Comedy - Cinema Crespodiso

Review: ‘Aloha’

“Aloha” is a movie that is not very good at all, mostly because it can’t decide it if wants to be a story about a disgraced military contractor moving on from past mistakes, or about a guy reconnecting with an old love and coming to terms with their new lives, or about a guy meeting a gal and how they fall in love with each other, or about the militarization and annexation of Hawaii by the U.S. government, or the appreciation of Hawaiian culture and how the “white man” keeps tearing it down by making promises to the locals and then betraying them, or about coming to terms with being a parent, or about the U.S. military engaging in private contracts with multi-billionaires. This all combined somehow into one movie and made for a mess of a picture.

“Aloha” starts with Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper) arriving in Hawaii, where he sees some people he hasn’t seen in years, namely before he totally sold his soul to be a contractor facilitating arms deals in the Middle East (or something like that). He sees old flame Tracy (Rachel McAdams) and meets her children for the first time, which includes a 12 year old daughter who happened to come in to this world less than a year after Brian and Tracy broke up. Hmmm, I wonder if this will come back around in some way (of course it does, it is telegraphed from the opening). Brian puts on the puppy eyes and sort of tries to get back in with Tracy, though romantic overtures don’t seem to be what he’s really after, especially since he’s kinda buddy-buddy with Tracy’s current husband Woody (John Krasinski).Continue Reading …

FFF 2015 Movie Review: ‘Results’

“Results” is the kind of romantic comedy that doesn’t get made often enough, in that it doesn’t just focus on the differences between genders, it doesn’t devolve into some stupid “war of the sexes,” and it doesn’t revolve around some sort of fake tome or list of rules dictating how dating life should be or how relationships are supposed to work. This is just a story about some people and how romantic entanglements can be real and messy and can lead to some problems between otherwise well meaning people.

In this case, the well meaning people are Trevor (Guy Pearce), the upbeat trainer and gym owner who is totally business-minded at this point, one of his trainers named Kat (Cobie Smulders) and the rich client who shows up one day and kind of slowly changes their lives. That rich client is Danny (Kevin Corrigan) and the movie starts out actually centering on him, as the story starts with him being dumped by his wife, and then jump cuts to his arrival in Austin, Texas, where he rents a large house and wanders around it bored out of his mind.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Wild Tales’

“Wild Tales” is a fun, crazy, over the top movie about six separate scenarios, short stories involving different characters, none of them related to each other at all save for the fact that each story involves some sort of revenge, usually stemming from very innocuous and seemingly simple actions, all of them building to insane crescendos of some sort of violence.

To go into details about each short story and to give away what happens in each one would do a disservice to you, so there will be a lack of deets here. Suffice to say, these stories involve a strange coincidence on an airplane, a mobster getting dinner at a deserted diner, a bit of road rage, undeserved parking tickets, a family cover-up, and lastly, a wedding party gone horribly wrong. In each story, seemingly normal well-adjusted people are pushed to the edge of civility (sometimes they are shoved, and sometimes it just takes a tiny little nudge), and that thin line that separate people from wild animals often gets blurred, if not outright erased. This is evident with the opening credits, as actors names are shown over images of wild animals, like lambs and foxes – sure we drive cars and exchange pleasantries and observe man-made laws, but in the end, we are all just as wild and unpredictable as any animal in nature.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘What We Do In The Shadows’

From Kiwi comedians (as well as writers, directors, performers, etc.) Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi, “What We Do In The Shadows” is a mockumentary in the same vein as the great Christopher Guest films “Best in Show” and “For Your Consideration,” films that follow around a very specific group of people and explores their weirdness, especially in comparison to the rest of “normal” society. But instead of dog owners or bad actors, this is a movie about centuries-old vampires, who also happen to be flatmates.

“What We Do In The Shadows” centers on Viago, Vladislav (the Poker), Deacon and Petyr, who all share a flat together in Wellington, New Zealand. Most of the movie is them hanging out and building up to the masquerade ball held every year for undead folks like them, zombies and witches (though are witches really undead? Anyway…), but before we get there, it really is more like a slice of life kind of thing, what do these guys do with their time, what are they thinking, how they do coexist, and so on. So we get scenes like the one in which three of the flatmates sit together to go over the rules of the flat again, as one of them has been neglecting their chores, and obviously the humor of this kind of scene comes from the fact that they are having a very basic, standard argument among people who live together, just with the exception that they are vampires, so an argument could devolve into them flying in the air and hissing at each other.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Maps to the Stars’

“Maps to the Stars” is a satirical dark comedy about Hollywood and its denizens, namely the psycho-babble loving, attention whoring, secret hiding folks who pop up within the movie industry all over the place. A family with multiple shameful secrets, an aging actress trying to revive her career, a limo driver with acting aspirations of his own, and a mysterious girl all come together to form this weird little tale of hidden regret, sought redemption and psychosexual revenge.

