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Review: ‘Red 2’

I need to write this stuff down now because it will all be forgotten very soon, even though I walked out of this movie just a few hours ago. As “Red 2” started and we get thrust back into the life of retired CIA operative Frank Moses (Bruce Willis, A Good Day to Die Hard), I quickly realized that I couldn’t remember a single thing about the first movie and what that story was about or why anyone did anything or why the characters acted the way they did. It was all a distant blur of a memory of a movie, and it is obvious now that “Red 2,” while entertaining enough, will go down the same path of temporal lobe obscurity.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 7/15/13 – ‘Blood and Bone’

I am too lazy to check, but I am pretty sure that “Blood and Bone” is the first direct-to-video movie to be a Netflix Instant Pick of the Week, but it was bound to happen, especially with the increase in quality in these DTV films recently. So here we are, a kick ass action movie featuring a bad ass lead performance, criminally underseen due to its lack of exposure, but ready for you to put on right now, sit back, relax and enjoy the pugilistic mayhem.

“Blood and Bone” should have been made in the 1980s, though if it was made back then it would have starred Jean Claude Van Damme, as the very basic story fits right into the mold of those awesome action movies. A lone, mysterious bad ass dude (played by Michael Jai White, Black Dynamite) forces his way into an underground fighting circuit, and he battles his way through fighter after fighter, and really what else do you need to know? The fight scenes are awesome, well shot, and I love how Michael Jai White’s character does each fight with his big ole boots, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen a leading character do before in a fighting movie like this. Looks like those huge boots would make things even more painful.Continue Reading …

#27 – No Oddjob

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In episode 27, Chris and Drew are joined by Big Mike from SwampPatrol.com and the Curtis Earth Show, and they talk about everything from new movies to delicious gator meat, there’s a new Netflix Instant Pick of the Week, a competitive round of Drewster Cogburn vs the World, and of course a good old fashioned lightning round!

Things discussed in this episode include:

Action movies going straight to home video.

Big Mike’s preference of watching movies at home instead of at the theater.

Video games, Playstation vs Xbox, and porn on HD DVD.

The box office review includes a review of Pacific Rim from Chris and Drew.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Pacific Rim’

This is how it is done, at least when it comes to the big budget summer blockbusters that come out weekly every year, the new bloated staples of modern American entertainment. Just as big and loud and sometimes even just as dumb, “Pacific Rim” still manages to stand tall over most other big budget movies of this ilk. It’s fun, playful, and takes old ideas and makes them seem new and wonderful, and while this thing won’t be for everyone, it will still delight many people who take pleasure in watching giant monsters fighting giant human-operated robots in magnificent battles both above and below the ocean.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 7/8/13 – ‘Chinatown’

Okay, some of you are going to be all like, “Chinatown? What the fuck, man? Think I’m an idiot? I’ve seen this movie already! This pick ain’t that special!” To which I say, relax broheem, we’re all good. This pick ain’t for you and it ain’t for me. No sir, this pick…this pick is for the kids.

See kids (cause I know you’re out there reading this shit and listening to Cinema Crespodiso), back before you were born in the 1990s, movies were still being made, you dig? And in 1974, the incredibly awesome “Chinatown” was unleashed upon the world. Made during a time when film noir movies stopped being all the rage (a time which persists to this very day), “Chinatown” is the most bad ass film noir movie you will ever see, kiddies.

What is film noir, you’re asking? Just know that it has to do usually with a private detective, a damsel in distress, and a conspiracy that is usually way too big for the the private eye, but he takes it on anyway. Add a lot of shadows and a gloomy atmosphere and mood, a dire outlook on life itself, and BOOM! you got yourself some noir.Continue Reading …

#26 – Reverse Lightning

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In episode 26 of Cinema Crespodiso, Chris and Drew review The Lone Ranger, they get into the Netflix Instant Pick of the Week Chinatown, they talk about the records broken by Kevin Hart and Man of Steel, and they recap the Box Office top five for the 4th of July weekend. There is also a new Drewster Cogburn vs The World and a tricky Lightning Round for Drew!

