Action - Cinema Crespodiso

Review: ‘Man of Steel’

In what now appears to be something of a “love it or hate it” scenario, the first Superman movie in seven years has arrived to much buzz and fanfare, and it has divided the critics right down the middle, while delighting the majority of audiences who have seen it so far. It’s an origin story all over again, the same one we’ve known since the Big Blue Boy Scout debuted in 1938, an origin that was pulled from the same old messianic stories that have been told for centuries and centuries, just with different twists and spins and new flavors. So how was the spin on this one? How does “Man of Steel” separate itself from not only other Superman movies, but from comic book movies and origin stories in general?Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Furious 6’

Following the over the top ridiculousness of “Fast Five,” the fifth installment in the increasingly popular “The Fast and the Furious” series, comes an action spectacle that veers on the edges of satire, loaded with plot holes and logic leaps and bits of human action that defy all known laws of physics, and proving that rampant disregard for human life is a hot commodity at the box office. “Furious 6” is here, and it is going to get in your face with all of its action and stupidity and you it dares you to not enjoy any of it.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Iron Man 3’

Hey, you guys hear about this “Iron Man 3” picture that just came out? Apparently it was hotly anticipated and people came out in droves opening weekend to check it out, a record setting opening weekend, mind you. But was it all worth it? Did this movie delight the world like the first “Iron Man,” or did it leave a wet fart in the collective mouth of the audience like “Iron Man 2?”

Well it is safe to say that “Iron Man 3” is certainly no wet fart in the mouth (okay, enough with that imagery). As a matter of fact, “Iron Man 3” definitely boasts the tightest and most professionally written Iron Man story to date, as the first film had a very unspectacular third act and denouement, while the second film was just a cobbled together mess of a movie. But not so with “Iron Man 3,” written and directed by Shane Black, who took the elements that gave him such success with “Lethal Weapon” and “The Last Boy Scout” and implemented them here with aplomb. Right from narration that opens this movie, one can feel Shane Black’s unmistakable style on this thing, as the opening voiceover feels like a leftover bit of dialogue from “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (the last Shane Black – Robert Downey Jr. collabo).Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Olympus Has Fallen’

“Olympus Has Fallen” feels like a movie based on an old script from the 1980s, updated to fit our current geopolitical climate and technological advancements, but containing the same jingoistic overtones that permeated many of our country’s action movies during the Cold War with the Soviets. This is basically “Air Force One” mixed with “Under Siege” and “Executive Decision,” which are all riffs on “Die Hard” anyway. So let’s just call this movie “Die Hard in the White House.”

This movie is all about a day in which a small yet well-armed North Korean regiments launches a full scale attack against the White House in Washington, D.C., ultimately taking the President (Aaron Eckhart, The Dark Knight) hostage along with the Vice President and others, leaving Speaker of the House Trumbull (Morgan Freeman, The Dark Knight Rises) in charge of securing the White House and the President inside. But of course the real hero of the day is the lone guy who is in the wrong place at the right time, disgraced Secret Service officer Mike Banning (Gerard Butler, Coriolanus), who manages to be the one guy loose in the House and able to sneak around and pick off terrorists one at a time and feed information back to the House Speaker and everyone else in the war room.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Dead Man Down’

Nowhere near bad enough to just hate on, but definitely too sloppy and ridiculous to actually be good, “Dead Man Down” is just a forgettable crime drama about revenge and learning how to move on with life after tragedy. From the director of the original “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” comes another middle of the road movie that has interesting touches here and there but ultimately adds up to a whole lot of nothing.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Oz the Great and Powerful’

“Oz the Great and the Powerful” is kind of a weird movie, as it is a prequel to a very popular film, but legally speaking can’t be too associated with that other very popular film, so some things can be referenced but others can’t, and we’re all like, “come on, we all know what’s going on here, why all the squabbling over copyrighted imagery?” Anyway, here it is, a prequel to “The Wizard of Oz,” the origin story of the man behind the curtain and the three witches who battle for control of the Oz empire.

Oscar “Oz” Diggs (James Franco, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Pineapple Express) is a carnival magician in turn of the century America, in the heartland of Kansas. He’s also a bit of a scumbag, as he woos local girls with the same story he gives everyone, but also at least knows he is a bit of a scumbag when he finds out that an old flame is getting married to some dude, and he refuses to stop it from happening because he feels like he doesn’t deserve such a nice person (and probably also because he doesn’t want to get locked down).Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Jack the Giant Slayer’

“Jack the Giant Slayer” is a big ole bloated boring movie that never really gets to “so bad it is good” territories. Instead it is just forgettable, a fairy tale turned into a $200 million blockbuster, but somehow despite the scale and budget, it doesn’t feel like a big old blockbuster. Instead it is kind of a breezy tale of men versus giants, with some familiar iconography thrown in to tie it all to something preexisting, because obviously no one wants to watch something that isn’t based on something else, right?

The story centers around Jack (Nicholas Hoult, Warm Bodies), a young farmer boy who gets his hands on some magic beans, one of which causes a giant beanstalk to the grow into the heavens. But unlike in the old tale “Jack and the Beanstalk,” these heavens are filled with gross looking Giants who are eager to find a way back down to the Earth to eat humans. There is also some bit about a magic crown made from a melted down Giant’s heart and black magic that controls the Giants, and a usurper (Stanley Tucci, The Hunger Games, Captain America: The First Avenger) to the crown of the king (Ian McShane, Snow White and the Huntsman) and his rambunctious daughter (Eleanor Tomlinson, Alice in Wonderland) who really starts a lot of the mess to begin with when she runs off from home because she feels all like trapped and stuff.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Snitch’

This poster promises truck carnage. The movie delivers.

Welcome to the year of Dwayne “The Rock (copyright World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc)” Johnson, a year with four different movies featuring the most successful wrestler turned actor since Hulk Hogan, two of these movies from film franchises, another movie from the most bombastic director working today, and “Snitch,” a family drama and thriller about the downside of federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws in regards to the oh-so-costly War on Drugs (copyright Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon).Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning’

“Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning” is a crazy movie because it is totally unexpected and weird and cool and really anyone into action movies or weird horror hybrids should definitely check this movie out, because despite the fact that it is a sequel to a sequel to a sequel to a not-very-good 90s movie about Vietnam soldiers turned into soldier cyborgs to battle for the government, it is still a pretty wild and awesome movie, full of the strangest little touches and an interesting enough story that it definitely stands out as a cinematic freak of nature, something actually fascinating to watch and enjoyable when it is all said and done.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘A Good Day to Die Hard’

This is what we were all afraid of, this is the exact thing that everyone doesn’t want to see happen, yet here it is, it has happened, it is in our face and all we can do is take it because we are all suckers. When people turned out in droves for the summer blockbuster, PG-13 rated and preposterously titled “Live Free or Die Hard,” certain people’s eyes lit up, as they saw they could still squeeze quite a bit of money out everyone’s favorite New York City detective perpetually in the wrong places at the wrong times. So here is some more squeezing, this time an R-rated non-blockbuster but still a new “Die Hard” movie, still featuring an ever-aging Bruce Willis, and still getting worse than ever as a franchise.Continue Reading …