Star Trek Into Darkness
Boldly Going Where Man Has Gone Before
Official Website | Trailers & Mo | Homeade Trailer
PG-13 | 132 min

JJ Abrams has re-assembled the single greatestist tribute act known to man (wet dream team – Pine / Quinto / Urban / Saldana / Cho / Yelchin / Pegg) for a 2nd round of fun, and they do it OH so right again, even if all they’re doing is imitating what’s been done before, but with even more lens flares!!!  Star Trek Into Dorkness is not really about much, besides a scowlingly enraged Benedict Cumberbatch enraging his scowl and wreaking havoc cause the only thing that can stop Benedict Cumberbatch is Cenedict Bumberbatch, and since you know there aint no such thing as Cenedict Bumberbatch, you know that nothing can or EVER will stop the awesomeness that is Benedict Cumberbatch, cause his name is so much fun to say, and we will never stop saying his name (ever since he was a Fenella Woolgar Bestest Names Award winner of 2006!) Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch Benedict Cumberbatch 

If only this movie was called Star Trek Into Cumberbatch!!

But there’s so much more to this movie besides Benedict Cumberbatch, like Peter Weller, who you know is gonna end up doing something assholey, and like Alice Eve, who you know is gonna show off her toothy teefy grin, and maybe eat a taco

But there’s so much more to Dorkness than juss Alice Eve maybe eating a taco – like how cockysure rawesome Pine as Kirk still is, and how eye-browsy sharp Quinto as Spock still is, and how to the bone we want to bone Urban as Bones still bonesies, and even though we pegged Pegg as maybe not the right choice to play Scotty, he has since beamed us up to changing our minds, and we still cho-cho-choose Cho as Sulu, and although Yelchin doesn’t have much to yel or chin about, he still roxxx the Ruskie accent shardcore in his minimal amount of screentime.  Kinda tossed about Saldana as Uhura.  She’s hot, and Uhuraish enuff, but why does she have to sweat Spock?  Why can’t she bone Bones?  Or me?  Or Alice Eve’s almost taco?

What am I saying?  I IS SAYING THAT IF YOU LOVES THESE PEOPLE AS NEW ERA STAR TREK PEOPLES THENS YOU WILL WANT TO WATCH THEM DO ANYTHING, like nap, or almost eat tacos, or fly in space, or be awesome amongst lens flares!!!!

JJ Abrams has done so much with the so little that the Star Trek universe had to offer him.  Imagine what he’s gonna do when he gets his spectacles sighted on a real spectacle franchise like Star Wars!  Actually Star Wars seems less like a real franchise these days than Star Trek does now.  WOAH!  I know!  But JJ will make mountonus molehills out of the dumphole that George Lucas left his own franchise stewing in.  And if JJ can’t get the Star Wars franchise back on target, maybe no one can, and then maybe he can take over the Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour company and turn that franchise around and open a franchise in my stomach

Thank you JJ.  You made us believers of something we didn’t ever really even care about before.  Spock to the future, yours and ours!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Trek is boldly but goody in thIghMAX today and at a theater near jews tomorrow

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

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Something In The Air
(Après mai)
It’s No Carlos
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
Unrated | 122 min

It’s the late 60s/early 70s, in France, and students everywhere are pissed about stuff, and they want to do something about it.  News to me, since I’m an American, and we didn’t cover late 60s/early 70s French student unrest in any of our history classes, and I took a lot of history classes cause I was a History minor in college (which got me nowhere… but here?).  So these French students did anything in their power to make their voices be heard – they like firebombed buildings and things, they wrote pamphlets and manifestos on hot topics and stuff, and they did drugs and each other.  Sounds juss like lates 60s/early 70s America, but in France!!!!!!!!!

The GREAT director Olivier Assayas (Carlos, Carlos, Carlos) came of age during that turbulent time, and he autobiographically channels his experiences into his atmospheric Something In The Air.  Newcomer (with a Strokes hairdo) Clément Métayer plays Olivier by way of the character Gilles – the son of a TV writer/director (just like Assayas and his pops is was), who has nothing better to do than fight the power with pal Felix Armand (also with a Strokes hairdo), and get into the pants of Carole Combes & Lola Créton.  But maybe there’s more to life than juss being a shaggy-haired revolutionary shagging chicks????  Gilles is an artist first, and a radical second, but the movie starts with the order reversed.  Not much actually transpires over the film’s two hours, but stuff is happening all around, but that’s not really our concern.  Our concern is for Gilles, but there’s nothing really to ever be concerned about, cause he will shed his anger and become an artist!  Oh, there’s something in the air indeedy-do, and yes, it’s worth inhaling, even if it’s not exactly clear what that something is!

