Cinema Crespodiso

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Netflix pick for 12/29/14 – ‘The Double’

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“The Double” is a crazy little psychological thriller sorta comedy drama about an introvert who meets his exact double in appearance and physical features but who is also his complete opposite in personality and temperament. Featuring Jesse Eisenberg in the two roles, this is a wonderfully weird and interesting film about identity and the different ways we interact with each other.

From my original review from the 2014 Florida Film Festival:

What really sets this movie apart, besides from two great Jesse Eisenberg performances in one movie, polar opposite characters that he is able to portray so well, is the incredible sense of tone and style that Richard Ayoade uses to convey Simon James’ off balanced world, a world which consumes him in rumbling sounds and dirty grey walls, flickering lights and incredibly shitty service, a dark, desolate, depressing city, mostly populated seemingly with octogenarians, and also, I may be mistaken about this, but now that I think about, I don’t even remember one scene set in the daylight. It’s all indoors or outside at night. Gloomy, bleak and depressing as it gets. I mean, really, who has a funeral at midnight? Besides weirdos. And death romantics. (again, weirdos).

Huge chunks of the movie get played out without dialogue as well, which gives it kind of a silent film kind of quality (though there are plenty of sounds and music, etc, not REALLY silent film) – really this is cinema at its most basic, as a lot of character development is derived from just watching a person do something, the way he lives his life, without having to include a bunch of dialogue and exposition, and it is great to watch when someone does it well like here in “The Double.”

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Netflix pick for 12/22/14 – ‘House of Flying Daggers’

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Zhang Yimou is one of China’s most famous and maybe one of their best film directors, as he has made his fair share of lush, gorgeous, impeccably directed films with only the biggest Chinese movie stars available. Following up his hugely successful and internationally loved 2002 kung fu epic “Hero” is another intricately designed and gorgeous kung film, the 2004 “House of Flying Daggers.”

Starring Zhang Ziyi and Andy Lau, “House of Flying Daggers” is about a rebel group living in a bamboo forest up against the imperial government of the time. But really it is a love story about the group’s sexy, blind leader (Ziyi) and a police captain who fakes being a rebel himself in order to infiltrate their group, only to fall head over heels for this strong and sexy vixen. So now this guy has to figure out to whom he is loyal, his fellow agents of the government, or with the leader of the rebels who his has been tasked with killing? So while this is still a big martial arts epic, it is also an intimate love story, which makes it good for the dudes AND for the ladies. Can’t go wrong there.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 12/15/14 – ‘Infernal Affairs’

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The movie that served as the basis for the Academy Award winning film by Martin Scorsese “The Departed,” “Infernal Affairs” is a 2002 Chinese crime drama that was a mega hit in China, initially propelled by star power and then gaining sustained success thanks to being a well made movie. Obviously “Infernal Affairs” is good because it inspired not only several sequels in China, but the aforementioned extremely popular American remake. Whether or not you have seen “The Departed,” it is definitely worth your time to see where this all started.

Inspector Lau (Andy Lau) is one of the best police officers in his department and is well regarded by his higher ups, which allows him to sneak around and be the mole that he is for a local triad (Chinese organized crime). While working for the police, he leaks information to his real boss, who uses this info to evade arrest. But Lau has a problem and so does the triad in the form of undercover police officer Chen (Tony Leung), a cop who managed to infiltrate the mob and who is leaking information back to the police. Both men are tasked with finding out who the other mole is, and the entire movie is a twisty cat and mouse game as both Lau and Chen try to find the mole while trying not to get found out themselves. It is a great set up and the story is told well, with a bunch of twists and turns that keep things moving and exciting.

The movie jumps right into the story and does not spend much time farting around, instead getting deeper and deeper into this quagmire of a situation, with both characters steadily coming closer and closer to complete ruin. This film gets tense, it is fun to watch and after seeing it you can see why someone like Martin Scorsese would do a remake of it because it just comes across as a fun story.Continue Reading …

Netlix Double Feature Pick for 12/8/14 – Tombstone and Batman Returns

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In honor of episode 1o0 of Cinema Crespodiso, a momentous occasion indeed, we had a double pick for the Netflix Instant Pick of the Week, and this will make for a strange yet fun double feature, believe you me.

We’ll start with a based-on-a-real-story balls out action Western and then we’ll follow that with a Tim Burton Christmas movie that just happens to feature a certain Caped Crusader.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 12/1/14 – ‘Twin Peaks’

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This may be a twenty-plus year old network television show, but the fact remains that the TV series “Twin Peaks” is better than a lot of movies out there, and it can be easily argued that this show was a progenitor to the long form and much more cinematic television shows which are all the rage now – stuff like “The Walking Dead,” “Breaking Bad” and “American Horror Story” owe a lot, if not everything, to this landmark serial created by David Lynch and Mark Frost.