Also in this episode:

New movies on DVD and in Theaters

Chris and Drew talk about Tyler Perry and his hatred of women, The Host (not the South Korean one, the more recent one), Tiny Fey in a rom com with Paul Rudd, the horribly titled (and pretty bad) Dead Man Down, and the very awesome Spring Breakers.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Lone Ranger’

Man did this thing go pretty awry. Disney’s “The Lone Ranger” was surely made with the idea that they could make a whole new billion-dollar-a-picture franchise with this old school property (because that’s how Disney and companies of their ilk sees stuff like this anyway, not as art or craft, but as property and franchises, like fast-food), and their reasoning behind giving the project to the group of guys behind the successful “Pirates of the Caribbean” films made sense on paper. After all, if Gore Verbinski could turn a theme park ride into a well-liked movie, then imagine what he could do with something with a rich history in radio, television, movies and comic books, going all the way back to 1933. What could go wrong with this set up?Continue Reading …

Documentarama – Politico Non-Fic Pic a Go Go!

Watch out now, here comes the documentarama, and for the first time out we got that political shit going. We’re going from the small Texas town that President George W. Bush famously called home all the way around the world with the political activists and pranksters the Yes Men, we’re gonna look back through U.S. political history with Robert McNamara, and you’re going to want to know what really went down in Abu Ghraib, trust me on this one. But first, let’s follow Philip Seymour Hoffman around as he pokes and prods his way through the 2000 Republican and Democratic National Conventions.

Talking Trailers: ‘Escape Plan’ is coming, but is it 20 years too late?

“Escape Plan” is a movie that’s right in my wheelhouse, featuring two of my most favorite actors from my most favorite genre (Action!), and backed by a crazy concept and lots of fighting and action! action!! action!!! If this is not the greatest movie ever made, I have no idea what would be, and it is blowing my mind to think that this will actually be coming out soon. This is what I would be thinking anyway, if I were still twelve-years old. Ohhhhh to be twelve again.

Alas, it is 2013, and my favorite actors have grown old and have been replaced by other favorite actors with just a bit more range. And the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone have gotten so old (which was inevitable, by the way) could be detrimental to them because they still make primarily Action! movies, which also happens to be a genre that is no longer my favorite, as I am no longer a stupid child.

No, now I am a semi-stupid adult who likes a wee bit of story and character in my movies. Action is still cool and all…but it has to have a point. And THAT is when you know you are becoming an old fogey – when a high concept movie featuring the Terminator and Rambo doesn’t really you excited, when pure spectacle and blood letting and body counts and spent cartridges just don’t do it for you anymore without you know WHO exactly is getting killed or doing the killing, then THAT is the time to check in your youth card and go sit on a rocking chair in an old folks’ home and just wait for death to warm over you like a comfortable blanket.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Heat’

So “The Heat” is supposed to be Paul Feig’s big follow up to the hugely successful “Bridesmaids” and for a while there we were all interested in this movie as if Mr. Feig (creator of television’s Freaks & Geeks) was the next Judd Apatow or Dennis Dugan (look him up and weep), and it’s as if we all forgot that the very funny Kristen Wiig actually wrote “Bridesmaids” and that could be a big reason for the movie’s success, and not so much because it was directed by the guy that made “Unaccompanied Minors.”

Looks like maybe “The Heat” screenplay could have used a pass from Ms. Wiig, because it’s just an okay movie, a half-smart update on the 1980s buddy-cop action comedy genre (see: 48 Hrs., Lethal Weapon). See, instead of the mismatched buddies being a couple of dudes (done to death!) or a dude and his dog (this has been done a few times actually) or a dude and a precocious kid (“Cop and a Half,” we’re looking at you, you piece of shit), we got a couple of mismatched ladies. Oh snap, take that, gender bias!Continue Reading …