REVIEWS - Cinema Crespodiso

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: ‘Spring Breakers’

Hey, do you like to oogle scantily clad young flesh whilst listening to Skrillex, all wrapped up in the confines of an arty indie movie trying to say something but in the end not really saying all that much at all but still looking cool doing it? Then buddy, do we have the perfect movie for you.

“Spring Breakers” is the story of four small town college girls who raise the funds to make it to Spring Break week in St. Petersburg, Florida (because everyone all over the world knows that the one place anyone associates spring break with is St. Pete, Florida), and once they get there, set out to be as debaucherous and wild as they possibly can, which means pretty much scene after scene of half naked and fully naked people drinking from beer funnels and jumping around in slow motion with their hands in the air and watching girls make out with each other and trashing their environment with reckless abandon, just moving around from setting to setting like beaches and hotel rooms and pools.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Incredible Burt Wonderstone’

“The Incredible Burt Wonderstone” is a comedy about a magician who has lost his way, forgetting why he got into the profession to begin with, and his life decision, coupled with the changing tastes of the public, have forced him into a downward spiral, from which only magic can save him. How ironic. With a strong cast, and more than a few good jokes, this movie ends up being more entertaining and likable than it would have seemed possible at the outset. Really, going in to this movie, it looked like a hunk of crap. So when in fact it turns out to be pretty decent, that’s a win for everyone.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: ‘Searching for Sugar Man’

“Searching for Sugar Man” just won the Best Documentary award at the 85th annual Oscars, and it is pretty easy to see why this very likeable and well made film would get the accolades it has received over the last few months, culminating with the biggest movie award in the land of pretension awards, and to think it all started with a talented musician just falling through the cracks in the early 1970s.

A Swedish-British co-production, “Searching for Sugar Man” is an epic international story, as it starts with an American singer named Rodriguez in the 1970s and ends in South Africa in the present. Basically, Rodriguez was a very talented singer and songwriter who put together a couple of great albums in the early 70s, but his music didn’t go anywhere in America, and he ended up going back to his old construction job.Continue Reading …

Review: ‘The Master’

Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master” is now available for mass consumption in home viewing form, and now it can be seen by many more people, many of whom will be downright flummoxed by this film, a strange and meandering tale of two men and their friendship forged through some psychotherapy and a shared love of harsh drink. Oh, and one of those guys is starting a weird cult-like group that has more than a thing or two in common with Scientology.

The movie starts with Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix, Walk the Line) in the Navy during World War II, but he isn’t shown doing any war type things. Instead he’s on a beach with a bunch of other naval men, doing different things like cutting up coconuts and wrestling around and making a large naked woman out of sand, and in most of these things, it is already obvious that Freddie is a little off. And when he’s on the ship with everyone, he siphons fuel from torpedoes and drinks it to get hammered and then passes out on a high perch where other sailors can through shit at him. And while we don’t see him in combat, we do get to see his exit interview from a VA hospital ward for soldiers with post-traumatic stress syndrome (though of course back then it was handled much differently than today), so maybe this guy is a little wacky because of what he’s seen and done in the name of war?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 …