A weekly talk show hosted by film critic Christopher Crespo
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In episode 79, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn have a spoiler-free discussion about Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, plus there is a new Netflix Pick of the Week, the box office recap, and movie news including villain rumors for Batman vs Superman, Fast and Furious 7 production wraps up, Star Wars in IMAX and much more!
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In this month’s BONUS CCN episode, Chris Crespo talks about all the things that outrage him (and things that amuse him), all in a newspaper style format. Drewster Cogburn occasionally chimes in with a grunt or a “no.” Things discussed include crazy World Cup stories, how most Christian metal bands are not Christian, how Malaysia is legislating language, how Egypt is imprisoning journalists, why Facebook ads don’t work, creepy Japanese androids, Uber in Orlando, the War on Women and much more!
In the grand tradition of movies about kids biting off more than they can chew a la “E.T.” or “The Goonies” or “The Sandlot,” here comes “Earth to Echo” a movie about some kids biting off more than they can chew, but this time in the form of a found footage movie. Oh how simple it is to update age old tropes to modern standards.
“Earth to Echo” starts with three kids who are friends but who find their friendship threatened by the spectre of Big Brother, as eminent domain forces them to move out of their neighborhood so a freeway can be built through the area. On their last night together, these three kids decide to investigate some random map zapped on to their cell phones, mostly in an effort to try to do something memorable with their last night together. And sure enough, when the map leads them to a cute tiny little alien, they find themselves on a mission to help this little alien guy find his spaceship so he can go home.Continue Reading …
Not “48 Hours” and not “Forty-Eight Hours” but specifically “48 Hrs.” because in a movie like this we just don’t have TIME to spell it all out, whiz bam thank you, ma’am, here comes enough anti-buddy cop mismatched action comedy shenanigans to blow your face off.
Directed by the great Walter Hill and featuring a cop no one likes (Nick Nolte) with the motor mouthed criminal no one likes (Eddie Murphy), “48 Hrs.” is about what happens when a cop has to catch a killer and his best bet is to get this other criminal out of jail for a specified amount of time in order to track down this other guy. And really none of that stuff matter because this movie is really about how these two guys don’t like each other and how they don’t get along and yet they are stuck together and have to work together and they actually have some interesting chemistry together which then throws them both of whack because they don’t want to like each other but dammit if that doesn’t start happening anyway.
The action scenes are fine and the use of both Sonny Landham and James Remar as the bad guys is brilliant, but the soul of this movie is in the bickering between the two main characters and it is great, making this movie a classic for a reason.Continue Reading …
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In episode 78, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn are joined by Etchie from the show Answer Pants (from RampantRadio.com), and after a smooth, glitch free first half, they must find a way to overcome a random engineering meltdown, from which Chris leads the way, finding a path from the pits of despair and making their way to the top of the mountain that is known as A Completed Episode!
Oh and they review the cool little movie Earth to Echo and the very awesome Snowpiercer. Dig it!
After a global experiment to reverse the trend of global warming goes horribly wrong and plunges the entire Earth into a modern ice age, killing practically all life on the planet in the process, a single bullet train carrying the world’s survivors makes a year-long loop around the world, preserving what is left of mankind, in a daily struggle to keep humans from becoming extinct. This is the set up for the most expensive South Korean film ever made, “Snowpiercer,” and this movie is pretty much as good as it gets, proof that high-concept fare and action-filled science fiction can also be thoughtful and smart and above all else well made.
The story of “Snowpiercer” starts up 17-18 years after the failed experiment pretty much destroyed the world, and the people who were all able to climb aboard the train find that not only were they preserving humanity, they were also preserving humanity’s main mode of existence, which seems to be centered on class division and the concept of the strong eating the weak. The poorest of people who still managed to get on the train were relegated to the very back of the train, where their quarters were overly populated and extremely cramped, as well as very dirty and lacking in basic necessities. Forced to fend for themselves, the people in the tail end of the train grew to resent the people in the front of the train, and over the years a few revolutions and uprisings have flared up, only to be beaten back by those who run the train, using armed guards and a prison system to keep people in line.Continue Reading …
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In this BONUS EPISODE, the Doctor is in! Drewster Cogburn is going to let you know about your most common misconceptions about history, food and more!
Preconceived notions = SMASHED!
“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 …
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 …
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 …