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Netflix pick for 6/6/2016 – ‘Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan’

As heard in episode 178 of Cinema Crespodiso.

“Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” is the Star Trek movie that non-fans can easily watch and enjoy. Of all the Star Trek movies and TV shows, this is the most popular and easily accessible of them all. This 1982 movie is a sequel to the first “Star Trek” movie and plot-wise actually works as a direct sequel to one particular episode of the original television show, which aired 15 years prior in 1967, so in theory it should be a tough movie for non-fans to just jump right into, a particularly tough nut to crack for people not familiar with these characters or their backstories, or the world in which they live. Without seeing that one TV episode, how can anyone know who this Khan character is and why we should care at all about his wrath? How could this movie possibly withstand the test of time but being so specifically tied into something that relatively few people would have seen at the time this movie came out, let alone now, almost 35 years later?

It accomplishes this feat by, quite simply, being extremely entertaining. William Shatner is in now top form as Admiral Kirk, Leonard Nimoy is his reliable Spock-y self as Captain Spock, and Ricardo Montalbán makes an absolute meal out of his role as the titular villain, Khan Singh, a genetically enhanced being who leads his small group of loyal warriors in a vengeance quest against Kirk and the rest of his crew. Revenge is a helluva motivator and for decades it has been used to propel plots forward, and here is no exception. Khan is on a mission of righteous retribution against the heroes of the movie and it all makes for some great, pulpy drama.Continue Reading …

#178 – Drewster Khanburn

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In episode 178, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn are joined by returning guest Nikki Willson.

Chris and Drewster review The Lobster and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.

The Netflix Instant Pick of the Week is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Dr. Drew gives his two cents on people who vote for Trump.

Billy D reviews The Ones Below.

The Crespodisco features a song featured in The Lobster, Beethoven’s Six String Quartets Op. 18 / 2nd movement.

Review: ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows’

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows” is here to proclaim very loudly and garishly that the insane phenomenon that started out life as a satirical comic series for teens and adults and has become a decades long franchise of multiple television shows, feature length movies and action figures is still here and intends to stick around for another few decades. And considering that the folks who watched the original animated TV show in the late 1980’s now have young kids of their own which they are bringing to this movie, it is conceivable that these mutated turtle teenage brothers proficient in ninjitsu will be around as long as there is money to be made in kids’ entertainment.

And surely this stuff has to be entertaining enough for the kids, and rest assured that most people who make movies and television shows for children has little respect for them and their still evolving tastes (and to be fair, children do indeed have terrible cultural taste), so they let the dumb jokes fly and stuff as much loud action and antics into a movie with a barely there plot and there is your recipe for a blockbuster aimed to 10 year olds.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Lobster’

“The Lobster” is a dark satire and a bleak romantic comedy, a movie designed to both make you laugh at the absurdities of life and also bemoan the depths of despair possible within basic human existence. Alternating between funny and sad in such a way that the two become nearly indistinguishable, this is an interesting and unique movie that will delight some and repel others, depending on whether or not you are on board with what this movie has to say.

In the world of “The Lobster,” marriage is compulsory and single people are given 45 days to find their soulmate or else they get turned into the animal of their choice and let loose in the wild. We start the movie with David (Colin Farrell), freshly single when his wife leaves him for someone else, and he is immediately sent to The Hotel, where the single folk start their Find Your Soulmate challenge. At this Hotel he meets other single people, and the first half of the movie is about them all adjusting to the weird rules of The Hotel and trying to match up with some of the other unfortunate loners checked in with them. There is also a band of loners who escaped The Hotel and live in the woods, militantly preparing for something kind of vague, and David gets wrapped up with them as well.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 5/30/16 – ‘The Right Stuff’

As heard in episode 177 of Cinema Crespodiso.

“The Right Stuff” is an epic adaptation of the novel of the same name, which detailed the beginning of the US Government space program and how it all really started with military test pilots trying to beat the demon in the sky by being the first to break the sound barrier, and how these are the same men ready, willing and able to be the first person to be strapped to a rocket and launched into outer space. This movie is over three hours long because it needs every minute of it, providing both great character profiles of the men involved in this program and also showing how the space program evolved and what everyone went through to make it happen. It is a crazy story populated with interesting people and this movie nails all of it and turns that novel into a sprawling and impressive piece of epic entertainment.Continue Reading …

#177 – Grave Dancing Drew

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In episode 177, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn review X-Men: Apocalypse and A Bigger Splash.

The Netflix Instant Pick of the Week is The Right Stuff.

Dr. Drew gives his two cents on amateur hour during the holiday weekend.

Billy D gives us his top 4 of 2016 (so far).

The Crespodisco features two songs from the original motion picture soundtrack for X-Men: Apocalypse.

Spoiler Bonus Episode – ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’

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In this BONUS episode, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn review X-Men: Apocalypse and they have a spoiler filled discussion in which they talk about the whole plot of the movie and everything that happens.

This means beware of spoilers because this episode is full of them, so if you want to know who lives and who dies and who cameos and who does not, this is the episode for you.

If you want to wait to see the movie first and then come back and listen to this later, that is totally cool. Do what you gotta do.

Review: ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’

“X-Men: Apocalypse” is the end of the second trilogy of X-Men centric movies, so if you are not onboard this particular train by now, this is not the movie to try to jump on, lest you don’t mind watching movies in which most of the character development has already been done in prior installments and references are constantly made to previously told stories. This is a culmination of serialized storytelling, and if you haven’t seen any other X-Men movie but watch this one for some reason, that is like just watching the season finale of the second season of a television show you’ve never seen. Sure lots of stuff happens, and it seems exciting, but does it mean anything without the years of build up?

The weird thing is that this movie is actually doing two things – it both ends this trilogy of movies (started with “X-Men: First Class” in 2011 and followed by “X-Men: Days of Future Past” in 2014), and also introduces new, younger versions of characters who will be the focus of the next X-Men movies. So certain characters (or at least certain actors playing these characters) are having their last hurrah while others are fresh faces and get to do just enough to set them up for whatever comes after this. And rest assured, there will be more of these, because why would 20th Century Fox ever stop making them? It is the only comic book franchise they do even close to right and which makes them any money (just look at how well they did with Fantastic Four and Daredevil). So get ready for high school Cyclops and Game of Thrones Jean Grey and twenty year old Nightcrawler and so on and so forth.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 5/23/16 – ‘Welcome to Leith’

As heard in episode 176 of Cinema Crespodiso.

“Welcome to Leith” is a documentary about an asshole who tried to buy up enough land in a tiny North Dakota town in order to turn it into a white supremacist safe haven, with himself positioned as their leader. And here’s the M. Night Shyamalan like twist – this isn’t an old untold story from the 1800’s about some old ex-slave owner or something like that, this whole thing happened in 2012, just a few scant years ago.

And now here in this foul year of our Lord 2016, thanks to a certain political and cultural climate in the air we have a whole bevy of openly hateful racists and bigots who have become emboldened to share their retrograde, backwater and completely destructive worldviews with anyone who will care to listen, making documentaries like this all that more important because we, as an evolving species, have ignored these kinds of people and allowed them to wallow in their ignorance for long enough, and we need something like to at least open peoples’ eyes and show them that “post-racial America” is just as bad if not worse than the America that has come before it. Continue Reading …