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Review: ‘Grudge Match’

It’s “Rocky Balboa” meets old “Raging Bull.” Surely that was the entire pitch to whoever decided to green light this movie because this is pretty much what we got here. Two retired boxers get together for one last fight, and everyone laughs at them until they see the fight itself and realize these guys are for real. Meanwhile both old men recapture some of their lost youths while also finally moving their stalled out lives forward, and everyone lives happily ever after. The end.

No, really, that’s about it. Rocky Balboa himself Sylvester Stallone plays retired Pittsburgh-area boxer Henry “Razor” Sharp, and Robert De Niro plays his old rival Billy “The Kid” McDonnen, and there is a little mystery about why Razor retired early from boxing, robbing The Kid and the boxing world of the rubber match that everyone wanted to see, but that gets cleared up halfway through. Otherwise, we have a typical movie about older men being both nostalgic for a bygone era and also regretting past mistakes while still being very slow to actually learn from them.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’

Gotta say, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is kind of a confusing picture, thematically speaking anyway. Sure most, if not all of the movie, is actually quite simple minded, and really rather pleasant overall in its apparent zest for life and praising of the general human spirit. Our protagonist makes a pretty big and satisfying change from the beginning of the movie to the end of it, there are some good jokes, some nice cinematography, so interesting casting choices, and in the end, it’s all kind of pleasant. So what the hell is confusing about?

Well first, you should know the basic story set up first. You see, this Walter Mitty guy (Ben Stiller, who also directed), he works in the bowels of LIFE magazine, and he is meek and put upon and spends an inordinate amount of time daydreaming about being someone different and doing exciting things, because you know his life sucks so much. He’s not even good at using eHarmony, which is an actual plot point of this story. But when he is faced with a mystery that requires solving, he breaks out of his shell to actually go solve it, following a handful of clues around the world.

And of course this is all grand and good and all that. Walter Mitty finally goes out and LIVES LIFE and good for him, right? He gets to see Iceland and Greenland and an active volcano and a shark and now he has all of these sweet stories to tell at parties and shit, so good for him, that’s what this movie is about, right?Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’

Welcome to the wonderful world of 1990’s stock trading, a world juiced to the gills with money, sex and drugs, a world in which the strong are made stronger thanks to their unbridled greed and ambition, a world in which even the righteous are envious of the spoils of the wicked, a world in which money can pretty much buy just about anything, a world in which a stockbroker rewards his loyal staff with airplane sex orgies, a world directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and named “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

“The Wolf of Wall Street” is a movie based on a memoir by a stock broker turned convicted felon turned motivational surprise (shock!), so to say that the world portrayed in this film is actually several steps away from reality would be an understatement. But of course, this IS a movie, and should we be expecting reality in any way? Nope. Even though some things portrayed in this film did happen and still do happen in the real world, it’s still a compendium of made up shit, meant to paint a bigger picture. Facts are not necessary to convey universal truths. So what “truths” are in “The Wolf of Wall Street?”Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 12/31/13 – ‘Somm’

The final Netflix Instant pick of 2013 is a great documentary that I saw earlier this year at the Florida Film Festival, and this documentary is called “Somm,” and it is all about the insane, rigorous and cutthroat world of wine-tasting. Seriously.

From my original review from the FFF 2013:

“You know the term “crowd-pleasing?” That’s what “SOMM” just happens to be, a crowd-pleasing film. This measuring of audience pleasure was quite easy at the Florida Film Fest screening this past weekend, as the packed theater burst into applause during several different moments of the movie, and often reacted quite audibly, and most importantly, in unison. By the time the exam results were being revealed at the end, it was obvious that the film had everyone in attendance in the palm of its wine-stained hand, which resulted in much of the spontaneous aforementioned clapping and shit.

This is definitely a well made documentary, because they managed to tell the story of four wine nerds studying for a test to become certified wine snobs, and they focused on the right people and the right details and put it all together in a compelling way and made this into a great movie.”

#51 – Product Placement Confusion

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In episode 51, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn review many of the movies released over the Christmas holiday, there is a new Netflix Instant Pick of the Week, there’s a theme to the movie news section, Q&A from show listeners, and more!

Discussed in this episode:

Chris announces the winner of the first ever Cinema Crespodiso Fantasy Football league.

The Netflix Instant Pick of the Week is Somm, and Chris explains the upcoming Netflix Instant purge on 1/1/14.

Chris reviews Grudge Match and complains about the obvious product placement.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 12/23/13 – ‘Zodiac’

“Zodiac.” Simply awesome. David Fincher. Robert Downey Jr. Mark Ruffalo. Are you kidding me? So good.

From my original write up on Examiner.com:

“Fincher is the king of working with darkness and shadows, and much like the rest of his films, Zodiac is blanketed in creepy blacks and the scariest of shadows. Most of the scenes take place at night or in dimly lit locales. But Fincher also shows us one of the Zodiac killings which took place in the broad daylight, and it might be one of the most chilling scenes in film (and no, not in this film, but in all films). The clinical and calculating coldness of his unblinking camera puts the audience in a very uncomfortable position in relation to the crime, forcing us to stand off to the side just a few feet from the victims to be. The viewer becomes all knowing and helpless at the same time. Another great example of Fincher’s skill comes in a scene towards the end of the film, when newspaper cartoonist turned true crime author Robert Graysmith (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) visits someone on his own accord to find out information on a possible Zodiac suspect. The scene quickly becomes intense as Graysmith finds out that the person he is visiting might actually be the Zodiac killer himself. These are just two examples of amazing scenes in this movie, a film that is downright silly with greatness.”

