A weekly talk show hosted by film critic Christopher Crespo
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In this BONUS episode, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn catch up with all the television and streaming shows they’ve watched over the past few months.
Specifically Chris and Drew talk about:
Fargo Season 2
Master of None
Jessica Jones Season 1
The Man in the High Castle Season 1
F is for Family Season 1
Daredevil Season 2
As heard in episode 169 of Cinema Crespodiso.
Of all the Spike Lee joints out there, “Inside Man” might be his more mainstream and easily accessible to general audiences. A slick bank heist movie, “Inside Man” stands out from most of the others because it is a little smarter and slicker than most movies of this kind, not just satisfied with the basics of a bank heist movie but instead going that extra mile to find a way to do something that has not been done before.
Clive Owen plays the leader of the gang of people who walked into a huge bank, took everyone hostage and created a crazy situation for the NYPD. Denzel Washington and Chiwetel Ejiofor are the detective who show up to the scene and attempt to deescalate the situation and find out what is going on. Christopher Plummer is the shady dude who owns the bank and Jodie Foster is the fixer hired to secure some sensitive and secretive information within the bank to keep the shady dude out of trouble. There are a number of moving parts in this story, and it all comes together pretty nicely in the end, as the final ten minutes of the movie provide the big reveals and pay off necessary to bring this whole thing home nicely.
Being directed by Spike Lee, there is naturally some commentary about race relations and gender perceptions and income inequality here and there, but for the most part “Inside Man” is Spike Lee’s most unapologetically commercial movie, as he seemed fine with actually making a movie whose prime directive would be to entertain the audience, as opposed to his usual fare, which seems to be in service of informing and enlightening audiences. Which is fine, because artists are allowed to indulge in both, whether separately or one at a time, and Spike Lee is no different.
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In episode 169, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn review the drone war on terror movie Eye in the Sky.
The Netflix Instant Pick of the Week is Inside Man.
Billy D reviews Batman V Superman, Baskin and Documentary Now!
Dr. Drew gives his two cents on getting a good night’s sleep.
The Crespodisco features Who is Tyler Durden from the Fight Club soundtrack.
“Eye in the Sky” is a tight thriller about drone warfare, examining the morality of making these brutal strikes from remote locations and the collateral damage they cause, but also getting into the complexities of coordinating with so many different people to make one crucial decision in a real time situation, and making this all seem that much more immediate and relevant is the current world setting, as the movie name drops real terrorist groups and actual events, driving home the point that this is how things really happen, this is the current state of the war on stateless terror.
So while being very current and of our time, the story itself is pretty solid in how new questions and obstacles keep popping up, making this a race against the clock type of situation, and as that clock ticks away the circumstances change, things are fluid at all times, and this causes ripples through all the layers of government involved in deciding whether or not to use this one mission to make one strike on one building to kill a small handful of people.
As heard in episode 168 of Cinema Crespodiso.
“Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny” is one of those sequels that pretty much no one asked for, but is also one of those rare cases in which said unwanted sequel actually turned out pretty good. It helps to have a legendary and awesome actress in the lead role, as well as another legend behind the camera, as Michelle Yeoh returned to reprise the role of Yu Shu Lien, and the original film’s fight choreographer and legit martial arts master Yuen Woo-Ping returned to take on directing duties this time. No big deal, he’s only the director of “Drunken Master” and “Iron Monkey,” nothing to see here, right?
While “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” was much more the story of an unfulfilled yet intense love, its sequel is a more pragmatic movie, with the focus being the titular sword of destiny, also known as The Green Destiny. Yu Shu Lien pretty much comes out of retirement to help protect the sword from some bad guys who want it, led by a scary looking dude named Hades Dai (Jason Scott Lee!), and along the way she takes on an aspiring student named Snow Vase (Natasha Liu Bordizzo, her first role, which she slays), and there’s also a guy in a cage that ends up being very important.
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In episode 168, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn are joined by first time guest Alex Knight, who is in studio to promote his new comedic web series The Lost Weekend.
Chris and Drew review Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice.
The Netflix Instant Pick of the Week is Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny.
Billy D reviews Dead Shadows.
Dr. Drew gives his two cents on people cooking for themselves like goddamned adults as opposed to relying on him.
The Crespodisco features the Wonder Woman theme song from the Batman v Superman soundtrack.
“Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” was announced at Comic-Con in 2013, and now almost three years later this movie is finally here, unleashed upon the masses, a mash up of two of the most popular comic book characters ever in a very expensive production, long and loud and stuffed to the gills with ideas. There’s a big potential for being letdown with something this big that takes so long to come out, with so much anticipation and expectation foisted upon it, so maybe it was inevitable that it would not live up to what it could have been, but did anyone expect this?
Because if you looked at the critical community at large, this movie is not getting good reviews, and as a matter of fact, is getting some of the worst reviews for a comic book movie. And many of these reviews have complaints that are very well founded and make sense, but is it also because everyone is watching this movie a little closer and with more scrutiny due to the very nature of the movie itself? People all around the world know who these two characters are just by looking at them, they are ingrained in modern American mythology, these characters (and others like them) are the 20th and 21st Century versions of the Norse, Greek and Roman gods (and sometimes they use actual gods), and we want, even subconsciously, for our $250 million tent pole commercially-driven paean to these characters to be worthy of the time and effort. And it seems a good portion of people believe this not to be the case with “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” but is it the total wash that many make it out to be?
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In this bonus episode, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn talk about Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice and everything that happens in it. They both have stuff they liked and didn’t like, and they try to make sense of it all.
Enjoy.
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In this BONUS episode, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn ramble about their earliest movie memories, plus whatever else bubbles up to the rambling surface.
What are the first movies they remember seeing? What are their first movie theater memories? Did they ever skip school to see a movie growing up? What movie scared them the most?
And so on and so forth. You get it. Movie memories.
Email us with your movie memories at CinemaCrespodiso@gmail.com!
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In episode 167, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn are joined by first time guest Samantha Haar (www.twitter.com/iamThatSam) from A Mediocre Time With Tom And Dan.
Chris and Drew review Pee-Wee’s Big Holiday.
The Netflix Instant Pick of the Week is The Master.
Billy D reviews Daredevil Season 2, The Expanse Season 1 and a PC video game that is like “Doom on crystal meth.”
Dr. Drew gives his two cents on taking vacations.
The Crespodisco features a song from the soundtrack for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.