Equal parts murder mystery, soap opera and surreal horror, “Twin Peaks” has it all going for it. The acting is solid and the characters are weird and fascinating, and none may be more interesting than the series lead Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan), an FBI agent who rolls into the quaint, countryside town of Twin Peaks when a popular local girl turns up murdered and a second girl is found having been beaten and raped across the border in Canada, and soon it becomes apparent that there is more going on in Twin Peaks than just some normal murder loving psycho. Otherworldly spirits, hidden alternate dimensions, hallucinated riddle-spouting giants, the Log Lady…there are enough weird characters in this thing to keep everything moving at a nice pace.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 11/24/14 – ‘City of God’

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“City of God” is a 2002 Brazilian crime drama that should have been called “Murderous Children,” because it is all about how crime festers and grows in the poorest neighborhood of Brazil, as little children criminals grow into older, experienced criminals, bringing death and destruction with them wherever they go.

To help make this movie feel as real as possible, much of film was shot on location in Brazil and featured non-professional actors from these impoverished areas, bringing real authenticity to their performances and to the movie as a whole. And it obviously worked because “City of God” almost feels like a documentary, like they just rolled up with cameras and filmed real people doing the things they really do. And yet some of these things are kind of crazy and intense, yet it is pretty normal for them. And since it has been released, it has been nominated for and won all sorts of awards and it has been named on 100 Best Films Ever lists and shit like that so come on, this one is a slam dunk, easy peasy one two threesy, if you haven’t seen “City of God” yet, you are missing out.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 11/17/14 – ‘Killing Them Softly

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“Killing Them Softly” is a great crime drama about a mob-run poker game that gets knocked over and how the mob bosses have a guy they use as their own police and also apparently prefer to communicate solely through their attorney. As this results in scenes featuring Brad Pitt conversing with Richard Jenkins, this is a win for us all.

From my original review of “Killing Them Softly:”

What if the movie going public was sold this movie honestly? Would people have turned out in any more numbers if they knew this was an angsty, arty, condemnation of the kind of business tactics that got us all in this mess in the first place, made in the grand tradition of the hard ass manly directors of yore like Sam Peckinpah and John Milius andWalter Hill? Would that have mattered at all? Maybe there would have been even fewer people. In any case, it’s all said and then, and the movie that condemns improper business tactics and which was sold with misleading commercials made for some bad box office business. But it’ll survive on, like so many well-made movies rejected in their time.

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Netflix pick for 11/10/14 – ‘The Karate Kid’

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Ralph Macchio is all like “I’m a high school kid from New Joisey and these California kids are a’bustin’ my chops over here-unnh!” and Pat Morita is all like “Daniel san, I will-a teach you how to fight-a with kah-rah-tay!” and he gets him to do all the landscaping for his backyard and paint his house and fence and wax his cars and shit and then someone convinces this kid that he was training him to karate fight the whole time. And joke’s on us. Because it fucking worked.

From the director of “Rocky” and the writer of “The Transporter” comes the original “The Karate Kid,” a sweet little romantic comedy coming of age drama featuring karate training montages and a whole karate tournament. Inspiring a generation of kids to try that weird crane kick thing there while standing in waist high water in the ocean, this is a great movie, well made, finely acted and with a solid, easily relatable yet fairly unique story. It has awesome bad guys, a sweet soundtrack, and Elisabeth Shue. Elisabeth Shue, I say!Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 11/3/14 – ‘Django Unchained’

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“Django Unchained” is one of Quentin Tarantino’s crazier movies, and this is coming from a guy known for his cinematic flights of fancy involving quick dialogue, hard violence and clever stories. Equal parts Western and 1970’s blaxploitation, with a Southern antebellum twist, this is a crazy, fun, disgusting, thrilling, saddening, maddening and uplifting movie, all rolled into one glorious blood splatter package.

Jamie Foxx is the titular Django, a name used since 1960’s spaghetti westerns from Italy and usually reserved for the most hyperviolent westerns, and he lives up to the name when he dispenses with the righteous vengeance and furious anger which is much deserved by the nearly inhuman antagonists of this slave trade revenge fantasy tale. And for the second Tarantino movie in a row, Christoph Waltz shows up and kinda steals the show in his supporting role as the good doctor who frees Django and helps train him to become a bad ass bounty hunter. If you really want to go deep with me on this one and see what I think, you can check out my review here from when the movie originally came out in 2012. Rest assured, I only like the more now than I did then.Continue Reading …

Netflix Pick for 10/27/14 – ‘Robot & Frank’

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“Robot & Frank” is a small character film about a retired cat burglar and the robotic healthcare assistant purchased to assist him with his day to day activities. So when the retired burglar decides that he can use the robot to assist him with his day to day duties of cat burglaring, he comes out of retirement for his some good old fashion heisting. Meanwhile he tries to impress a lovely librarian and also has to deal with his oft-absent yet well meaning children who have different views on the use of robotic help aids.

This is an interesting movie because it is science fiction without really having to be so different or implausible. It is sci-fi like “Her” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” movies which use their science fiction premise to tell the stories of characters and their relationships to one another. And the fact that the main character is played by someone with the gravitas and talent, specifically Frank Langella, doesn’t hurt at all. He makes the character of Frank seem real and vital and he makes us care about him even though he comes across initially as an old curmudgeonly fogey.Continue Reading …

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