Netflix Picks - Cinema Crespodiso

Netflix pick for 7/11/2016 – ‘Hot Fuzz’

As heard in episode 183 of Cinema Crespodiso.

From 2007, “Hot Fuzz“is Edgar Wright’s follow up to the hugely successful “Shaun of the Dead,” and with the stars of that movie (Simon Pegg and Nick Frost), they reteamed to make an ode to the action movie genre, going so far as to directly and repeatedly reference both “Point Break” and “Bad Boys II” in the movie itself. Hilarious and quite action packed, “Hot Fuzz” is great because it accomplished what it set out to do, which is to be an homage to these action movies while also sending them up, in an embrace of the ridiculousness which leads to some great action scenes and fun character development, all of it coming together to make a helluva entertaining flick.

Nick Angel (Pegg) is London’s top cop, and he’s so good he makes the rest of the department look bad, so everyone agrees it is in their best interest to transfer Angel to the countryside where he can’t be that great and can’t steal all their thunder and hog up all the limelight and other such metaphors. So he unhappily goes to Sandford, a tiny little town with practically non-existent crime. There he meets the chief’s son Danny (Frost), they get partnered up, and Danny instantly hero worships this big city cop while Nick just tries to do his job without going crazy from the small town mentality of all the people and the high levels of boredom associated with such a village. And then two of Sandford’s citizens turn up dead, it is declared an accident, and Nick Angel immediately suspects there is something else going on. Hence starts his investigation into why exactly Sandford has a very low murder rate but an extremely high “accident” rate, and he uncovers the most dangerous and deadly conspiracy of his career. Hilarity ensues.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 7/4/16 – ‘Coming to America’

As heard in episode 182 of Cinema Crespodiso.

“Coming to America” is one of those movies we gotta show the kids so they can see that not only was Eddie Murphy once the funniest person on the planet but he also made damn good movies. The man has earned the right to do with his time what he feels and make whatever movies he wants to make, but let’s all be honest with ourselves, something happened when the calendar rolled over to the 2000s and the “good” Eddie Murphy movies became the exceptions and not the rule. He provided a funny voice for an animated donkey a few times, had a small but acclaimed role in “Dreamgirls” and was the best part in the otherwise terrible “Tower Heist.” That’s it. And he’s been in seventeen movies since the year 2000. Not a good average.

So put on “Coming to America” and tell those twenty-somethings and younger to pay attention to the incredible array of characters he portrayed years before the fat suited Klump family, and more importantly, how good this guy is at being funny and also carrying an entire movie on his shoulders effortlessly, selling the actual emotional story of it all, striving in every way imaginable way to make this movie as good as it could be. Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 6/27/16 – ‘The Sandlot’

From 1993, “The Sandlot” is a cult favorite, which is kind of odd for a family movie, but this fits that bill. Doing modest box office business at the time of its release, it found new life on home video, where it was discovered by many as the charming, sincere and fun coming-of-age tale of Scotty “You’re Killing Me” Smalls and Benny “The Jet” Rodriguez, two kids you meet in the summer of 1962 and bond over baseball and typical teenage kid antics. Episodic in how the story unfolds, the first half of the film features little stories about Smalls learning the ropes of his new neighborhood, learning how to play baseball properly, and going on tiny little adventures with his new friends to the community pool and to the amusement park.

And then the second half of the movie happens, and it becomes this crazy story about trying to retrieve a valuable baseball that got knocked into a neighbor’s yard, a yard guarded by a legendary animal known as The Beast, which has apparently killed and eaten a number of kids over the years. So many attempts are made to get this ball back in various ways, involving daring feats and absurd contraptions, and the whole movie just has a sense of fun and enjoyment, as if writer/director David Evans was really having a good time revisiting his past and exploring things that he liked so much as a youngster. The love is palpable in this movie, so while it is never surprising or groundbreaking, it is still a great well to spend an hour and forty minutes.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 6/20/16 – ‘The Fury’

As heard in episode 180 of Cinema Crespodiso.

