REVIEWS - Cinema Crespodiso

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: ’10 Cloverfield Lane’

According to producer JJ Abrams, “10 Cloverfield Lane” is not a direct sequel to the 2008 found footage monster movie called “Cloverfield,” but instead is hopefully the beginning of a series of movies that will fall under a Cloverfield-themed banner, essentially an anthology of genre movies that will be similar in spirit and tone to each other but will be different stories going in different directions. Like “The Twilight Zone” or “Tales From The Crypt,” the word Cloverfield will theoretically start to mean something more to people than just “giant monster.” And with “10 Cloverfield Lane,” it appears that they have started this journey of a thousand miles with the proper first steps.

The cool thing about “10 Cloverfield Lane” is how the story and plot are both quite small and contained to a single set and only a few characters, but the scope of the movie ends up being pretty epic. It’s actually a great example of how a movie can give an audience just enough so that they can make bigger leaps with their imaginations, wondering how the details provided actually continue to extend throughout this world logically. We don’t need to actually see the full picture, just give a few smartly chosen details and let the audience do the rest.

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: ‘Zootopia’

“Zootopia” is a pretty chill movie, mostly because its central message of acceptance and tolerance is most welcome in this divisive “us versus them” climate currently being stoked in the mainstream media and out on the streets. Fear Of The Other is a very real and palpable thing and there is no shortage of folks who make it their mission to use it to drive as many wedges as possible between communities via propaganda and campaigns of hate, which means now is a great time for a big commercial piece of art to come out and literally say out loud “hey, stop judging each other and start being cool because we’re all in this together and it is our differences which bring us together and complete us and allow us to function together brilliantly.” Is it a daring message? No. Is it important? Absolutely.

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: ‘The Witch’

“The Witch” is a slow burn of a horror movie, in which something feels off and disturbing almost right away, and the terror builds slowly and the evil permeating the entire film reveals itself gradually. We figure out pretty early on what is happening, but we have no idea the extent of it all until the very end. A story of an early 1600s Puritan family living in the wilderness on the edge of a forest inhabited by something terrible, this is the kind of movie that gets under your skin and creeps you out from within.

William (Ralph Ineson) takes his family and leaves a settlers’ plantation because his religious views were not compatible with the new town’s position on religion, and he takes them out into the wilderness where they find a big open spot next to some ominous looking woods. Soon they have a home and a farm, tended to by William, his teenage daughter Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), his teenage son Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw), while the mother Katherine (Kate Dickie) takes care of a couple of annoying little twins and their brand new little baby Samuel. One day, Thomasin is out with Samuel watching over him when he gets snatched away from her in less than a second, and his disappearance is sudden and definitive. This baby kidnapping early on sends the family dynamics into an off-kilter direction, with the mom blaming Thomasin and the father wondering if they were simply cursed by a vengeful God unhappy with their sins. Thomasin, for her part, is not sure who to blame, but the family circulated lie that a wolf took the child does not sit well with her because she was there and she knows it wasn’t a wolf. So what could it be? Well, you’ve seen the title of this movie, right?

Review: ‘Zoolander 2’

“Zoolander 2” is unfortunately not a good movie. Whereas the first “Zoolander” had some heart and came across as a fun and funny skewering of pop culture, “Zoolander 2” feels misshapen and just cobbled together, a weird series of bad jokes and celebrity cameos which make less and less sense as the movie wears on, until the whole thing finally ends with a group cameo by some of the world’s top fashion designers, cameos which surely made not one single person laugh, because who gives a shit if Tommy Hilfiger or Anna Wintour appear in this movie? What teenager is going to be wowed by this movie having a couple of lines of dialogue for Marc Jacobs or Valentino Garavani? And which in-the-know fashionistas (who actually would recognize these people) are ardent fans of Ben Stiller and absurdist comedy? For whom exactly is this terrible movie intended? Justin Bieber fans who also want to see him killed? Folks excited for a 2016 comedy featuring fat jokes? Susan Boyle completists? People who laugh at the mere sight of Willie Nelson?

“Zoolander 2” is an insane movie, and not in a good way. It looks pretty lousy, even for a brightly-lit comedy, and the “story,” as it were, definitely feels like 2 or 3 different screenplays mashed together. Like they couldn’t decide if they wanted to make a movie about Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) being a terrible father or if they wanted to make a movie about old fashion icons staging a comeback or if they wanted to make a movie about the fashion industry’s obsession with youth and overly thin models, so they just threw it all into a blender and hit the “frappe” button and now we have this odd thing in which Derek is a widower and single father who had his son taken away from him by child services and he stages a fashion comeback so he can try to get his son back but he doesn’t realize this whole thing is somehow a set up by Mugatu (Will Ferrell) to lure Derek’s kid into a trap so he can do a blood sacrifice that will somehow give multiple people everlasting youth, and also Hansel (Owen Wilson) has to decide which orgy group he loves more or something like that, and also a bunch of celebrities and pop stars around the world have been killed and trust me when I say it only tangentially connects to the rest of this slop.

And also Penélope Cruz is in this movie as a member of Interpol’s Fashion Police because fuck you America, that’s why.

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).

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