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#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 …

Review: ‘White House Down’

Well here is “White House Down,” the third “John McClane” movie of 2013, and they already got beat to the punch by both “Olympus Has Fallen” (a movie for which I remembered so little that I actually had to re-read my own review there as a recap) and an actual John McClane movie in “A Good Day to Die Hard” (which is just about one of the worst movies of the year), and if you really like your “lone guy taking out a team of thieves/mercs in a singular location” movies, this is going to be your best bet.

John McClane stand-in John Cale (Channing Tatum, This is the End, Side Effects) applies for a job at the U.S. Secret Service department, and he brings along his estranged daughter Emily (Joey King, The Dark Knight Rises) to the White House for his interview, scoring her some passes because he knows she is some sort of nut for the White House and its history and he needs to bribe his way back into her life because she’s pissed at him for being a shitty father who put work before parenting (very John McClane-ish of him, by the way, Emily could easily be Lucy McClane, and there’s even the estranged wife so that completes the package).Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 7/1/13 – ‘Quigley Down Under’

So who ordered the Australian-set western starring the mustachioed men? Cause this week the Crespodiso Randomizer 9000 spit out “Quigley Down Under” which means it is time to fire up the barbie, crack open a Fosters (which no one in Australia drinks) and get to watching this western about a crack shot riflemen from America heading to Australia for a job and finding out that he may have to settle some other things while he is there instead (of course with the aid of his custom-made gigantic rifle).

“Quigley Down Under” was actually developed in the late 70s for Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood, but this project fell apart as so many projects do, and while it was subsequently picked up by a very interested Tom Selleck (whom I fully believe is one of the world’s biggest movie stars in a universe parallel to ours), it still took a number of years to get off the ground, finally becoming a reality in 1990, obviously as a different film than the one that was originally conceived. Who knows what the McQueen-Eastwood version would have been like, but we do have a version with Tom Selleck and Alan Rickman, so we can’t really be upset at that, can we?Continue Reading …

#25 – Trivia Madness

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In episode 25 of Cinema Crespodiso, Chris and Drew are joined by trivia master Curtis Earth for a trivia packed show, featuring a very competitive round of Drewster Cogburn versus The World, as well as reviews of White House Down and The Heat and brand new Netflix Instant Pick of the Week Quigley Down Under.

They also talk about Curtis’ past as a movie critic for a radio station and how he segued into the world of trivia.

3D in movies and whether or not we think they are worthwhile in terms of the extra money spent.

Pixar decides to make less sequels and focus on more original movies.

We get our now weekly Terminator 5 update, which includes a release date.

The summer of 2015 is going to jam packed with giant blockbuster sequels and reboots, and Chris has the full rundown.Continue Reading …

‘Realism’ in movies – where is the suspension of disbelief?

It is incredible how often people decry implausibilities in movies, allowing themselves to be drawn out of a movie’s spell by questioning every little thing about a story and how it is presented, declaring a movie to be shit because they “didn’t buy it.” But why does this happen? When did “realism” become so important to movie going audiences? Did we decide that we were all going to stop believing? Who told us that Santa wasn’t real anymore? Why did our balloon pop and how did it happen? What the fuck happened to our childhood?Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 6/24/13 – ‘Man on Wire’

“Man on Wire” is a fantastic documentary about a French mime and juggler and all around lover of life who decided in 1974 to tight-rope walk between two buildings. But not just any two buildings. The still-under-construction World Trade Center towers in New York City. Just look at that poster right there and imagine that’s you, on a high wire, over 1,300 feet in the air, with no net or tether. It’s just you and the wind and God. That’s what this movie is all about.

And it is great! The people involved in pulling off this feat (because it took more than one person) managed to record a good amount of their time and efforts and practices, so we actually get a lot of first hand look at this stuff, and then the whole setting up of the wire in the middle of the night plays out like a heist movie because they didn’t get anyone’s permission to do any of this, they just showed up with equipment and snuck their way up. Crazy.Continue Reading …