“The Fury” is a 1978 Brian De Palma supernatural thriller about young people with telekinetic powers, the shadowy people who want to turn them into weapons, and the father of one of these young people desperately trying to get his son back. Featuring a great Kirk Douglas performance as the father looking for his son, a wonderful John Williams soundtrack, and way more fake blood than initially expected, this movie is perfect 1970’s De Palma, in that it is, in its own special way, kind of an insane movie.

If you’ve seen any De Palma before, like “Scarface” or “Dressed to Kill” or even his more recent stuff like “Mission: Impossible” and “Femme Fatale,” than you know he has a knack for showing elaborate sequences, often presented in slow motion, usually ending in something crazy like someone’s death, and “The Fury” does not disappoint in this regard. There are a few excellent sequences like this, and some pretty wild special effects that involve things like people bleeding from multiple orifices and even one body exploded from the inside out, as this movie approaches “Carrie” levels of bloody violence.

It is not all psychic horrors, however, as Kirk Douglas gets to do some joking around here and there, especially when he finds himself on the run from government operatives tracking him down and he ends up taking a couple of Chicago police officers hostage to get away and one of them turns out to be Dennis Franz in his very first movie role and his character is very concerned about his brand new car that he is taking for a spin and it is a really well done sequence and a lot of fun and a highlight of the movie for sure.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 6/13/16 – ‘Adult Beginners’

“Adult Beginners” is a tight little comedy about adults in their thirties still trying to figure out exactly how to be adults. Still doing things like sneaking off to smoke some weed, balking at basic responsibilities, and generally fumbling around with romantic interests, this is a movie about people who know they have to be the grown ups in the room and kind of hate doing it but go through with it anyway because that’s what they are supposed to do and lo and behold who woulda thunk it this kind of responsible, adult-like behavior can actually lead to a pretty satisfactory outcome. Surprising only in its maturity in how it tackles these themes, while there is little to separate this from similar “adult coming of age” type dramadies, “Adult Beginners” is still a very satisfying watch.

Jake (Nick Kroll) finds himself broke and friendless when his brand new company immediately goes up in flames, taking his and his investors’ money with it. He has to move in with his pregnant sister (Rose Byrne), her husband (Bobby Cannavale) and their 3-year old kid, and in order to make a few extra bucks, he agrees to be a nanny for his sister while he tries to figure out what to do next with his life. What ends up happening is he spends longer than planned living with them, and he gets involved a little in their lives, and of course things gets upset and problems arise, which leads to be funny mix ups and sad developments between characters in almost equal measure.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 6/6/2016 – ‘Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan’

As heard in episode 178 of Cinema Crespodiso.

“Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” is the Star Trek movie that non-fans can easily watch and enjoy. Of all the Star Trek movies and TV shows, this is the most popular and easily accessible of them all. This 1982 movie is a sequel to the first “Star Trek” movie and plot-wise actually works as a direct sequel to one particular episode of the original television show, which aired 15 years prior in 1967, so in theory it should be a tough movie for non-fans to just jump right into, a particularly tough nut to crack for people not familiar with these characters or their backstories, or the world in which they live. Without seeing that one TV episode, how can anyone know who this Khan character is and why we should care at all about his wrath? How could this movie possibly withstand the test of time but being so specifically tied into something that relatively few people would have seen at the time this movie came out, let alone now, almost 35 years later?

It accomplishes this feat by, quite simply, being extremely entertaining. William Shatner is in now top form as Admiral Kirk, Leonard Nimoy is his reliable Spock-y self as Captain Spock, and Ricardo Montalbán makes an absolute meal out of his role as the titular villain, Khan Singh, a genetically enhanced being who leads his small group of loyal warriors in a vengeance quest against Kirk and the rest of his crew. Revenge is a helluva motivator and for decades it has been used to propel plots forward, and here is no exception. Khan is on a mission of righteous retribution against the heroes of the movie and it all makes for some great, pulpy drama.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 5/30/16 – ‘The Right Stuff’

As heard in episode 177 of Cinema Crespodiso.