“Maps to the Stars” initially focuses mostly on Havana (Julianne Moore), an actress with a famous, very respected and very dead mother, who is on the verge of an emotional breakdown, with the root causes for this being her quickly declining stature as a working actress in Hollywood and her memories of a mother whom she felt abandoned and mistreated her. Havana’s mother made a movie called “Stolen Waters,” and a remake of this movie is being planned, so Havana wants to play the same role her mother did, with the hopes that this would be her comeback. But people really don’t want to take Havana seriously, and it is kind of hard to take her seriously when she comes across as super flakey very often, as well as emotionally needy and somewhat unpredictable. It feels like Havana, especially as she is played by Moore, is a middle-aged version of Lindsay Lohan – once promising and in demand, but now washed up and the butt of all the jokes, she spends her time smoking cigarettes in her mansion, doing yoga and wondering why no one will work with her.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Inherent Vice’

“Inherent Vice” is a rambling, shambling, somewhat confusing, extremely colorful, fun yet melancholy film noir about a burn out private detective, his love for his ex-old lady, and how that love gets him embroiled in all sorts of trouble with all sorts of weird characters in a somewhat fictionalized 1970 California. Based on the Thomas Pynchon novel of the same name, this is Paul Thomas Anderson doing his version of Robert Altman doing his version of a PI story, and if that sounds delightful to you, then you need to see this movie right away.

Larry “Doc” Sportello (a delightfully unpredictable Joaquin Phoenix) is just laying around his home one night smoking that weed when his ex-girlfriend Shasta Fay (Katherine Waterston) shows up out of nowhere and enlists him to help her out of some jam revolving around a secret plot to kidnap a wealthy real estate developer named Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts). He agrees because he still loves her, that much is as obvious as the sun in the sky, and he’s off snooping around and asking questions and just getting himself deeper and deeper into some mystery involving Neo Nazis, the LAPD, heroin smugglers, a mysterious schooner with its own back story, a massage parlor, a presumed dead saxophone player turned government snitch, a drug abusing dentist, a privatized mental hospital and a lieutenant with aspirations that include becoming a big time movie star.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Top Five’

Chris Rock has been in a ton of movies, from small roles to leading roles, and he’s even directed some of these movies himself, but for the first time we have a movie that actually feels like we are getting the cinematic equivalent of one of his stand up routines in all the best ways – the surety of the storyteller, the confidence in the delivery, the attention to detail, the wry observations and interesting twists on everyday things, “Top Five” is the Chris Rock movie we’ve all been waiting for, though no one has been waiting for this more than Mr. Rock himself.

“Top Five” is about a day in the life of famous comedian turned famous actor Andre Allen (Rock), and this is a very busy day for him. As a major part of his gambit to convince people he is more than a comedian, he is out and about in New York City to promote the opening of his new movie “Uprize,” in which he plays the lead character in a film about the slave rebellion in Haiti. Part of the promotion involves being tailed by a reporter for the New York Times all day, which ends up being a foxy lady named Chelsea (Rosario Dawson), and their relationship starts off contentious because of all the bad things the Times’ resident film critic wrote about Allen’s movies (just substitute Andre Allen for Adam Sandler and you get an idea of the vitriol he got from film critics). On top of the annoying interview tour and the journalist all over his shit trying to get a quote, he has to deal with his own past as he visits family and friends, getting mixed signals and reactions from them all.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Horrible Bosses 2’

In 2011, in a summer of multiple R-rated comedies, “Horrible Bosses” was the surprise break out hit of the group, making over $200 million worldwide and resulting in a sequel that has come out…now. “Horrible Bosses 2” is here. But does it capture the same sense of fun and hijinks as the original? Or is this an unreasonable facsimile of something that was once good, a failure of an attempt to recapture old magic?

