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#164 – Sentient Garbage Made Flesh

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In episode 164, Chris Crespoand Drewster Cogburn are joined by returning guest Curtis Earth, from The Curtis Earth Show and Curtis Earth Trivia.

Chris and Drew review Triple 9 and Gods of Egypt.

Billy D presents us with a massive Crespodome Battle Royale.

The Netflix Pick of the Week is Electric Boogaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films.

Dr. Drew gives his two cents on how awards for art is whack.

The Crespodisco features two songs from the soundtrack for the great movie Blue Ruin.

Review: ‘Triple 9’

“Triple 9” is like a bacon cheeseburger that looks great but ends up being mediocre; all the right ingredients are there, it looks very well assembled, the patty is big, the cheese is melted, the bacon looks crispy, this thing looks like it should be awesome. But then you eat it and realize the meat has no seasoning, and the ingredients are kind of limp, and despite looking awesome, ends up being bland and forgettable. Its like someone knew how to make a burger, but didn’t put any love or care into it. This could have been a great meal, but instead it was just basic and uninspired.

“Triple 9” follows a lot of characters, which is its first problem. There’s Mike (Chiwetel Ejiofor), who runs a small crew that does jobs for a Jewish Russian mob family. His Baby Mama (Gal Gadot) is the sister of Irina (Kate Winslet), who runs the family on behalf of her incarcerated husband, so its a little complicated for Mike when it comes to working with these folks. Meanwhile, his crew is made up of a friend (Norman Reedus), his friend’s ex-cop turned junkie (Aaron Paul) and two crooked cops (Anthony Mackie and Clifton Collins Jr.), and they are tasked by the Russians to take on a very difficult heist, so they have to come up with an extreme plan to pull it off.

Bonus Episode – Oscar Picks 2016

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In this bonus episode, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn embark on their fourth annual Oscar Picks bonus episode.

Chris and Drew go through all 24 categories for this year’s Academy Awards and they make their respective picks.

As per usual, the loser will have to complete some sort of punishment or bet or whatever the hell you want to call it, which will be decided eventually.

Will George Miller win Best Director? Does Mad Max: Fury Road have a shot at winning Best Picture? Or will The Revenant clean up a whole bunch of awards? Will The Big Short or Spotlight surprise anyone? These questions, plus more, will be asked, though not really answered, in this bonus episode of Cinema Crespodiso.

Review: ‘The Witch’

“The Witch” is a slow burn of a horror movie, in which something feels off and disturbing almost right away, and the terror builds slowly and the evil permeating the entire film reveals itself gradually. We figure out pretty early on what is happening, but we have no idea the extent of it all until the very end. A story of an early 1600s Puritan family living in the wilderness on the edge of a forest inhabited by something terrible, this is the kind of movie that gets under your skin and creeps you out from within.

William (Ralph Ineson) takes his family and leaves a settlers’ plantation because his religious views were not compatible with the new town’s position on religion, and he takes them out into the wilderness where they find a big open spot next to some ominous looking woods. Soon they have a home and a farm, tended to by William, his teenage daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), his teenage son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), while the mother Katherine (Kate Dickie) takes care of a couple of annoying little twins and their brand new little baby Samuel. One day, Thomasin is out with Samuel watching over him when he gets snatched away from her in less than a second, and his disappearance is sudden and definitive. This baby kidnapping early on sends the family dynamics into an off-kilter direction, with the mom blaming Thomasin and the father wondering if they were simply cursed by a vengeful God unhappy with their sins. Thomasin, for her part, is not sure who to blame, but the family circulated lie that a wolf took the child does not sit well with her because she was there and she knows it wasn’t a wolf. So what could it be? Well, you’ve seen the title of this movie, right?

Netflix pick for 2/22/16 – ‘Silver Linings Playbook’

As heard in episode 163 of Cinema Crespodiso.

With “Silver Linings Playbook,” writer and director David O. Russell found himself in the midst of what would end up being a three-movie run of highly acclaimed, commercially successful and critically lauded films. Squished between “true life” tales “The Fighter” and “American Hustle,” with “Silver Linings Playbook” we got the story of a young man getting over a nervous breakdown connecting with a young woman battling her own personal demons and how these two damaged people were able to help each other through the powers of friendship, honesty and good old fashioned choreographed dance routines. This movie was very popular and well liked and it helped very much that there is a lot of great chemistry between this movie’s lead actors, Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence.

