Cinema Crespodiso

A weekly talk show hosted by film critic Christopher Crespo

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Review: ‘Abduction’

Abduction_PosterA young aspiring action star turns to a director of usually solid b-movies to help launch his karate-based, abs-and-chest-at-the-forefront career as this generation’s Jean Claude Van Damme. The result is a lousy mess of a movie with bland action, bad acting and a boring story, with the aspiring actor’s future looking a little grim.

This actor, of course, is Twilight’s Taylor Lautner, and the silver screen has not seen such an inept dramatic performer is quite a long while. He has all the charisma of a deadly black hole, reads his lines with the inflection of a robot, and makes the aforementioned Van Damme look like Daniel Day-Lewis. Meanwhile, director John Singleton burst onto the Hollywood scene with the excellent Boyz n the Hood, and while he hasn’t made anything as good as his first film, he still has a resume loaded with entertaining and well done movies. So what went wrong? What happened in his recent six-year hiatus that made him go from the perfectly fine and entertaining “Four Brothers” to this abysmal piece of malarkey?Continue Reading …

Review: ’50/50′

50-50-posterOn the list of phrases you are not likely to hear on an average Friday or Saturday night, “Let’s go see that cancer comedy” has to be pretty close to the top. That is hard sell for many people, considering how serious cancer is and how nearly everyone has been affected one way or another by cancer. It’s not a topic that people want to ruminate on for a couple hours of entertainment. Why would anyone even want to see such a film?

Well maybe because it’s actually very well done and strikes an interesting balance between R-rated comedy and sincere drama, sometimes switching between the two very quickly and with surprising ease. This is “50/50,” the cancer comedy you never knew you wanted, but it is here and it is very good.

Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is 27 years old, works in radio, has his own place, works out regularly, and avoids driving because it is the fifth likeliest way to die. He’s a very nice guy and even puts up with the shenanigans of his hot but strangely distant girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard), the douchiness of his otherwise best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen), and the smothering of his overbearing but well-meaning mother (Anjelica Huston). So when he finds out that he has a rare spinal cancer, he’s definitely thrown for a loop. He’s a young, healthy guy with no vices, why would he ever expect to get cancer? But alas, that’s how it happens sometimes, and it happens to him, and he has to deal with it.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Cowboys & Aliens’

cowboys-and-aliens-international-movie-posterJust look at that title – “Cowboys & Aliens.” Going into this movie, everyone knew it would be a tough one to pull off. The mixing of the very grounded and dusty Western genre with the fantastic, more imaginative aspects of science fiction writing doesn’t make for a smooth pairing. Some massaging and elbow grease has to be used to make these two genres come together in an entertaining and coherent fashion. And while “Cowboys & Aliens” does come close to nailing this concept, it does fall short, and probably would have been much better without the aliens at all.

The set up is simple. The movie opens in the middle of the desert, in which a gunslinger with amnesia (Daniel Craig) wakes up injured and wanders into the nearest town. When he gets there, he finds out that he’s a stagecoach robber and murderer and the law takes him in. But before he can be processed, here comes an alien invasion, blowing up the town and lassoing away people from the streets and into their little aircrafts. So our amnesiac stagecoach robbing gunfighter hero teams up with the local dickhead cattle baron Woodrow Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford) to form a posse and track down the aliens in an effort to save the people that were kidnapped. Oh, and Daniel Craig has some sort of ridiculous alien wrist gun the whole time.Continue Reading …

Crespodiso Spillover Episode – Sloppy Seconds

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In this week’s Crespodiso Spillover bonus episode, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn talk about:

– Sicario 2

– Lockout officially ripped off Escape From New York

– Why the Robocop remake sucked

– Jeff Bridges and John Turturro are pushing for more Big Lebowski movies

– Get Shorty the tv series

– No Infinity Stones in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. II

– Updates on the next two Avengers films
Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Bad Teacher’

bad_teacherThere are two types of crude humor usually employed in R-rated comedies these days. There’s the disgusting gross out humor, you know, the poopy-related stuff usually found in your typical Farrelly brothers film or any number of urine or toilet based Austin Powers gags. And then there’s the more sex-based crude humor, which involves jokes about oral sex and saying “tits” a lot, and the latter is where “Bad Teacher” traffics. What happens when you take a person pretty much unqualified to teach and put them in a room full of kids? Well, hilarity, for the most part.