Verdictgo: low-end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

The Air is Something in limited release today, and on-demand May 9th

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Climate Changez
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 130 min

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a Pakistani named Changez (Riz Ahmed), a man who once went to America chasing the Yankee dollar, and is now a professor in his country of origin, possibly teaching questionable curriculum… depending on who’s doing the questioning (and no, we are not reffering to teaching how to do some sports betting or playing poker).  The man questioning him in the present is American journalist Liev Schreiber, who’s looking for a kidnapped American professor from the same university where Changez teaches.  Changez may not have the answer, but he begins to tell his story, and spank Allah he does, cause the past he presents ends up being much more intriguing than anything happening in the present.  Changez regales Schreiber and his Elmer’s Glue cow face with a tale about his once promising life in America, where he was taken under the wing of Wall Streeter Kiefer Sutherland (IN GLASSES!!!) and quickly moved up the finical ladder, and quickly down Kate Hudson’s pants (she’s actually pretty decent in the movie! not decent as in keeping her pants on, but decent as in she’s not being awful in some awful rom-com that’s awful).  Things go swimmingly, and then 9/11 happens, and then the world is with America, and then America turns hateful, and turn on people like Changez, who personally had zero to do with any of it besides the color of his skin and his religion and his nationality.  Enough becomes enough, and Changez demands change, for himself and his home country, so he heads home, where stuff happens, and then we’re caught up to the point where Schreiber and his Elmer’s Glue cow face come walking in to question this and that and why Changez has a beard and is angry at America

Mira Nair‘s take on Mohsin Hamid’s novel is certainly heavy handed, but should a movie about post-9/11 Muslim identity in Western and Eastern societies be dealt with with a light hand?  No, it shouldn’t.  Sure, Nair is a bit out of her depth in a 1/3 of her movie – where guns and hard talk raise tensions in the present, but the other 2/3rds told in flashback are right on point and carry the message across.  Her film practically sinks or swims on Riz Ahmed’s piercingly serious eyes, and she was wise to make him the navigator, as he floats above the given script and keeps us tuned into that bigger picture (he similarly sizzled and dazzled in Michael Winterbottom’s Trishna, and one would assume for him to do the same in many more films to come).  So what’s the bigger picture?  There are more sides to the post-9/11 world than just the one that America wants the world to take.  This is the fundamental point.  It’s more mental than fun

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

The Fundamentalist luctantly opens in limited release today, and on-demand April 30th

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

To The Wonder
Days of Unleavened
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 112 min

A couple, deep in love, ascend the castle mount of France’s majestic Mont Saint-Michel.  They hold hands, caress, kiss, stare at each other’s beauty, the man-made beauty of the castle, and the heavenly nature-made beauty of their tidal surroundings.  The music swells, the cameras swooshes by, she runs wild on the sand, glowing under the wide open sky, and the eyes of god?  Repeat, repeat, repeat.  Wow, we’re at the very beginning of Terrence Malick‘s next poetic masterpiece… right???  Well…

Well, the couple (Ben Affleck & Bond Girl Olga Kurylenko) decide to leave Europe for the friendly suburban plain planes of America, where he does environmental land things.  Guess what, the caressing, kissing, staring, music swelling, and camera swooshes crossed the ocean with them (although the running wild on sand has been replaced by running wild thru wheat fields).  Repeat, repeat, repeat.  But then after they settle in, maybe he’s no longer that into her as she is into him.  The caressing and kissing are replaced by arms being thrown up in the air in disgust, and the staring is no longer the kind kind, and yet the music still swells, and the camera continues to swoosh.  Her visa is up, and he doesn’t marry her, so she has to go home (with her daughter.  we coulda mentioned her earlier, but the daughter doesn’t matter).  He then meets Rachel McAdams (apparently again, although it’s not clear that they’ve met before) and so he’s found a new lady to caress and kiss and stare at, all while the music swells and the camera swooshes.  New she doesn’t like to run thru wheat fields as much as the old she did, but she certainly still loves wheat fields. Repeat, repeat, repeat.  But then the original she comes back into the picture/America so new she goes bye bye, and then he and old she are doing a combo of caressing, kissing, staring and throwing their arms up in the air in disgust, while the music swells and the camera swooshes by.  That’s basically the movie – one long montage of what we juss described, on endless repeat repeat repeat repeat.  Oh wait, forget to mention that Javier Bardem was in this too.  He plays a priest who has like lost his way, kinda like the old she has, and they’re both trying to find their way back, to god, and themselves, and stuff.  Or something

