Room 237
You Don’t Know Jack… Torrance
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
NR | 102 min

You may not have put much thought into The Shining, besides thinking about how awesome it is, but plenty of others have, way too much so, but in a good way, cause why bother over-analyzing politics or the Kardashians or other pointless garbage, when one can try to decipher why Stanley Kubrick put Calumet Baking Powder + Tang canisters behind Scatman Crothers in the Overlook Hotel’s kitchen closet (see above).  Apparently everything has a reason, and meaning, and the answers are simple – the Calumet canister = a symbol of Native American suffering, and the Tang canister = a nod to Kubrick’s own participation in ‘faking’ the moon landing in a TV studio.  OK, so maybe the answers are complex, and maybe not even answers, more like crackpotted babble, but I never want to stop listening to these leery theories!!!

Rodney Ascher‘s Room 237 focuses in on 5 of these crazy diamond Shiners, and lets them spiel their spelling outs of what they’ve seen after watching The Shining… for the 50th time.  We’re never shown these peeps’ faces, as footage from the actual movie is heavily poured on + random archival stuff (love the footage of the people watching a movie in a mostly empty theater) + some Eyes Wide Shut-edness.  Ascher does the viewer/listener a huge favor – deftly edits these scatterbrained-hot breaths into to something watchable/listenable.  For example, one of his talking heads is Michael Wysmierski, a man who strongly believes that Kubrick did indeed help the US government fake the moon landing, and used The Shining as a way of admitting his guilt and shame (the Tang canister!  Danny with his Apollo 11 sweater!).  You can struggle to sit thru Wysmierski’s 79 minuted Babylon of babble, called The Shining Code 2.0, like we did, or you can let Ascher act as his editor, and to the 4 others, getting to the point of the pointed pointlessness, and in turn, crafting a piece of work that’s possibly even more mesmerisng and scarier than The Shining itself!

We saw Room 237 back in October at the New York Film Festival, appreciated what Ascher attempted to do, but was left a little too dazed and confused by it all.  Well, since then, we’ve seen The Shining again (you will too if you see Room 237), which made us only want to see Room 237 again (which we did), which now makes us want to see The Shining again (which we will), and so on and back and forth and so forth.  It’s an endless maze that leads to nowhere, but we’d rather go there than anywhere else.  It’s up to you if you want to believe.  BELIEVE IT!

Verdictgo: upon further review –  Breast In Show

Overcooked Hotel: the internets is overloaded with Shining madness, but the best caretaker of it all is The Overlook Hotel, where they have such delicious morsels like this photo of the faux Torrances, who actually shot the 2nd unit footage of the VW bug driving up in the mountains

Room 237 has a vacancy in NY & on-demand this Friday, and elsewhere elsewhen

 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Sapphires 
It Can’t Help Itself – Sugary Pie Honey Too Much
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG 13 | 103 min

Oh wow, there was a real-life foursome of Aboriginal gals who were so good at singing, but unloved by Australian white folk that the girls took off for Vietnam to sing to US troops during the war!!!!  That one sentence, including the exclamation points, is about as excited as the movie wants you to be while watching it.  Well, if your idea of a movie is a shoestring plot with zero drama, barely strung together with Motown songs you already love, with some, for once, MUCH NEEDED comic relief from Chris O’Dowd (usually we need relief from him), then The The Sapphires is for you!!  The only time the movie gets real, and deep, and remotely moving is when title cards come up at the end to tell us about what became of the real women.  Too bad that everything that came before it was like drinking Velveeta thru a Pixy Stix stick.  OK, ok, sure, it’s impossible to truly hate on this sugary-sweet movie, but it’s OK to pass on it too, especially since you can do much better, like (re-)watching The Commitments, which is pretty much the same thing, cept with better filmmaking, acting, songs, humor, and Irish people (sorry Mr O’Dowd, but it’s true)

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Sapphires don’ts exactly sparkle in limited release this Friday 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Spring Breakers 
Bikini Overkill
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 94 min

Harmony Korine‘s Spring Breakers is exactly what you’d think/expect/want it to be.  Maybe more, maybe less, but dude, in the end, it’s fcuking Spring Breakers!!! It’s Korine’s most mainstream movie to date (a good thing), but not necessarily his best (it’s RIGHT up there, but kinda hard to top the depth and beauty of Mister Lonely), but for those who don’t know the difference between Gummo and Chico & The Man, juss go and see it and have your eyes melt  

Spring Breakers is like one long episode of UK’s Skins, but neonier, pastelier, gangstier, and way dirtier, but it doesn’t go ALL THE WAY disgustingly dirty (this isn’t Enter The Void, but it is the same cinematographer!), cause if it did, we’d despise this movie, instead of being energized by it.  Actually, it’s more like this Skins promo, which was raunchier than anything on the actual show, although the show itself was pretty raunchy.  So lets juss say the Spring Breakers‘ is Skins‘ very American cousin, k?  (wait, you’ve seen Skins, right????)

