A weekly talk show hosted by film critic Christopher Crespo
I just recently republished my original book-to-film adaptation analysis of the great “The Warriors,” when lo and behold, on the most recent episode of Cinema Crespodiso (available here), the completely random Netflix Pick of the Week turned out to be “The Warriors!” So here we go!
From 1979, “The Warriors” is about a a Coney Island street gang getting framed for the murder of the biggest gang leader in all of New York City, and having to fight their way back home through about half a dozen other gangs, varying in numbers, style and competency. Walter Hill is a tough guy director, often making movies about tough guys having to do tough things or at least act tough, movies like “Southern Comfort” and “48 Hrs” and the recent “Bullet to the Head.” So while this movie does has a slightly cartoony feel thanks to some of the gangs’ outfits (a cartoony effect Hill claimed was intentional, stating that he wanted to treat this movie like a comic book story), it is still pretty gritty and intense at times, thanks in large part to being filmed not only on the streets of New York City, but late 1970s New York City, which is completely different from the city today, as it exuded menace and danger at every lonely street corner and in every darkened doorway.Continue Reading …
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If you’re playing along at home, you’ll notice that this series is a back and forth type of deal. No Country for Old Men was a best of, I Am Legend was a worst of and most recently, The Warriors was a best of installment. To keep the pendulum going, entry four brings us back to the worst of side, where we find ourselves staring into the gaping maw of Evil Otto himself…Dreamcatcher.Continue Reading …
Installment one was a “best” and installment two was a “worst.” So here’s another example of one of the best: Walter Hill’s The Warriors is an adaptation of Jewish-American writer Sol Yurick’s novel of the same name. Walter Hill, as we already know, makes manly movies about manly men. And The Warriors is populated with manly gang members, as well as younger kids trying to be men by being in gangs. Importantly, it must be noted that this write up of The Warriors will be of the original film and not the recent “Ultimate Director’s Cut DVD,” which itself (coupled with the director’s cut of Donnie Darko) is an example of a director not realizing what makes their film great. But that’s a completely different article. So with that out of the way…Continue Reading …
Written by the star of TV’s Prison Break and directed by the guy behind “Oldboy” is not a way I thought I would ever start any review ever, yet here it is, it has come to pass, this is indeed a thing, as “Stoker” is directed by the great Chan-wook Park, based on an original screenplay by Wentworth Miller (which itself is a loving homage to the works of Alfred Hitchcock, most notably his film “Shadow of a Doubt“). And you know what? It’s pretty damn good.Continue Reading …
“The book was better.”
How many times has that phrase been uttered? Films and books are two different forms of media, and there is no reason why one should be better than the other. As long as films have been made, filmmakers have been turning to books for inspiration. And why not? There’s nothing wrong with going with the old book to film route, and as history as shown, it’s a coin flip, a toss up, it could go either way. There are so many things at work on any given film that when one is made well it’s a bona fide miracle. Continue Reading …
Have you guys seen this trailer yet for “The Hangover Part III?” While giving very little in terms of plot specifics, it seems pretty clear in that this is going to be more than just a rehash of the previous two movies in this most unexpected of comedy film franchises. But just what the hell is this thing actually about?Continue Reading …
“Olympus Has Fallen” feels like a movie based on an old script from the 1980s, updated to fit our current geopolitical climate and technological advancements, but containing the same jingoistic overtones that permeated many of our country’s action movies during the Cold War with the Soviets. This is basically “Air Force One” mixed with “Under Siege” and “Executive Decision,” which are all riffs on “Die Hard” anyway. So let’s just call this movie “Die Hard in the White House.”
This movie is all about a day in which a small yet well-armed North Korean regiments launches a full scale attack against the White House in Washington, D.C., ultimately taking the President (Aaron Eckhart, The Dark Knight) hostage along with the Vice President and others, leaving Speaker of the House Trumbull (Morgan Freeman, The Dark Knight Rises) in charge of securing the White House and the President inside. But of course the real hero of the day is the lone guy who is in the wrong place at the right time, disgraced Secret Service officer Mike Banning (Gerard Butler, Coriolanus), who manages to be the one guy loose in the House and able to sneak around and pick off terrorists one at a time and feed information back to the House Speaker and everyone else in the war room.Continue Reading …