Action - Cinema Crespodiso

Review: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’

For a good while there, “Guardians of the Galaxy” has more in common with sci-fi space epics than it does with the other Marvel comic book superhero action movies and that is definitely a good thing. It is a fun, joke-filled romp through some crazy locations, like a space jail filled with all sorts of beasts and the inside of a huge, floating, severed head of an ancient space god. There are different alien species and kooky technology and a walking tree and a talking raccoon and for the most part it all makes for a pretty damn good time at the movies.

So why does “Guardians of the Galaxy” feel a little hollow?

Because make no mistake, there is plenty of entertainment to be had from this thing, as it has an irreverent tone and sense of whimsy that has definitely been missing in this day and age of the brooding blockbuster. This movie doesn’t take itself seriously (except for the couple of scenes that we ARE supposed to take seriously), it has a fun 70’s pop soundtrack that keeps heads bopping and toes tapping, there are more special effects and huge action scenes than you can shake a stick at (if that’s the kinda stuff you want from your movies), and there are good performances from folks who are really giving it their all, really buying into their ridiculous characters and just selling the shit of them. So what the hell else does this movie need?Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Hercules’

Well if “Hercules” gets anything right, it is having the one and only Dwayne Johnson playing the role, as he has the physicality and imposing stature required to be a conceivable half-human, half-god bad ass warrior mountain of a man, and thanks to that innate physical capability he possesses coupled with his unending charisma, “Hercules” mostly works as an entertaining piece of fantasy action. If there is anything wrong with this movie, Dwayne Johnson is not among them. And I am not just saying that because I fear this large man will read this and might possibly squish me into nothingness.

Because yes, there are some things wrong with “Hercules,” and we might as well start with the marketing versus what we go, as the movie was sold as a big fantasy movie involving Hercules battling all sorts of beasts and monsters, but the movie features all of these encounters during the opening of the movie, and in actuality, we don’t get any action involving any beasts, there is actually very little that is fantastical about this movie, it is all a great big trick, and we have all been had. This is not Dwayne Johnson as the son of Zeus battling great beasts, but instead Dwayne Johnson as a guy who is just a mercenary and who leads a small group of random people from job to job. And that is kind of lame.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Lucy’

There has been this idea floating around for a long time that we humans only use 10% of our brain’s power and capacity, effectively leaving so much potential and power untouched and unused, and of course it plays right into our own innate desire to see ourselves as the top of the food chain, the masters of the universe, the end all, be all of creation and/or evolution. Not only are we the best things to happen to this world, but we have so much more power to obtain, so much more to do, we can (and will!) be even better because goddammit we are humans and we have earned the right to rule all, even only utilizing a fraction of our brain.

Too bad it has been pretty thoroughly disproven that this particular idea of “brain capacity” and 10% usage is false and misinformed and just wrong.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Purge: Anarchy’

“The Purge” was a 2013 horror movie, in which it was posited that America would have extremely low unemployment levels and crime rates if all crime was legal one night of the year. Somehow if people were allowed to do anything they wanted, including murder, for 12 hours out of 365 days, then they would be totally chill the rest of the year, due to the release of their aggression. This is a bunch of bullshit, because one does not follow the other. Aggressive people are aggressive people year round, and people with criminal tendencies can’t just sit on them for the other 8,748 hours of the year. So the premise of that movie was BS and then the movie itself didn’t do anything with this premise and instead was just a run of the mill home invasion film (albeit one with Ethan Hawke totally giving it his all and classing up the joint). So in summation, “The Purge” was bullshit through and through.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’

Look this one is pretty obvious thematically speaking, amiright? We can all agree on this much. As a continuing allegory for the age old inability of the human race to work together in peace and harmony and without hurting each other, “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” hits all the most obvious albeit important notes over and over, those about the importance of family and the duality of man and the conundrum of how our survival instinct can lead to our own downfall. In the most simplest of terms, after everything is left in shambles and on fire and smoldering with the specter of violence of death draped over the world, the most important question is asked: Can’t we all just get along?

“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is not an excellent movie because of the top notch and often stunning visual effects or because of the well crafted and interesting action scenes but instead it is excellent because of how the movie is properly made from start to finish, with each scene moving the story forward, either via advancing the plot, the themes or the characters, often times simultaneously, and it makes for a fast moving, engaging and interesting summer blockbuster. Entire scenes consist only of computer generated characters, communicating often in soft grunts and sign language, yet thanks to some bold yet beautiful strokes, so much information is given that it allows us to actually get to KNOW these characters, and to understand their wants and needs, and this is a beautiful thing.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Rover’

“The Rover” is an Australian western set in the future, but that doesn’t mean sci-fi in any way, as actually they go in the other direction, depicting a world totally collapsed and depressed, a harsh world with no amenities or benefits of technology, but instead a barren land of little food and less hope. This is the world in which this story exists, and it is a brutal world, one in which the rule of the land is merely survival of the fittest and nothing more.

