Joy
Mop & Glowing
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 124 min

The Silver Linings Playbook/American Hustle crew is back!  And possibly better than ever!! David O Russell and Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper bring the JOY and the pain in what has got to be the greatest movie that has something to do with a mop and/or QVC – Joy 

Joy is prideful, and joyful, and funny, and mildly melancholy, and 300% fun.  You know the movie is super super dope when it utilizes Robert De Niro talent (in this day and age) and instead of stupefying it.  And you know I aint no J-Law fan, but I love J-Law in this, and thus I love this movie!!

And the story is all true-ish!!!

Joy Mangano is an inventor.  She invented the Miracle Mop

At one point in time, there was no Miracle Mop, and Ms Mangano needed a miracle to support her children, and her ex-husband, and her wacky mother, and her twice-divorced father.  The mop changed everything and this movie is about getting that mop to market and the struggles to get there.  A total underdog story, that you’ll be rooting for from the get go.  Go Joy! Go Joy! Go!!!!!!!!  

Wait, they made a whole movie about a woman who invented a mop?  Well, it’s more than juss that.  It’s about ideas, and family, and things and stuff.  And what a family!!  You couldn’t ask for a more fun and willing bunch of family folks helping her along - Isabella Rossellini, Édgar Ramírez, Elisabeth Röhm, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen and the Gadsby twins.  Loved them all.  Makes me wish I was a member of her family so I could hug these people!!!

And the QVC stuff was super cool.  You get to see what it looked like at the beginningish, and things, and stuff, and I think it’s juss so super super super cool and honorable that Melissa Rivers played her mom Joan Rivers, and how eerily alike they look

Did we mention that this movie was 300% fun?  You like fun, right?

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Joy to the world – everywhere on Xmas day

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Here We Go Again
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 135 min

Now is not the time for a full review and dissection of the 7th Star Wars movie ever put into existence.  Today is for initial thoughts only, and so here we go – my initial thoughts of Episode VII – The Force Awakens

• this movie won’t change your life.  it won’t surpass your love of IV thru VI, BUT it succeeds where Indiana Jones IV failed
• it’s better than anything the prequels were. it’s less cluttered, CGI-y, pretty, cute, kidsy, dumb. it’s grimy and dark and evil, as it should be
• George Lucas could have never made a satisfying Episode VII.  I truly believe it would have looked like this.  poor Lucas – he tarnished his own legacy, but without him, we’d have nothing to complain about, or love.  but kudos for him for letting go and letting someone else give it a go
• only JJ Abrams could have made a new Star Wars movie work, and let us all move forward in the Star Wars world in this day and age.  he could probably make Citizen Kane 2 something passable.  looking forward to seeing what others can do with Star Wars.  we shall see, but probably we’ll see way too much Star Wars in the decades to come
• the movie is funny, in a good way.  has a lot more fun with itself than previous installments, while remaining very serious
• the new characters are awesome (even though I guessed them all wrong).  I LOVE Rey.  like, SUPER LOVE REY!!! Dog bless Daisy Ridley. I LOVE Finn.  He’s great.  Didn’t get too much of a handle on Poe Dameron, but he will probably be super cool in due time, but hey, aren’t these three newbies juss assuming the same roles that others had in IV – VI????
• Adam Driver was really really really good, and angry.  anger is what Star Wars needs. there was anger in the prequels, but it was dumb anger
• it was AMAZING to see our old favs – Han, Chewie, Leia and a guy who looked like Admiral Ackbar.  it’s kinda sad to see how old our heroes have become – on screen and in life, but I’ll take this over not seeing them at all
• this guy/girl/whatever wasn’t as awful as I thought he/she/it would have been
• I know he’s JJ’s pal and all, but Greg Grunberg doesn’t deserve to be in this movie (unless he happens to be the kin of Jek Porkins)
• the only thing I HATED was that Lord Voldemort is in it
• the movie is grand, but not really full.  the characters are rich, but the story isn’t.  and the plot is kinda, sorta, almos all too familiar.  and the final battle at the end didn’t give off the same kinda UMPPPPPPPPHHH that the old ones did. will something big will blow up at the end?  biggest non-shocker of the year
• not sure how the movie could be anything different or better than what it is.  it had to embrace the past and set up a new future.  it did that, very well, and for that, we all should be grateful, and grateful that the movie didn’t suck