“The Right Stuff” is an epic adaptation of the novel of the same name, which detailed the beginning of the US Government space program and how it all really started with military test pilots trying to beat the demon in the sky by being the first to break the sound barrier, and how these are the same men ready, willing and able to be the first person to be strapped to a rocket and launched into outer space. This movie is over three hours long because it needs every minute of it, providing both great character profiles of the men involved in this program and also showing how the space program evolved and what everyone went through to make it happen. It is a crazy story populated with interesting people and this movie nails all of it and turns that novel into a sprawling and impressive piece of epic entertainment.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 5/23/16 – ‘Welcome to Leith’

As heard in episode 176 of Cinema Crespodiso.

“Welcome to Leith” is a documentary about an asshole who tried to buy up enough land in a tiny North Dakota town in order to turn it into a white supremacist safe haven, with himself positioned as their leader. And here’s the M. Night Shyamalan like twist – this isn’t an old untold story from the 1800’s about some old ex-slave owner or something like that, this whole thing happened in 2012, just a few scant years ago.

And now here in this foul year of our Lord 2016, thanks to a certain political and cultural climate in the air we have a whole bevy of openly hateful racists and bigots who have become emboldened to share their retrograde, backwater and completely destructive worldviews with anyone who will care to listen, making documentaries like this all that more important because we, as an evolving species, have ignored these kinds of people and allowed them to wallow in their ignorance for long enough, and we need something like to at least open peoples’ eyes and show them that “post-racial America” is just as bad if not worse than the America that has come before it. Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 5/16/16 – ‘Best in Show’

As heard in episode 175 of Cinema Crespodiso.

“Best in Show” is a Christopher Guest mockumentary about a number of different dog owners and their shared dream to have their dog named “best in show” at the Mayflower Kennel Club Dog Show. But just because this is a “mockumentary” doesn’t mean the movie mocks these people; all the different dog owners have their own little quirks and stories and these things are meant to be comedic, but the movie never looks down on them or belittles them. There is a fine line between portraying these kinds of behaviors in a comedic way or a mean spirited way, and Christopher Guest has always shown the class and restraint to embrace his dopey characters and love them.

And that is key because in watching “Best in Show,” there is a quality of “lovable losers” so to speak, they have dreams and goals and hobbies and they may seem silly but they are sincere about them, and it makes for a very fun and watchable (and rewatchable) movie because the characters are fun to be around and watch react and evolve.Continue Reading …

Netflix pick for 5/9/16 – ‘Bowfinger’

As heard in episode 174 of Cinema Crespodiso.

Movies about making movies is tricky genre to crack because most people don’t like seeing how the sausage is made, but every now and then something is done in this weird subgenre and it works, and “Bowfinger” from 1999 is one of those movies, a satirical spoof comedy about a bottom of the ladder Hollywood producer trying to put all his minimal resources together to make his version of a big blockbuster on a shoe string budget. Written by and starring Steve Martin, directed by legendary Frank Oz, and featuring Eddie Murphy in two roles (he plays polar opposite twin brothers), this is both a broad comedy about a bunch of hustlers and dreamers trying to make a movie, and a critique of the airheaded, profit minded, superficial, hyper sexual and unfulfilling underbelly of Hollywood and Los Angeles Culture.

Bobby Bowfinger (Martin) is a Roger Corman type of movie producer, barely getting by in the industry by cranking out low budget schlock, and he finally wants to strike out on his own and direct his first movie. He has everything in place except for a studio to distribute the movie, and he manages to get a deal from a big time producer with the caveat that the lead role is played by gigantic movie star Kit Ramsey (Murphy). When Ramsey turns down Bowfinger, he decides to secretly film Kit as he went about his business in LA in order to illegally integrate him into the movie. And when Kit disappears, they have to find a lookalike to fill in for him – enter Jiff (also Murphy).Continue Reading …