#163 – Bonus Swaggery

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In episode 163, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn drink sangria and review The Witch.

Billy D reviews Southbound and Estranged.

The Netflix Pick of the Week is Silver Linings Playbook.

Dr. Drew gives his two cents on being true to yourself.

The Crespodisco features two songs from the movie You’re Next.

Crespodiso Film School – Bruce Lee

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In this Crespodiso Film School BONUS episode, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn talk about the life and career of martial arts legend, movie star, philosopher and artist Bruce Lee.

They start with the life of Bruce Lee, they talk about how he came to America as a teenager, how he got the attention of Hollywood, and how he made himself into a movie star despite the racism he encountered within the industry.

They also talk about Bruce Lee’s movies, including Lee’s final and incomplete film “The Game of Death,” and the differences between the 1978 film and Bruce Lee’s intended version.

Plus Chris tells the ridiculous story about how Bruce Lee’s son Brandon Lee was killed on the set of “The Crow” due to insane incompetence.

So open your ears, learn something, and most importantly, enjoy the show.

Review: ‘Zoolander 2’

“Zoolander 2” is unfortunately not a good movie. Whereas the first “Zoolander” had some heart and came across as a fun and funny skewering of pop culture, “Zoolander 2” feels misshapen and just cobbled together, a weird series of bad jokes and celebrity cameos which make less and less sense as the movie wears on, until the whole thing finally ends with a group cameo by some of the world’s top fashion designers, cameos which surely made not one single person laugh, because who gives a shit if Tommy Hilfiger or Anna Wintour appear in this movie? What teenager is going to be wowed by this movie having a couple of lines of dialogue for Marc Jacobs or Valentino Garavani? And which in-the-know fashionistas (who actually would recognize these people) are ardent fans of Ben Stiller and absurdist comedy? For whom exactly is this terrible movie intended? Justin Bieber fans who also want to see him killed? Folks excited for a 2016 comedy featuring fat jokes? Susan Boyle completists? People who laugh at the mere sight of Willie Nelson?

“Zoolander 2” is an insane movie, and not in a good way. It looks pretty lousy, even for a brightly-lit comedy, and the “story,” as it were, definitely feels like 2 or 3 different screenplays mashed together. Like they couldn’t decide if they wanted to make a movie about Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) being a terrible father or if they wanted to make a movie about old fashion icons staging a comeback or if they wanted to make a movie about the fashion industry’s obsession with youth and overly thin models, so they just threw it all into a blender and hit the “frappe” button and now we have this odd thing in which Derek is a widower and single father who had his son taken away from him by child services and he stages a fashion comeback so he can try to get his son back but he doesn’t realize this whole thing is somehow a set up by Mugatu (Will Ferrell) to lure Derek’s kid into a trap so he can do a blood sacrifice that will somehow give multiple people everlasting youth, and also Hansel (Owen Wilson) has to decide which orgy group he loves more or something like that, and also a bunch of celebrities and pop stars around the world have been killed and trust me when I say it only tangentially connects to the rest of this slop.

And also Penélope Cruz is in this movie as a member of Interpol’s Fashion Police because fuck you America, that’s why.

Netflix pick for 2/15/16 – ‘Hardware’

As heard in episode 162 of Cinema Crespodiso.

“Hardware” is a crazy 1990 low budget sci-fi movie about a rogue robot with a serious bloodlust, let loose within a single apartment, in which said robot inflicts a very surprising amount of bloodshed and mayhem. This is the kind of down and dirty movie that doesn’t get made often enough. Rarely is this kind of gonzo imagination put on display in a large way like this, a movie in which even the silent secondary characters are compelling and interesting.

An ex-soldier (Dylan McDermott) in a post apocalyptic wasteland comes home to his girlfriend (Stacey Travis) and gives her a robot skull, knowing she would like it because she takes old pieces of metal and combines them to make sculptures. She uses the skull in a piece she already started working on, which turns out to be a bad move because this skull is still sentient and it is able to use the rest of the metal material around it to make some sort of crazy body, and immediately it’s initial instinct to kill makes it go rampaging around this apartment. And thanks to some unannounced visits and others trying to help, this very small scale movie has a large body count. To put it lightly, this movie just goes insane.