And in a scenario like this, one must be wary of people like Eric (Guy Pearce), a man whose sole possession is his car, and who has nothing else in his life, and definitely nothing to live for. The movie starts with him sitting in his car in the heat of the desert as flies buzz around his face, and he can’t even be bothered to swipe them away, he just lets them land on his face and mouth and he doesn’t care at all. So when three dumb criminals steal his car and use it as a getaway vehicle, he sets out to find the guys and get his car back because he’s got nothing else, nothing to lose, no loved ones waiting for him, no place to go, he has all the time and hate in the world, so off he goes, looking for his car.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’

Well what the hell did ya expect? Michael Bay has made three Transformers movies of varying degrees of quality (said degrees ranging from “watchable” to “abominations”), so when he announced he would do a fourth one, did any of us think that it would be that much better or that much worse than any of the other films? If we did, we were foolish. Because “Transformers: Age of Extinction” is just another Michael Bay Transformers movie, with the only thing really separating it from the rest is the length, which is to say, this movie is long as Hell. So depending on your opinion of the other three movies, this new installment is either more of that same chaotic (Bay-otic) action and mechanical Sturm und Drang that you’ve come to love, or it is visual and aural torture akin to cinematic waterboarding, as you just feel like you are drowning in relentless action and noise.

Then again, you could fall right in the middle of these two reactions, because even for the uninitiated (for we ARE initiated), there are some things that can be appreciated in this story of humans trying to take their planet back from the alien robot beings that hide among them, whether or not these alien robots were formerly friends or foes of said humans. It is an us versus them scenario, with the only thing balancing out the aliens’ advanced technology being the humans sheer force of numbers, as well as their crafty and underhanded nature (as exemplified by shady government dealings with multiple parties).Continue Reading …

Review: ’22 Jump Street’

The comedy sequel is a tough nut to crack. It is nearly impossible to recapture the magic that makes a comedy so memorable and fun to begin with, as if there is some sort of blueprint to making a great comedic film, and usually we are left with at best pale imitations of the great comedy that we all remember fondly or at worst an abomination of a film that would even make us question why we liked the original movie in the first place. So where does “22 Jump Street,” the sequel to the surprise comedy hit, fit on this spectrum of disappointing and sub par comedy sequels?

Well, nowhere really. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears, I wouldn’t have believed that a comedy sequel could have been so funny and enjoyable and downright comparable to the original, but I DID see it, I DID hear it, and believe me when I tell you that I did laugh. And I laughed and I laughed, because “22 Jump Street” is damn funny front start to finish.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Edge of Tomorrow’

Welcome to the fun side of war. Well, a sci-fi war against an alien threat involving a video game style restart mechanism that renders the specter of death, at least temporarily, into less of an unwanted state of (not) being and more of an asset which can be used to defeat the enemy in the most rad of ways (read: weaponized mech suit).

“Edge of Tomorrow” doesn’t want to tell us that war is bad, we know that war is bad, we’re not idiots, so instead “Edge of Tomorrow” embraces the war and the mayhem and the horrific numerous possibilities and turns it all into a romp of a summer blockbuster, into a (dare we say it) almost light film about the terror of war and the kind of guts and dedication and intensity it would take to get launched into such conditions and even dream about making it out alive, yet alone victorious.

War is indeed a force that gives us meaning, so when our main character Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) finds himself thrust onto the front lines of an invasion against an alien stronghold in Europe, his cowardice and lack of spine or discipline becomes readily apparent. When confronted with battle, he stumbles around like a lost child, someone’s sick joke writ large, as death and destruction literally rain down all around him (on a beach, by the way. In Normandy. Because you know…metaphors!), and really it is a miracle that the pathetic Cage even makes it as long as he does in the battle and manages to pull of what he can, and soon enough he dies a rather horrific death (which is saying something considering the ways people die all around him), but thanks to the exact manner of his death, something clicks and BOOM, Cage wakes up in the previous day, and finds himself having to re-live the same day or so, leading up the battle all over again. And he goes to war. And he dies. And he wakes up.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Maleficent’

In Disney’s “Maleficent,” the world finally gets a chance to hear and see the story that no one wanted to know, the back story of the evil fairy witch lady from the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. You know that one, right? We all know it. The young princess gets cursed by some mean old bitch to fall into an eternal sleep by her 16th birthday through the pricking of her finger on a loom, and she can only be saved by a kiss of true love. And when we all heard this story when we were kids, that’s the thing that we wondered about, right? Why did she do this whole cursing thing? Who is this lady? What makes her tick? Well step right up for answers.

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