Well, writer/director Seth Gordon did NOT come back to do this sequel, and instead those duties were passed along to Sean Anders, who is the writer and/or director behind such movies as the not-so-good “Superbad” wanna be “Sex Drive,” the hugely successful and very not funny “We’re the Millers” and the massively disappointing “Dumb & Dumber To.” With this as our benchmark, then it can be said that “Horrible Bosses 2” is the most enjoyable film of the career of Mr. Anders, a definite highlight among comedic low lights. That being said, this movie really isn’t that good. It is not a terrible anti-comedy monstrosity like some of those other movies this guy has had the pleasure of working on, but it’s not something worth revisiting or even recommending. It’s a mild diversion for 108 minutes, with jokes built on the backs of jokes made in the first movie, and new jokes that just aren’t that funny.

Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) and Dale (Charlie Day) have quit their shitty jobs (though I am pretty sure I remember them having finished the last movie happy with their positions as they took care of their horrible bosses, because like, you know, that was the point of that movie) and they are going into business for themselves by manufacturing and selling a shower multi-tool called the Shower Buddy. They start going into business with a massive company run by a dude (Christoph Waltz) and his douchebag son (Chris Pine) and these two guys screw over Nick, Kurt and Dale, so the team of N-K-D concoct a ridiculous kidnapping scheme to try to get their money back. Shit quickly goes awry and they find themselves in it a little too deep with nowhere to go but deeper.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Dumb and Dumber To’

Oof.

This movie is just not good. It is the kind of comedy sequel that makes one question whether or not the original is actually as funny as remembered. The same writers and director, the same actors, even the same tone and style of humor. So why was it so funny twenty years ago and now it is so damned unfunny? What could have possibly been their undoing?

“Dumb and Dumber To” picks up twenty years after the original, with Lloyd (Jim Carrey) and Harry (Jeff Daniels) looking the same save for the wrinkles. It is possible that these characters are somehow dumber now as they have aged, but that’s it. They are the same. And they go on another ridiculous road trip based on another misunderstanding and they encounter another set of killers and Lloyd’s lust for love is again the driving force for the shenanigans. So much is the same. So why does it stink?

This movie is a bunch of dumb humor without a hint of cleverness to any of it. At least “Dumb and Dumber” felt like a “smart” dumb movie, whereas this one just goes for the low hanging fruit. For a movie being so many years in the making, it sure feels quite half baked and not so well thought out. The initial set up is a decent one, too: Harry and Lloyd set out to find Harry’s kid that he just found out he has, but now this kid is all grown up. Obviously the fruit of their respective loins is bound to be a dumb dumb (sorry to break it to you, Forrest Gump), and the character they came up with is okay, but she’s not all that memorable or interesting in the long run. It’s not like I want to see her in a “Dumb and Dumber 3” or anything. Nothing against Rachel Melvin who played this character, she was great, it was just what they asked her to do, which wasn’t much.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘Birdman: or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)’

“Birdman” is about fame and infamy, artistic expression both successful and failed, dealing with a reputation despite whether or not it is earned, and mostly it is about that point in just about everyone’s life in which they question what they are doing, whether they are doing it right, and whether or not they are failing at life in some way. For most people this is known as the “mid-life crisis,” though it can happen to anyone at any point, and it can happen multiple times. It happens to more people than not, and from the outside looking in it can be quite entertaining to watch, even if a little sad and even cringe-inducing. The misery of others is comedy to us, if only because we can relate. We just call it “dark comedy,” and then proceed with the laughs. A man in the throes of an emotional breakdown on the verge of losing everything is not funny, yet it actually is if looked at from the right angle. This is “Birdman.”

Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) is adapting a Raymond Carver short story into a stage play, to be produced on Broadway no less, and the only problem for him is that very few people are taking him seriously due to the fact that he made his bread and butter twenty years prior making a trilogy of superhero movies centered around a character named Birdman. He still gets stopped on occasion by Birdman fans asking for him an autograph. When a young kid asks his mom who Riggan is supposed to be, his mom replies, “he used to be Birdman.” That’s a burn for ole Riggan. He didn’t used to be anything. He is what he is, which is a person, Riggan Thomson, an artist, a man, a human being. He wants recognition not for what he once portrayed but for what he can due now in the present, and for some reason he saw this play as his best option. So he gets his best friend and lawyer Jake (Zach Galifianakis) to help him produce this big play and when the movie starts he is just getting ready for previews, which are the dress rehearsal performances in front of paying crowds leading up to opening night.Continue Reading …