Don Jon 
Off Beat Beat Off 
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 90 min

And the most annoying, poorly made debut film by someone we respect, and now don’t fully respect, cause we hated his film so much, film of 2013 is Joseph Gordon-Levitt‘s Don Jon

If you love a movie that revolves around endless internet masturbation (by a character who doesn’t even know how to clear their own browsing history – ZERO REALISM HERE PEOPLES), gratingly AWFUL hammy Joooursey accents (wish I didn’t have ears), endless annoying annoyingness (wish I also didn’t have eyes), that throws away whatever it ‘built’ up in its first 2/3rds for a final third that feels so out place and nothing to do-ish with them first two-thirds that you’ll juss wish this movie were released on any rock from the sun that isn’t the third one

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Love me some Joseph Jason Jordan Gordon-Gerry-Graydon-Levitt-Stein-Berg.  Always felt like he (and James Franco) was to fill the vacuum that Heath Ledger left with his passing.  For the most part, he has come thru, and we relish anything he does, even if it is doo-doo, but Don Juan?  Beyond thunderdome doo-doo.  I wouldn’t wish this film on my würst enemies, and my würst enemies are sports teams from New York and the south, and George Clooney

JG-L plays the title character – a guy who loves the gym, his boyzzz, and picking up sluts, and going to church, and taaaaawwwwwk-ing with horrible Joouuurrrrssssssey accents with his over-acting parents Tony Danza and Glenne Headly.  He also loves his screen sister Brie Larson, but she doesn’t say a word, just plays on her phone and that’s suppose to be funny.  It’s not.  This movie thinks it’s really funny and clever, but it puts the UN in fUNny, and is more like clNEVER

Things get interesting for Jon (but not for us) when Scarlett Johansson shows up and rocks his world (and destroys our ears with her Joooooororuururusseey accent – that’s worseserererer than everyone else’s).  And then she finds out that he masturbates endlessly, and then awkward funny is suppose to happen, but all that happens is how awkard I felt watching this movie about a guy who beats off.  I beat off.  All men do.  But I don’t want to see a movie about it, especially if it has nothing deep to say about it.  JOing isn’t suppose to be something we think deep about.  It’s actually something we all enjoy doing, but then when the climax happens, it’s best to forget about what juss happened – but sometimes remorse seeks in.  Well, Don Juan is the same, but there’s no climax, and it’s all remorse.  WHY DID WE WATCH THIS???

Later in the movie, Julianne Moore shows up resembling an actual character that we could actually care about, but by the time the focus shifts to her, and away from the other crap that came before it, all wees want is Julianne LESS of anything having to do with this movie

JG-L’s production company is called hitRECord.  He should have hit delete on this whole project

Verdictgo:  Slit Your Eyes Out Repoopulous

Donna JOn: if I had to say one nice thing about the movie – I would say that it least it had a lot of hot women in it, like…

Antoinette Kalaj

Don Jon sucks tomorrow at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Rush 
Winning Formula One 
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 123 min

I have negative one interest in Formula One racing, and after seeing the Ron Howard directed/Peter Morgan written Rush, I still have negative 1 interest in the ‘sport’, but I have 1293891991321293 positive things to say about their beyond interesting/captivating/thrilling/fun film (same thing happened after I saw the INCREDIBLE doc Senna).  Ya see, skinny car racing is what the film’s rival characters do.  Sure, we root for them to win, but we care more about them as people then we do about thems taking the checkered flagz.  This is what the great sports movies do.  Actual winning is secondary to winning personalities  

The winning dudes are real life F1 racers – icy technical Niki Lauda and playboy pretty boy James Hunt, and they pushed each other to the limit in the mid-seventies, by putting the pedal to the metal, and trash-talking to the mental.  Lauda is embodied by the GREAT GREAT GREAT and vastly underatted and unknown (to Americans) Daniel Brühl, and Hunt by the greatly beautiful Chris Hemsworth, probably handing in his best work to date

Rush is a terrible name for a movie, but that’s eggzactly what the movie felt like and how it was paced – quickly zooming and vrrrrrrrrroooommmmmming us thru the two’s racing origin stories (they started in Formula Three.  hmmm, didn’t even know there were other types of Formula # racingsz), to their extracurricular activities (Hunt’s many c#nts, and Lauda’s main lady – played by the gorgeous Alexandra Maria Lara), to duking it out on the Formula One circuit (focusing mainly on the 1976 season), where it all basically culminates on that one fateful day that would intertwine the two’s lives together forever  

It’s all a GAS GAS GAS, that’s both FAST and FURIOUS, and has more brains AND brawn (and beauty – much WOWsers in the cinematography AND colorist departments!) in one movie than the Fast & Furious series’ has haves over six movies!!!!!!  AND WE LOVE THOSE MOVIES, BUT THEY HAVE MEATHEADS, AND RUSH AS AWESOMEHEADS!!!!!!!!!!!!!  AND THE FORMULA IS SIMPLE… AWESOMEHEADS will ALWAYS be > MEATHEADS!!!