What actually is going on, or transpired, or whatever ever To The Wonder is is anyone’s guess (some say it has to do with the disintegration of Malick’s own marriage to a European lady).  There’s barely any dialog, mostly lyrical narration, and this spiritual meditation babble gets plopped on top of the swelling music and camera swooshes, and guides the viewer further away from understanding.  Look, this kinda stuff was fine when it was in Tree of Life, cause things happened in Tree of Life, like Bradd Pittt saying ‘hit me‘, and death, and dinosaurs, and the creation of earth, AND STUFF, but when you try to use the same GORGEOUS cinematography against a movie of nothing but caressing and kissing and then not caressing and not kissing and lots of running thru wheat fields it doesn’t really do anything for anybody.  It juss becomes one of those Koyaanisqatsi Powaqqatsi Naqoyqatsi movie things, which aren’t really movies, but juss long montages set to the music of Philip Glass.  That’s what this feels like – pretty images with pretty music with pretty much no point.  Look, there won’t be another film in 2013 as beautiful as Malick’s To The Wonder, but beauty doesn’t make a movie.  If I wanted to look at empty beauty, I’d head to my nearest breastaurant

Oh Malick, why did you make such a Terrence Malicky Terrence Malick homage of a Terrence Malick film???  You tried to make like a modern day Days of Heaven in Hell, and ya juss ended up out-Terrence Malicking yerself.  But hey, I’m not really complaining, cause I love that he’s doubled his own output in 8 short years, and has like 99 movies in the pipeline, but are they all going to be these visual poems with no chapters, footnotes, forwards or epilogues??  Maybe time will be kind to To The Wonder, but I have to wonder, wonder what the fcuk that was all about, but for now, God only knows

Verdictgo: kinda pains me to say, but 9reals, this is totes Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Wonders why today in limited release & on-demand

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

42
Artful Dodgers
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 128 min

42 – the story of Jackie Robinson(‘s first year in the majors) – is exactly like Trouble With The Curve, except 42 is really dang good and Curve is really stupid, and instead of an crotchety old man played by Clint Eastwood, we get an old man who sounds like he’s crotchety played by Harrison Ford, and instead of Justin Timberlake being the würstest wannabe play by play announcer of balls thyme we have John C McGinley eloquently barbing like Red Barber, and instead of Amy Adams looking not hot, cause she’s kinda plain like plain yogurt on a plane, we get Nicole Beharie who makes us want to bat our eyes and bunt our balls, and instead of a bunch of dumb actors playing baseball players, we have Chadwick Boseman totally chad wicking the bose as Jackie Robinson, MAN!!!!  Wait, what am I even talking about?  STEAL SECOND!

42 could have been a cornball flick about a dude who did important stuff, like being the first black dude to play major league baseball in a sea of nuttin but whitey fords, but it wasn’t corny at all (ok, so there was a LIL corny-corny-ness-ness, like when a lil black boy in the grandstands says cheesy corny corny cheesy things, but it’s OK, cause he meant well, and the kid didn’t write the corncheeseball dialog).  And even if Harrison Ford hams it up, wrapped in bacon, it’s his (Branch Rickey) story as well, cause he had the balls to put a black dude with white dudes (like Pee Wee Herman Reeses Pieces Lucas Black!), cause he wanted to win, and he knew that white dudes suck at sports.   It’s true  (apologies to white people).  So Rickey/Ford & Robinson/Boseman take chances on each other, and make giant leaps, and the audience is so hooked, lined, and sinker-balled, that we never want them to land, and when they do, they’re safe at home, cause they scored, and we cheered!!  Go home team!!  Especially the home team with the one black dude and 38832 crappy white players!!

The movie doesn’t take risks, but it still rewards.  Nice work Brian Helgeland, although I’m sure somewhere Spike Lee wants to bat your face in cause yer a white guy doing a movie about Jackie Robinson, but Jackie Robinson is not juss a black story, it’s a black AND white AND read all over story.  It’s a story of us, the US-A.  We’re not perfect, but sports is where we level our playing field.  Are there any other sports puns I can make?  Christopher Meloni balks and talks, and Alan Tudyk clears the benches, by doing the mos thankless acting job in the movie – being really really realy racist to Jackie while he was trying to hit a baseball.  Well, Tudyk’s character and racism STRUCK OUT, cause black, yellow, red and white dudes all play baseball together, and it’s awesome, especially when the Ws are mad curlied

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Worth A Peepers

42  adds up at a theater near jews this Friday 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…