In “Bad Teacher” we have Cameron Diaz going back to her comedy roots (lest we forget her star making roles in “The Mask” and “There’s Something About Mary“) and playing Elizabeth Halsey, a gold digger who took a teaching job only so she could skate by and focus on planning her wedding with her well off fiancé instead. But when the wedding falls through, she finds herself stuck in the school, struggling to get by and on the search for another wealthy guy to “take care of her.”Continue Reading …

Review: ‘A Better Life’

ABetterLife_PosterIt is said that there are seven basic types of stories, and all movies (and books and short films, etc.) are comprised of any mixture of these story types; basically, there’s nothing new under the sun, and we’ve seen it all before. When someone sets out to tell a strong yet simple tale, it is easy to recall all of the other similar stories we’ve already seen and heard. So what can be done to overcome this inherent problem in the millennia-old tradition of storytelling? How can a story set itself apart from the myriad of similar stories that have come before it?

How about with some confident direction and strong writing? Sounds easy enough right? But if it was easy, how come we don’t have more good movies? Movies like “A Better Life,” which tells the story of an illegal immigrant named Carlos (Demián Bichir, Che) who is raising a teenaged son all by himself in Los Angeles, and his story is one of struggle, that’s for sure. This guy just keeps his head down and works his landscaping job, but the incredibly long hours keep him from being able to do anything with his son Luis (José Julián), who is getting his life lessons from the local thugs and street gangs and is on the verge of joining up with them himself.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 8/1/16 – ‘The Big Short’

TheBigShort_MoviePosterAs heard in episode 186 of Cinema Crespodiso.

“The Big Short” was one of the surprise movies of 2015, an ensemble drama with streaks of dark comedy slashed throughout it, focusing on the lead up to the big financial meltdown of 2007 and 2008 triggered by the subprime loan market and investors betting against bad mortgages, brought to life by the director of “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” and “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” and right when no one was looking, BAM, this thing came out with a wallop, making an impression by telling a complicated story in an entertaining and accessible fashion and also doing so with not only humor but a sense of righteous anger at those many people responsible for letting such a good thing turn into such a nightmarish shit show.

Of course, since we are talking about Adam McKay we should remember he also directed “The Other Guys,” a movie in which the ultimate villain was a “Too Big To Fail” bank that didn’t pay for its crimes while some fall guy took the blame, and then the final credits are used to make a presentation on the rising income and wealth inequality in America. So in hindsight the trajectory makes sense.Continue Reading …

#186 – Handsome Drew and the Lemonheads

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In episode 185, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn review Jason Bourne.

The Netflix Instant Pick of the Week is The Big Short.

Dr. Drew gives his two cents on seeing Suicide Squad.

Billy D reviews Black Mountainside.

The Crespodisco features two songs from the Jason Bourne original soundtrack.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Jason Bourne’

JasonBourne_MoviePoster“Jason Bourne” brings back Jason Bourne, the American anti-Bond, the 21st century of a spy movie hero, broken by the Powers That Be and constantly seeking answers in a dark and murky world of dubious morals and ethics, fighting not against foreign enemies but instead against the system that birthed him, dissatisfied with what he has become, with a need to blame someone and his aim always shifting to different targets until he finds what he’s looking for. Which of course leads to more questions. And then more searching. Almost as if…it will just go on forever? Meaninglessly?

When “The Bourne Ultimatum” ended back in 2007, it felt like a solid wrap up for the story of regular guy turned incredible super agent Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), as he got most of his answers he was looking for and then escaped the system with his life, his future unknown but at least free in a way of what these shady government programs made him. And yet almost ten years later Jason Bourne is back on movie screens, this time because “there’s a new program” that he apparently needs to be made aware of, and there is also a link to his father in these spy programs, and I am pretty sure in four movies this is the first time his parents are mentioned in any way, shape or form, so of course it feels contrived and kind of hacky.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 7/25/16 – ‘Eyes Wide Shut’

Eyes_Wide_Shut_posterAs heard in episode 185 of Cinema Crespodiso.

“Eyes Wide Shut” is the final masterpiece from history’s greatest filmmaker, Stanley Kubrick. High praise indeed, but well deserved. The 1990s saw a bit of a boom in sexual thrillers in mainstream cinema, but instead of going the trashy route like most movies of the time (see: “Basic Instinct,” “Sliver,” “Rising Sun,” “Striptease,” “Showgirls” and so on), Kubrick delivered a movie more interested in the psychological ramifications of a man confronted with cracks in his marriage and seeking out sexual solace in the dark underground of New York City, accidentally stumbling across a secret society that wants very much to remain secret, due to all the creepy shit they get into.

And being a 90s movie, “Eyes Wide Shut” retains those classic Kubrickian touches, the shot compositions and visual storytelling, but gets to feature a movie star couple in the form of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, together at the time in real life, hence bringing that real emotion into their roles, and it all works really well. Continue Reading …

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