem of a movie, just sitting there waiting to be appreciated. Well here we are, folks. Let’s get to appreciatin’.

“Dutch” stars Ed O’Neill, at that time best known for being television’s Al Bundy on “Married… With Children,” as opposed to now in which he is known as that guy who WAS on “Married… With Children” but is now on “Modern Family,” and “Dutch” is pretty much his one starring role, the one time someone gave him the lead of a movie and said “let’s see if this works.”

It was a critical and commercial failure. Ahem.

But now here we are, over twenty years later, and we can see that people in 1991 were just a bunch of dummies who didn’t know a good thing when it was right there in their face. Because “Dutch” is a sweet, well made little movie about a guy trying to impress his girlfriend by being nice to her snobby kid, and we got ourselves a lil road movie that involves fireworks, truck stops and hookers, and who doesn’t like THAT in their movies, plus there are moral lessons and all that other stuff, PLUS this is that rare holiday movie that is centered around Thanksgiving, and all of those things combined make for a nice film, one worth watching and enjoying.Continue Reading …