Much has been made about former Disney starlets Vanessa Hudgens (WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY WIFE????) & Selena Gomez being turned into Korine harlots, and much should be made about it, cause you get to see sides of these girls that you’ve never seen before –  their acting talents the sides of their boobs, and butts!!  Dude, Spring Breakers!!  But don’t get too excited.  The one Spring Breaker who drops trou more than the others is Korine’s real life wife, Rachel Korine, the least looker of the bunch.  Drats.  But put away your calls of nepotism, cause Rachel kinda sorta feels like a well-needed mother-figure to these tween-sweetheart tarts of raging pleasure, even if she’s raging more than all of them combined.  Oh, and the fourth breaker is Pretty Little Liar‘s Ashley Benson, and she’s hotter than mercury on the surface of Mercury!!!!   Oh man, bless this foursome, especially since their entire wardrobe consists of bikinis.  All they wanted was spring break.  So what if they had to rob a BBQ joint with ski-masks, water guns and sledgehammers to make it happen???

After a bunch of endless days and nights of typical collegiate beach partying, the girls break bad when they get tangled up with wankster drug & arms mini-kingpin James Franco (this is when the movie starts to REALLLLLLY click its heels/grillz).  He crosses every line, especially the line of looking like a human being.  Muss be why he goes by the name of Alien.  He’s like the slimiest white dude to ever sport cornrows, and pretty much every white dude that sports cornrows is the slimiest white dude ever (his helpers - The ATL Twins – don’t have cornrows, but they’s slimy in their own special way)  

But the girls take to him, and he giveth back to them.  Ya see, the girls live for spring break.  They don’t want it to ever end.  James Franco’s Alien is the embodiment of spring break never ending.  They want to be him (cept for Gomez).  He wants them to be with him, and in him.  They sing Britney Spears songs together with guns in hand at sunset.  It doesn’t get much better than this, but then it does.  PLEASE DON’T LET SPRING BREAK EVER END!!!! 

But things go wrong, but not too wrong, cause the girls get what they want in the end - a spring break for the ages.  This is ultimately a ‘happy’ story.  A scary happy story, a nightmare that never felt better.  Every minute flirts with disaster, but the next minute keeps molesting you with laughter  

This film is a grower.  As the hours, now days pass, the more and more we fcuking hate that spring break in Spring Breakers ended.  Sure, it’s over, but it aint never over.  I keep hearing James Franco calmly chanting, ‘spreeeng braaaake, spreeeng braaaaaaaaake‘ in my ear.  You’ll hear it too.  And you also won’t be able to get this image out of yer head anytime soon neither, and why would you want it to leave your head???

Spring break forever.  Spring Breakers forever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Verdictgo: it ages like fine wine.  thought it was purty darn good yesterday and now methinking it’s Breast In Show.  give me a week and I’ll proclaim it better than Zodiac

Spring Breakers breaks loose this Friday in NY/LA and elsewhere elsewhen 

oh, and animated gif posters should become the new posters

oh, and this Vanessa Hudgens poster will hang in every room of my house, and every inch of my brain.  Vanessa Hudgens (looking eggzactly like this) 9evvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Stoker 
Bram Flakey
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 98 min

Korean director Chan-wook Park has given in and giving filmmaking the ole Hollywood try.  The Oldboy (not Old Joy) dynamo (or so we hear, since we’ve never seen one of his movies) takes a script by Wentworth Miller (yes, that Wentworth Miller) and hands in something that’s notable, but not really that noteworthy.  What does that mean?  Zero idea, but we also kinda sorta have zero idea what to make of the result – Stoker

Stoker is about a mother (Nicole Kidman) and a daughter (Mia Wasikowska) trying to move on after their hubby/daddy (Dermot Mulroney) dies in a mysterious car accident.  Out of nowhere comes his dashing brother (Matthew Goode), who’s more into flirting than grieving.  He has eyes & designs on both ladies (the mother’s game, the daughter’s glum), and a wide perma-smile that spells something fishy.  So what happens?  Moody moodness, lovely cinematography and editing, some pop-ins from Alden Ehrenreich and Jacki Weaver, and not much else.  There’s a reveal towards the end, but it’s not too revealing, and then some stuff happens, and then something else happens, which doesn’t seem to jive with anything, and then the movie ends, and I was like, whaaat?  And then I was like OK, well, whatever, nevermind

Side Effects
Moody Mara
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 106 min

Steven Nerderbergh‘s oeuvre is filled with so many hits AND misses, although it seems like there’s more misses than hits, and yet everyone seems to love all of his movies regardless of what we think.  For every killah Bubble or Informant there’s those Ocean 911 garbages or flix that seem like they’d be super dope but really are snooze-fest drecks, like The Whore Experiment or Che Parts 1 thru 289932919392 

Apparently Nerdy’s retiring.  Yeah, I believe that about as much as I believe that REM’s done for good, but if Side Effects is his ‘swan song’, well, then, I don’t know what it really says as a departing shot, but as a movie independent of Nerderbergh’s ‘closure’, Side Effects is a thriller that simply thrills.  There are surprises around some corners, and the corners that aren’t surprising are corners still worth turning!

So what exactly happens?  WON’T TELL, but Rooney Mara gets moody and confusing (probably cause she’s not hot people!!!), and Jude Law tries to help her, but is he hurting her or himself????  WHAT WHAT WHAT!!?!??!?!  And like Channing Tatum is Marion Crane, KINDA, sorta, MAYBE, ok NO TELLING, but he doesn’t overly Tatum his Channings in this one.  And then Catherine Zeta-Jones pops in and out and keeps pushing…

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Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Side Effects affects at a theater near jews this Friday

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…