Action - Cinema Crespodiso

Review: ‘The Nice Guys’

“The Nice Guys” is a return to the modernized film noir private detective template that writer and director Shane Black previously played with in “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang,” and like that movie, here we have a pair of men who don’t exactly get along but find themselves having to work together to unravel a conspiracy that have unwittingly stumbled upon, with wise cracks and dead bodies peppered in their wake. That is to say, for the most part. this movie is a good time.

For the most part because “The Nice Guys” isn’t afraid to get dark or a little real here and there, as both characters deal with alcohol addiction the whole time, with one abstaining and the other indulging, and this takes them down some dark paths, especially when it comes to how it affects the lives of those close to them. Also there’s some murdering, and sometimes it is played for laughs, and other times characters openly talk about how stuff like this makes them bad people, and they don’t want to be bad people, but sadly that might be the case no matter how hard they try. They want to be nice guys, but one is drunk and will take your money and the other is violent and fond of his brass knuckles.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Captain America: Civil War’

The thirteenth movie in the franchise known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), “Captain America: Civil War” is most definitely a unique product of movie making in both good ways and bad. While this particular installment of this ongoing saga benefits greatly from many hours worth of character development spread over numerous movies, it also has that feeling of being not so much a complete movie but more of a big budget half step, just another episode in this hugely expensive serialized story. If you haven’t seen the other twelve Marvel movies, then just walking into this movie is very much like picking up a random comic book and just reading a story that is in media res, with characters and callbacks that just come out of nowhere and make no sense in a vacuum. In that way, this movie can not exist on its own in a meaningful capacity without the “Iron Mans” and “Captain Americas” and “Avengers” that came before it.

After a fight in a public space causes casualties, the Avengers are asked to sign an agreement, ratified by a panel representing 117 countries, that says they would be beholden to this international committee, who would decide on a case by case basis as to whether or not this group of mostly American superheroes should be deployed. Basically some official oversight to keep them in check, acknowledging that their actions in previous movies, while meant to save people, also cost many innocent lives. In their attempts to save billions, they have still killed millions. Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) feels much guilt when confronted by a grieving mother, and coupled with everything else going on in his life, sees this agreement as a decent solution to an obvious problem. Steve Rogers a.k.a. Captain America (Chris Evans), still feeling burned by the government from his last movie, refuses to become beholden to some panel, no matter the intentions. This causes a rift in the group as some people agree to sign and others do not.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Green Room’

“Green Room” is quite simply not for the faint of heart. Intense and foreboding, with the constant specter of gruesome violence hanging palpably over every scene, this is a movie that gets to a point in which every move and decision can lead to something unimaginably disastrous. A simple set up leads to almost unbearable tension which eventually explodes, leaving an impressive body count in its punk rock wake. In this story, no one is safe and everything is on the line, and when it gets down and dirty, watch out.

A struggling band takes a gig somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, and they take it knowing that they would be playing for a bunch of skinheads and racists. But they need the money so they accept the gig, and just try to get in, play their set and get out. Those first two parts went down just fine. Getting out becomes impossible when one of the band members (Anton Yelchin) walks into the green room moments after a murder; he sees the dead body, tries to call the police on his cell, gets stopped by the people running the club, and it is on from there. They put the whole band in the green room while they sort it out, and the band turns the green room into their holdout, knowing that these backwoods racists wouldn’t just let them walk away.

And the tension builds. And builds. And builds. Until…pop. Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Hardcore Henry’

It was only a matter of time before we got our first ever first-person point of view action movie, and now that it is here in the form of “Hardcore Henry,” we have another example of all the gimmicks and stunts in the world not being able to make up for a complete lack of interesting story or characters. Not to say “Hardcore Henry” is a total waste of time, as it is an impressive technical feat of a movie, but when it is all said and done, it is also surprisingly boring.

Since the movie’s perspective is 100% from that of the main character, we learn about the other characters in the movie as the story progresses. Well “story” is a loose term used to describe the series of objectives given to Henry so he can move from scene to scene, all in an attempt to rescue his wife and also his inventor Estelle (J-Law lookalike Haley Bennett) from the clutches of some white-haired weirdo named Akan (Danila Kozlovsky) who has telekinetic powers that I am pretty sure are never explained at any point. When the movie starts, Henry “wakes up” in a lab and sees Estelle putting him together and she tries to explain to him what is going on, but before he gets the full story, they are attacked by this Akan fella and his goons, she is eventually kidnapped, and Henry finds himself meeting up with a guy named Jimmy (Sharlto Copley) who tries to help Henry along the way.

Review: ‘Eye In The Sky’

“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.

Review: ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’

“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?

Review: ‘The Brothers Grimsby’

“The Brothers Grimsby” ended up being one of those movies that I did not like nearly as much as I wanted to like it going in. Sacha Baron Cohen is a comedy force unto himself, and he has a specific style of using idiocy to make some great points, to use jocularity to approach difficult subjects, but unfortunately there does seem to be something in the way of diminishing returns when it comes to his movies. And at the most recent and lowest end of this spectrum is his latest, an action comedy which would have fit right in with 2015’s glut of spy-related movies.

Cohen is Nobby Butcher, a welfare cheat and soccer hooligan living with nine children and his girlfriend (Rebel Wilson) in the small town of Grimsby, where he was born and raised. For 28 years, Nobby has been separated from his younger brother Sebastian due to the foster care system, but Nobby becomes reunited with his brother (Mark Strong), who now happens to be one of MI6’s top secret agents. Nobby immediately and predictably screws things up for Sebastian, and the two of them have to go on the run from MI6 in order to clear their names and also to save the world or something. You know, generic spy movie stuff.

Review: ‘London Has Fallen’

“London Has Fallen” is one of the worst kind of action movies, which is that it is the kind of film that wants to mine real world politics in the name of action and suspense, and it does so without any nuance or actual thought being put into the situation they are exploiting, and as a result ends up being a gross reinforcement of outmoded stereotypes used to maintain a constant sense of general Fear and Loathing. What’s worse is that this particular movie pays a little bit of lip service to idea that maybe Western governments bring a lot of this violence on themselves, but that is all negated anyway with a couple awkward lines of dialogue and a specific character detail.

Basically this movie did start out with the balls to show an American drone strike at a wedding, something that does happen all the time in the Middle East, as drones are used to blow up all manner of gatherings of people as long as there is just a slight possibility of them killing an actual terrorist. And it would have been kind of amazing if the “bad guy” in the movie was indeed wrongly targeted, but they made sure to let us know the main baddie behind the whole crazy terrorist plan in the story is an arms dealer, providing weaponry for all sorts of armed conflicts around the world, making money on the backs of the dead. He does get to point out that this is the same thing the US government does, and they just don’t happen to like the people he sells weapons to, and this is a valid point after all, the ridiculous hypocrisy of selling weapons to some groups of people and labeling other groups as terrorists for doing the same thing. But just saying this isn’t enough, this guy is bad this movie tells us and despite the collateral damage killing him is a worthy cause.

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.

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).