Netflix pick for 10/26/2015 – ‘eXistenZ’

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As heard in episode 146 of Cinema Crespodiso.

From 1999, “eXistenZ” is one of those movies that should have a much bigger audience and cult following than it already has, but hey, that just means there are more people out there ready to get sucked in to this amazing, puzzling, and unfortunately somewhat familiar world. A story about a virtual reality game designer in some unspecified near future and the violent “realist” movement trying to take her and all of gaming down, this is a weird, creepy, cool, bizarre movie, which means it is standard pre-2000s David Cronenberg, which is a great thing.

Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is the world’s foremost game designer, and the movie starts with her giving a demonstration – the first ever – of her new eXistenZ gaming system. But when an assassination attempt on her live disrupts the demo, she ends up on the run with security guard Ted Pikul (Jude Law), and while on the run, they have to test out the eXistenZ game pod and ensure it still works properly, as it is the only copy in the whole world and also cost millions upon millions to develop. And when Ted logs in to the game for the first time with Allegra, things start getting really wonky, as he starts to lose concept of reality and they delve deeper and deeper into the game.

This movie gets into our relationship with technology, and while it was made over 15 years ago, it feels more relevant now than ever before. We all hear the same old complaints about people being less and less connected with each other personally because we are all too busy to connect with each other electronically, and this story explores this concept, as it is possible for people to spend so much time in the virtual world of the game that they forget about the real world and neglect it, and hence themselves.Continue Reading …

#146 – Long Live The New Flesh

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In episode 146, Chris Crespo is joined by guest co-host Steve Etchie (www.twitter.com/Etchie) and first-time guest Amy Drew Thompson (AmyDrewThompson.com).

Chris reviews Steve Jobs, and Amy reviews Crimson Peak and The Last Witch Hunter.

Billy D reviews Possession and The Entity.

Chris, Amy and Etchie all talk about their favorite Halloween movies.

The Netflix Instant Pick of the Week is David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ.

The Crespodisco features a Sammy Davis Jr. song and a Julio Iglesias song from the movie Tinker Tailor Solder Spy.Continue Reading …

Op-Ed: Will ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ break box office records?

star_wars_episode_vii__the_force_awakens_ver3In case you have not heard, there is a movie called “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” coming out on December 18, 2015, and with a full two months to go before release, all sorts of people have worked themselves up into a lather in anticipation of this sure-to-be huge movie event. As a matter of fact, this particular film will be so huge that people are having fun speculating upon the size of the movie’s financial potential. So the question is, will “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” break box office records?

Yes.

And no.

To keep things in perspective, the monster opening weekend is a relatively recent phenomenon. Thirteen years ago, in the summer of 2002, “Spider-Man” shocked the world by being the first movie to ever have a three-day opening weekend of $100 million or more ($114m, to be precise). Since then, the $100 million opening weekend has become the new barometer for a successful launch, with 31 other movies opening to that amount at a minimum, with 21 of those movies making more than $114m in just three days. It has gotten to the point where “Godzilla” can open at $93 million and somehow still be considered a disappointment. So what of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens?” How much does it have to open to in order to be considered a success?Continue Reading …

Spoiler Bonus Episode – ‘Crimson Peak’

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In this SPOILER-FILLED bonus episode, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn talk in depth about Crimson Peak, all the weird and wonderful things that happen in that movie, all the secrets, and that crazy last 20 minutes.

Beware of all the spoilers because Chris and Drew are gonna spoil the shit out of this, so unless you do not care about knowing all the details, watch Crimson Peak first and then listen to the show.

But hey, you can do whatever you want.

Enjoy the show.

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Review: ‘Bridge of Spies’

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Based on a pretty amazing true story, “Bridge of Spies” is an old school style Cold War era thriller, a movie about spies and geopolitical tensions and the ominous specter of a full blown thermonuclear war threatening to break out at any moment, but more specifically it is about some of the hidden and secretive actions of rival governments, and also how these governments view the populace and use them to their own ends, and how the populace could in term actually find a way to use their governments.