#50 – Merry Cres-mas!

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In episode 50, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn are joined by four-time guest Soul Brother Kevin from “The SBK LIVE Show,” and they talk about movies new and old, Chris and Drew review American Hustle, Chris reviews Anchorman 2, and so much more!

Chris explains the origins and meaning of Cres-mas.

The Netflix Instant Pick of the Week is Zodiac.

During the box office weekend recap, Chris and Drew review American Hustle and Anchorman 2.

New on DVD this week – Insidious: Chapter 2.

New in theaters this week – Grudge Match, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, 47 Ronin, The Wolf of Wall Street, Lone Survivor and August: Osange County.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘American Hustle’

So now David O. Russell has gone three-for-three in terms of putting out movies that are both crowd-pleasing and critically praised, no small feat for a guy who had his Jessica Biel political sex comedy taken away from him by an insurance company due to production troubles, leaving Russell with no movie and no prospects at the time.

After recovering nicely with the well made “The Fighter” and then following that up with the award-winning “Silver Linings Playbook,” here we have his version of a rollicking 1990’s Martin Scorsese movie, as “American Hustle” is filled with knowing voice overs, astute period details, great performances from an array of great actors, great musical choices blasting on the soundtrack, and features a fantastic juggling act of different characters and storylines that all come together so nicely.

Loosely based on the Abscam FBI stings of the 1970s and 1980s, “American Hustle” is about a pair of con artists (Christian Bale, Amy Adams) avoiding federal prison time by agreeing to work with an FBI agent (Bradley Cooper) to take down a series of people on federal charges, starting with a well meaning New Jersey mayor (Jeremy Renner) and working outwards from there. But really it is not so much about the actual sting operations than it is about the characters and people involved in this whole thing. And of course just about all the character names have been changed, allowing for more creative license so they can have these characters say and do whatever they need them to say and do in order to tell their story, without having to worry about the real life people getting upset at the perceived misrepresentations of this fictional retelling of a real story.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues’

Look, we all know that comedy sequels are never as good as the original. It is the rare genre in which the original is never topped, and more than not we actually get some horrible retreads like “Caddyshack 2” and “Blues Brothers 2000” or cynical cash-ins like “The Hangover” and “Clerks” sequels or worst of all, simply disappointing and uninspired follow ups like “Airplane II: The Sequel” and “Wayne’s World 2,” just to pick on a few. So where does “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” fall on this spectrum of comedy sequels?

(okay, I will make concessions to animated movies, with the “Toy Story” sequels coming to mind, and stuff mixing in other genres like action or horror have more leeway to be different, but the comedy sequels mentioned here are just that…straight up comedies).

“Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues” is actually a little better than all those previously mentioned films, in that it was pretty amusing throughout, with some good genuine laughs here and there, and a couple of surprise cameos that worked pretty great (but also with a couple of cameos that flopped pretty hard). If you did not like “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” then you will not like this, and you may even hate it because it is a lot of the same jokes and character dynamics just turned all the way up to eleven. If you DID like the first film, my gut reaction is that most people will feel the same way when they watch this movie, in that a lot of people will generally like this one but it won’t be surpassing anyone’s expectations, nor will it likely become another slow-burning cult classic like the original, finding it’s real legs when it hit home video. Basically, as far as comedy sequels go, this isn’t an abomination or stain on the first film at all, but it’s not as good as the first film either.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’

Here we go again, yet another nearly three-hour journey through the world of Middle Earth, as filtered through the sensibilities of Peter Jackson, filled with swords and monsters and walks over mountains and sorcery and all that other good stuff. This time we got “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug,” and what can we say about this movie that has not been said already in one way or another in one of the four previous Hobbit-Lord of the Rings related movies?

I can say this: enough already! And I did not say that before about the original trilogy based on The Lord of The Rings, because those movies were interesting and compelling and filled with danger and excitement and newness, and now all of these years later I just don’t give a shit about a bunch of dwarves and their quest to reclaim their homeland because we already saw a huge battle of good versus evil for the entirety of Middle Earth. I didn’t care about these dwarves a year ago, I don’t care about them now and I won’t care about them a year from now when the final (thank GOD!) Hobbit movie is released.

Yet here we are, we sat through another one of these things, despite the fact that the magic is gone. Splitting a 300-page book into three separate three-hour movies seemed like a bad idea when it was first announced, and now that we are two-thirds of the way through these movies…it still does not seem like the best idea ever. Really, if need be, the story of Thorin and his dwarf buddies could have been told over two movies, that would have been acceptable, but goodness gracious this was so not necessary. For example, there’s a ten to fifteen minute sequence in the movie in which the dwarves are captures by elves and we get to see Legolas again and his father whines and complains about something and refuses to help Thorin and just acts like a dick. And it is so boring!Continue Reading …