Verdictgo:  Jeepers MOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS DEF Worth A Peepers

Race Time Face Time:  Sports Figures Portrayed in Movies

Rush, do not walk to a theater showing this.  it opens today in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Enough Said 
The Straight Divorcees 
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 93 min

What if Seinfeld‘s Elaine dated Tony Soprano?  WHAT IF??????????   Keep asking, cause you won’t find that IF in Nicole Holofcener‘s beautifully charming Enough Said, but you kinda find out what would happen if a super-flighty, super-fun Julia Louis-Dreyfus and super adorable, super sweet (FINALLY!) James Gandolfini found love after love with each other 

If the thought of this union isn’t already making your own heart go pitter-patter, than you probably don’t have a heart, or didn’t watch TV in the 90s or 00s.  We hactually teared up a bit towards the end of the film, and even did when we saw the trailer for it the other night.  The trailer tears were induced by the thought of Gandolfini no longer being with us (this is his second to last film ever), but the movie’s tears were truly earned by his and JL-D’s excellent and honest performances  

Naturally JL-D was gonna win our heart, but Gandolfini?  Forever a movie’s heavy heavy, Holofcener lets him go soft, and there’s not nearly gonna be enough said about how great he was in doing so.  This opened our eyes to a new Gandolfini, but this new train aint going nowhere cause there’s no more train to ride.  BOOO TO THE END OF GANDOLFINI SOFT TRAINS.  Oh well, if this is all we have, then this is a delight to cherish over and over  

Co-starring on the fun is Holofcener player Catherine Keener + Toni Collette (allowed to talk Australian) + that guy Ben Falcone + wise beyond their years youngins Tracey Fairaway, Eve Hewson (Bono’s daughter!) and…

Even Better Than The Real ScarJo: 

Tavi Gevinson

Verdictgo:  Jeepers MOS DEF Worth A Peepers

say Enough today in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Salinger
How To Lose Friends & Influence & Alienate People 
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 120 min

From the writer of Armageddon and the Shaft remake comes a documentary about the biography that he, Shane Salerno, co-wrote, about one of the most infamous and mysterious writers and persons of the the 20th century – Salinger, about… YOU GUESSED IT –  Jerome ‘Jerry’ David ‘J.D.’ Salinger 

We all vaguely know what JD’s been up to since he was last published in 1965 – self-imposed hermiting in Cornish, New Hampshire, questionable loving of way too young younger ladies, possibly working on unpublished stories – but what has he really been doing (is he drinking his own urine)?  There may not be a lot of knowledge or truth (nor analysis of his work) dug up in Salerno’s two hour long expose, but the hearsay said is here to say, and I for one ate up every inch of it!!! (although no mention of urine drinking ever pops up.  CRAP!!  or more like PEE!!)

For a man so privately guarded about his life and his work, and who was no fan of the Hollywood-ization takes on either, JD Salinger would hate every minute of this sleazy talking head documentary (filled with questionable interviewees – John Cusack???), but he’s dead and can’t do anything about it now, and if this five/nine years in the making doc is all we have to look at, then this is what we have to look at, and it works for me!  

What we’re mainly looking at is 30ish photographs of Salinger, and we see them over and over in the film (like the one above), and some we’ve never seen before – a bunch of WWII ones, including one of him actually writing Catcher In The Rye!!!  And a lot of talk – from former friends and lovers, that may not get us any closer to better understanding Salinger, but it’s about as close as we’re gonna get, unless his son (see below), and third and final wife ever have their say, which they probably won’t

You want a deep study on Salinger’s work – get a degree in comparative literature.  You want whatever dirt can be dug up on JD – see Salinger.  See it and hear how his upper class upbringing brought on his hate of materialism and phoniness.  See how the loss of his young love with Oona O’Neill (she moved on to bigger things – like Charlie Chaplin!!!) spurned him for life with the ladies (he didn’t seem to like it when girls became women).  See him at war (there’s actually a video clip of him in liberated France!!!), and how it permanently damaged his psyche and soul.  See him find happiness and inspiration in innocence and isolation.  See him seek adoration, but reject fame in the same breath.  See how others seeked him out for answers, only to find out that he didn’t offer or have any, and really just wanted to be left alone

Salinger’s death didn’t solve any of the myths and mysterious surrounding his life and his work.  This doc doesn’t either, but nothing truly can, cause only Salinger can answer for himself, although he himself said that nothing should be known about an author, and juss let the work speak for itself.  Maybe the answers will lie in those unpublished works, supposedly headed our way between 2015-2020.  Maybe they won’t.  They probably won’t.  Regardless, JD Salinger will always remain a closed book that we will want to re-read and over-analyze until we’ve finally caught that rye

Verdictgo:  Breast In Show

Revenge of The Literary Nerds:  Salinger’s son Matt is an actor, that you sorta know in his own right.  He played Captain America in the eponymous movie that no one saw, BUT he was also in Revenge of The Nerds, a movie that everyone in the 80s saw!!!  wonder if dad ever saw it, and was proud or found the movie phony, or he loved all the nude scenes like I really did when I was under 10 years old

Salinger catches eyes in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Closed Circuit
Boy Eh 
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 96 min

John Crowley directed Boy A, one of my most favorite movies about a boy and the first letter of the alphabet.  Two of my moist flavorite actors are Eric Bana and Ciarán Hinds, who co-starred in Munich, one of my moist favorite Jewish movies starring non-Jews.  Them three gots together, with Rebecca Hall, Jim Broadbent, Riz Ahmed, a dash of Julia Stiles and a bob of Anne-Marie Duff to make Closed Circuit – a desperately wanting to be riveting courtroom drama that isn’t nearly riveting enuff, doesn’t have much courtroom to roam, or any real drama from its start to its whatever finish.  WHAT A MOVIE!!!  Wish it was something more than juss not much of anything, but heck, we’d watch Bana and Hinds in ANYTHING – even if they were in a movie about the invention of microwaved tunafish sangwhiches!!

Verdictgo:  Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Circuit is open for bidness at a theater near jews 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…