James Donovan (Tom Hanks) is a successful insurance lawyer at a large law firm in New York City, and one day he shows up to work to find that he has been elected by seemingly every other lawyer in New York to be the defense counselor for Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), a man arrested and charged with multiple counts of espionage and accused of being a Soviet spy. Drawing the short straw, he in convinced rather easily that this is in the best interest of the justice system itself, as it needs to appear obvious to everyone that this accused Soviet spy is still getting the full benefit of the American constitution, and Donovan sets out defend this man, all the while suffering anger and vitriol from the public at large.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Crimson Peak’

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From the director of such modern horror classics as the vampire film “Cronos” and the ghost story “The Devil’s Backbone” and the wickedly dark adult fairy tale “Pan’s Labrynth,” each one creepier and spookier and more violent than the last, comes a…costume drama of manners and high society? Well, in a way, yes absolutely, this is the case, but of course Guillermo Del Toro isn’t just making a turn of the century love story in the style of “Wuthering Heights” and “Pride and Prejudice,” he takes this classic genre of storytelling and infuses it with what he knows and does best, and that is telling the tale of monsters, whether they be vampires or ghosts or the scariest type of monster of them all, humans. This movie is about a woman having to choose between two suitors but also having to survive a bad situation which she doesn’t realize is bad until it is too late.

This is “Crimson Peak.”

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Netflix pick for 10/19/2015 – ‘The Hunter’

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As heard in episode 145 of Cinema Crespodiso.

“The Hunter” is one of those rarest of movies, especially these days, which is to say, this is one of the very few times we get to see the great Willem Dafoe as the lead character in a film, as opposed to be relegated to the sidelines one of the many supporting roles that he routinely knocks out of the park. But here the movie is on his shoulders and he carries it wonderfully through the forests of Tasmania.

From 2011, this Australian production is an adaptation of a novel about a fella hired by a military biotech company to hunt down an elusive animal and collect its DNA, and as if that wasn’t enough, this fella is instructed to finally kill any remaining traces of this already thought to be extinct animal so as to maintain a monopoly on what he finds.Continue Reading …

#145 – Crespodiso Year One

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In episode 145, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn are joined by first time guest Mike Venditti (www.twitter.com/Ditti33) from 96.9 FM The Game as well as Your Girlfriend’s Favorite Sports Show.

Chris and Drew review “Crimson Peak” and “Bridge of Spies.”

The Netflix Instant Pick of the Week is 2011’s “The Hunter.”

Billy D is initially though to have finally died at the movies, but makes it in time to review “The Final Girls.”

We get listener reviews of “Spy” and “Goosebumps.”

Dr. Drew gives us his two cents on some upcoming video game and comic book releases, plus explains why his social life will soon be non-existent.

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Review: ’99 Homes’

99Homes_PosterHey Orlando, Florida, congrats on being in a movie starring Michael Shannon and Andrew Garfield! Too bad it’s because you had one of the biggest mortgage foreclosure markets in the country, but at least they filmed the movie there and brought some much needed economic support to the region. Oh…the movie was filmed in New Orleans, Louisiana? Well…better luck next time, I guess.

“99 Homes” is the story of a man trying to provide for his family during a very tough time, and what that man is willing to do to both himself and others so he can care for the ones he loves. It is one thing to sit in relative comfort and say to yourself that you have certain moral lines and ideas about ethics and legalities, it is another to have your comforts taken away and to be put into a dangerous position, one which makes you reevaluate what you may be willing to do.

Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) is such a person, a honest and hardworking family man who finds himself without work due to the worldwide economic collapse of 2007, and due to the lack of work and lack of funds, finds himself on the receiving end of an eviction, one from his long time family home that is packed with memories, which makes it all that much harder. But now the bank owns the home, and working as a rep for the bank is asshole realtor Rick Carver (Michael Shannon), who spends all of his time pressuring families to sell their homes for a few thousand dollars so he can flip them, and if they don’t take the pay out, he just waits for the eventual eviction process and takes the home then.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 10/12/2015 – ‘Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau’

LostSoulSo most of us know that the 1996 film “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” featuring an obese and eccentric Marlon Brando and a thin and unbearable Val Kilmer, is an unmitigated disaster of a movie, an unbelievable amount of money and effort put into something that came out so utterly terrible, truly one of the rarest of movies, the big budget cinematic trainwreck. But movies this bad aren’t made in a vacuum, there is a reason for why it all went so wrong, and in “Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s The Island of Dr. Moreau,” we get an amazing detailing of the events and decisions that brought us such a poorly conceived movie.

Though poorly conceived doesn’t really quite describe what happened, because as the beginning of this documentary tells us, writer/director Richard Stanley approached this newest cinematic version of the classic novel with lofty artistic ambitions – it may have been more like a case of a person’s reach exceeding their grasp, as he spent four years developing a huge story with complex characters and intense adult themes, but when it came time to start shooting the actual movie, things just all went so horribly wrong. And Richard Stanley, father of the entire project, found himself getting fired off his own movie by the studio, and industry veteran John Frankenheimer came in to take his place, and naturally things just got worse from there.Continue Reading …