More thoughts to come, after my 2nd, 3rd and 129129129th viewing

Verdictgo: a HUGE Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Force is to be reckoned with, at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Son of Saul (Saul Fia)
Better Culled Saul
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 107 min

And the würst date movie of 2015 is the László Nemes‘ Holocaust drama Son of Saul.  Oh what, you’ve had enough of Holocaust movies?  I kind feel that way (I can say that cause I’m Jewish), but this Holocaust film is unlike any I’ve seen before.  It’s about a Auschwitz death camp prisoner name Saul (Géza Röhrig, who looks like a Hungarian Mark Ruffalo), who is forced to work in a Sonderkommando work unit.  The job comes with zero perks (besides being alive… for the time being), and a zillion yards of pain.  These Sonderkommando workers are tasked with cleaning up all the dead bodies after they’ve been put through the gas chambers.  Yes, the movie is filled with horror, endless horror, but that’s not the main point

After one gassing, Saul finds the body of a boy and decides that it should have a proper Jewish burial.  He adopts this lifeless boy as his own ‘son’, and treats it as such.  While Saul has been stripped of his humanity, he still feels the need to maintain his identity, and his people’s.  The entire film and camera is always focused on Saul – pointing at him, and showing his point of view.  There’s a lot of intimacy with Saul, while there is a lot of horror going on in the background – and while the horror is in the actual background, it is always present.  For most of the film – Saul seeks out any imprisoned Rabbi who can help him achieve his goal of properly burying the boy, while his co-workers are focused on trying to rebel against their captors.  Eventually, it all comes to a head, and this is the Holocaust, so you know it aint ending with peaches and cream

Son of Saul is essential viewing, even if you have to take a date to go and see it

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Saul braves NY and LA this Friday and elsewhen in 2016

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Hitchcock/Truffaut
Book Wormed
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 79 min

This book is required reading for anyone who loves film (loving Hitchcock doesn’t hurt, but not loving Hitchcock is punishable by death) 

Before this book was published, Alfred Hitchcock was regarded as a mere entertainer, but the label wouldn’t last after fan, and fellow director François Truffaut extensively interviewed Hitch for over a week, dissecting his work and process and amazingnessness.  The results were an ephinany to the industry and filmgoers everywhere.  The perception of Hitch started to change – and form into how we think of him today – a true artist and visionary, who changed cinema forever

Any love this book can get is welcomed by me.  I was introduced to it in my Hitchcock class at IU.  I have never forgotten it, but I hadn’t thought about it in awhile, so was glad to have my memory jogged by Kent Jones, who sorta made a doc about it

I say ‘sorta’ – cause he sorta talks about the Hitch/Truffaut interviews and book, and even plays audio clips from the interviews, but Jones keeps veering too far away from them.  Instead of going all in on them – he gives way too much of the running time to other modern film directors basically saying that they love Alfred Hitchcock over and over.  Sure, I love hearing it from Fincher and Scorsese and others, but I didn’t enter the theater for that.  I wanted Hitchcock/Truffaut, not Hitchcock/Truffaut/and a bunch of other gushing directors verbally JOing

STILL, any doc celebrating Alfred Hitchcock is worth seeing, but if you want to know about Hitchcock/Truffaut, yer juss gonna have to read the book, cause this is no adaptation, juss Cliff Notes, barely noting anything

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Hitchcock/Truffaut slashes its way currently in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Danish Girl
Puffy Pastry
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 120 min

The Danish Girl is a tragic and inspiring true story (think The Crying Game meets Boys Don’t Cry meets me crying at how hot Alicia Vikander‘s hot nekkid body is), but the biggest tragedy is that it’s NOT about a woman obsessed with danishes.  DAMN YOU HOLLYWOOD!!!  It’s about some dude who loved women’s clothes and then realized that he was more woman than he was a man.  Don’t be suprised if Eddie Redmayne and his strange lips nab Oscar gold, for the 2nd time in as many years.  What’s his next Oscar baited trick – playing a man with no head, orbiting Uranus?  

Anywho, you should see The Danish Girl, cause it’s really really good, and really really well done, but you should see it and think about what could have been… 

The Danish Girl – The Story of A Girl Who Loved and Lived for Danishes 

  

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

The Danish Girl is scrumptious, currently in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…