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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.

#162 – Momentum Music

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In episode 162, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn review Deadpool, and Chris reviews Zoolander 2.

Chris and Drew are briefly joined by Drewster Cogburn 2.

The Netflix Instant Pick of the Week is Hardware (1990).

The Crespodisco features two songs from the Turbo Kid soundtrack.

Dr. Drew gives his two cents on being better prepared to give his two cents.

Billy D reviews Israeli apocalyptic found footage Google Glass movie JeruZalem.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Deadpool’

“Deadpool” is a total have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too kind of movie. A thoroughly unconventional character making jokes at the expense of the thoroughly conventional film in which he inhabits, “Deadpool” features all the greatest hits, like the origin story, the secret friends, the bland villain, the final battle atop a giant obviously CG-ed structure, unmentioned yet obvious collateral damage, it has it all. This is, after all, a comic book movie.

But it’s that rare breed of comic book movie, which is to say, it’s the R-rated kind, meant for adults though we all know the youngsters will probably eat this up. We’ve had “Watchmen” and the “Kick Ass” movies, and the very underappreciated “Punisher: War Zone,” and that’s it. And now we can add “Deadpool” to that list, which is as violent and foul mouthed as a Marvel-branded movie featuring X-Men characters will probably ever get (until the sequel anyway), and thanks to the very nature of the Deadpool character from the comics, they have something that other comic book movies can’t get away with, which is directly referencing this movie as it plays out as well as other comic book movies, bringing a weird element of meta-comedy that feels refreshing among the deluge of superhero movies we’ve been getting hit with for a few years now (and no end in sight).

Netflix pick for 2/8/16 – ‘Turbo Kid’

As heard in episode 161 of Cinema Crespodiso.

Mad Max on BMX bicycles. That is the essence of “Turbo Kid,” a 2015 post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie about a young man trying to survive in a horrible and dusty ruined future, where friendly faces are rare indeed and he’s more likely to run in to blood thirsty and amoral scavenging psychopaths. With a very electronic 80s style soundtrack, impressive low budget special effects (and some wonky CG effects as well), this is a cool, fun movie that is well worth checking out.

#161 – Nick The Chameleon

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In episode 161, Chris Crespo and Drewster Cogburn are joined by returning guest and friend of the show Nick Sharabba!

Chris and Drew review Hail, Caesar!

The Netflix Instant Pick of the Week is Turbo Kid.

The Crespodisco features the main themes from early Coen brothers’ movies Blood Simple and Miller’s Crossing.

Dr. Drew gives his two cents on people supporting R-rated comic book movies like Deadpool.

Billy D reviews The Boy and the newest episodes of The X-Files.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Hail, Caesar!’

“Hail, Caesar!” has been marketed as a high paced screwball comedy, a sort of spoof of the 1950s Hollywood studio system and the distinct genres of movies in which that system trafficked, replete with odes to Gene Kelly dance numbers, Esther Williams aquamusicals, hokey Westerns and of course prestige pictures. But being a Coen brothers movie, audiences will be getting more than just jokes, as this is not the high paced comedy advertised, but instead an alternately silly and somber reflection on faith, purpose and personal fulfillment, emphasized by scenes in which characters discuss communism or have dialectic debates on the truth of divinity in disparate theologies. The Red Scare and Catholic Guilt, both examined in a movie about the one sane person keeping the nuthouse in check.

That one sane person is Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), who runs the day to day operations of Capitol Pictures, which fans of the Coens’ film “Barton Fink” will recognize as the same studio for which Barton wrote in the 1940s (they even name drop Wallace Beery again), and this whole story pretty much plays out over the course of 27-28 hours, though its one of those days that just happens to be pretty pivotal for our main character. While he goes around the studio lot addressing problems and making sure everything is fine, he’s also thinking about a job offer he has to go work for Lockheed Martin, a job that would give him easier hours, better pay, and a guaranteed gig for a very long time. But…would he find it fulfilling?

Review: ‘Jane Got a Gun’

Whereas the Western was once a prominent go-to genre for movie studios from the 1920s through the 1970s, it has fallen out of favor through saturation and overuse, so that now we are lucky to get two, maybe three Western films in theaters over the course of a year. And unfortunately “Jane Got a Gun,” released in theaters now with zero fanfare or marketing from The Weinstein Company, will not be the movie to reverse this trend of get people excited about this genre again. An interesting idea of a story presented in a muddled non-linear fashion within the confines of an ultimately weightless movie, this is the kind of movie that makes for an okay watch on a rainy Tuesday night – simply a way to pass the time with some fine actors doing decent work in a film that just never comes together into something memorable.

Jane Hammond (Natalie Portman) lives with her daughter on a secluded piece of land somewhere in New Mexico, and one day her husband Bill (Noah Emmerich) comes home with bullet wounds all over his back. Jane tries her best to fix him up but he’s bed ridden, paralyzed from the waist down, and for some reason his vision is all blurry (may have been from the booze he was constantly drinking to numb the pain). He also has bad news, telling her that the Bishop Gang was coming for them. This causes Jane to panic a bit, so she hands off her young daughter to a friend for safe keeping, and then goes to her former lover Dan (Joel Edgerton) asking for his help as a gunslinger. He refuses at first, being drunk and bitter, but then acquiesces and agrees to help, while still being drunk and bitter.

Netflix pick for 2/1/16 – ‘Nightcrawler’

As heard on episode 160 of Cinema Crespodiso.

“Nightcrawler” is five-minutes-into-the-future satire, a look at our news media culture and what that machine entails, an indictment of the “blood and guts” mentality of selling newscasts to an ever fearful public, wrapped up in the guise of a darkly comedic noir thriller. Simultaneously gorgeous and ugly, funny and cruel, hopeful and horrified, this is like a modern day “Network,” but if Howard Beale was less an angry prophet of a god and more of a purveyor of socially acceptable smut.

Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom will go down as one of the creepiest, most disturbing and of course fascinating characters from this era of movies, an ugly antihero for an ugly world, he of singular purpose and such incredible drive and determination, put to such horrifying use. It pays to be soulless and self serving, this sayeth “Nightcrawler.”