Frankenweenie
James Whale of a Good Time
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG | 87 min

Tim Burton, creatively, hasn’t had much luck adapting other people’s claims to fame.  Alice was far from a Wonderland.  That Chocolate Factory desperately needed to be condemned.  Planet of the Apes?  More like Planet of the WÃœRST!!  Sure, Dark Shadows wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t as awesome as it could have been neithers!  So what if he adapted his own claim to fame?????  Taking his 1984 live-action short film [WATCH!!!] and turn it into a full-length stop-motion animation feature (basically an adaption of his adaption of Frankenstein)? On paper, it sounds like a sure thing, but so did all those other projects listed above, before they became sure thing disasters!!!!

But movies aren’t made on paper, they are made on film digital files!!!  And sometimes Tim Burton is capable of making things that don’t suck in the 21st century (BIG FISH!!!), and his long-form Frankenweenie far from sucks.  It’s actually his best work since Big Fish (although that doesn’t really say much) and more importantly, reminds us of a time when Burton wasn’t a studio hack, but a unique mastermind of weirdness and wonderment.  Could you ask for anything more?  Yeah, like 20 more real Tim Burton movies instead of 20 more bullsh!t Tim Burton movies

So how does the longer Weenie compare story-wise to the shorter one?  Basically the same (boy loves dog, dog dies, boy brings dog back to life, weirdness AND loveliness ensues), but everything this time around is more gothic-y/Burton-y/stop-motiony AND funner!!!  PLUS the boy, Victor Frankenstein (now voiced by Charlie Tahan), also gets more fleshed out classmates to play with, and THEY ARE ALL AWESOMEESSS!!!!!!  esp Edgar ‘E’ Gore voiced by Atticus Shaffer + one of them has the voice of Winona Ryder!!!!!!!  YES, WINONA AND TIM BACK TOGETHER AGAIN!!!!!!!!  YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MORE THIS PLEASE!!!! And Catherine O’Hara is back too!!!!  IT’S LIKE A BEETLEJUICEY SEMI NOT REALLY REUNION!!!!!  + Martin Short AND Martin Landau have voices!!!!!

This movie is a FrankenWINNER!  It’s true cause it’s true

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Frankenweenie IS ALIVE, today at a theater near jews!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Wuthering Heights
Wutherings Original
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
NR | 129 min

Here’s what we knew about Wuthering Heights before seeing the 15th filmed adaptation of it – I think one of Brontë sisters Brontësaurused it.  Other than that, we don’t know what ‘wuthering‘ is or how to spell it without googlesings it!!!

Here’s what we’ve learned about Wuthering Heights after seeing Wuthering Heights – dude, there are heights, and then there are WUTHERING HEIGHTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It’s true!!!  BUT WHAT IS ARE ‘WUTHERING HEIGHTS????????????

We sat thru the whole movie, awake, and really really dug it all, cause it was beautiful and had feelings, and had great foley work, and had even more feelings, but we STILL have zero negative one idea what Wurthering Heights are is!!!

When movies don’t spell things out, the internet does.  According to here, ‘Wuthering Heights‘ is the name of one of the main character’s homes.  Don’t think they mentioned it in the movie, or at least wethinks they didn’t, but maybe they did and we were juss too busy taking in the beauty, and the pain, and the love that could never be, which is a worse pain than the worsestest pain you can imagine (even more so than death by stereo!!!)

But what is ‘wurthering‘???  Webster didn’t know, so we asked his sister Merriam who says ‘blowing with a dull roaring sound‘.  Now that makes sense, cause there is lots of wind blowing with dull roaring sounds in this movie!!!!!!!!!!!  Andrea Arnold did it!!!  No, she really did!  She took some heights and wuthered them.  Of course she did!!!!  Wemeans, she’s made three full length features (this, FCUKING FISH TANK!!!! & the rocky rockin Red Road), and they all is mesmerizings and had awesome womens characters in em, and that’s really all you need to know!

OK, enuff about ‘wuthering’.  What’s the story abouts???  One day a carefree lass named Catherine (Shannon Beer) gains a black half-brother named Heathcliff (Solomon Glave).  The two quickly become as thick as thieves (wait, WHAT THE FRUSH DOES THICK AS THIEVES MEAN????), and they have fun and run around the moors and is never boorsed.  But he’s black, and this is olden times, so he has to do lots of work and her real brother despises Heathcliff and hits him and stuff.  Heathcliff obviously sweats Catherine hard, and Catherine not as obviously sweats him back, but she can’t go all in cause he’s black and this is the olden times.  WHY CAN’T LOVE WIN REGARDLESS OF COLOR OF WUTHERINGS?!?!?!?!?!?  Time passes, and they get older (Cat turns into Kaya Scodelario and H’Cliff into James Howson), and they go their own ways, but LOVE WILL NEVER DIE, UNTIL IT DOES, so sh!t goes down and…  what do you think?  THE HEIGHTS ARE FRUDGERING WURTHERED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and in this version of WH the last 16 chapters from the book were cut out, which is a good call, cause the movie is solid as is, and if there were 16 more chapters included, I’d probably still be watching this movie

Oh, and for some reason this movie was shot (or presented) in 1.33:1 (basically 4:3) aspect ratio!!  JUST LIKE MEEK’S CUTOFF!!!!!  Apparently, if you have a beautiful arsty fartsy movie shot in a 4:3 square, Oscilloscope will buy and distribute it.  Kudos to them, and to the square filmmakers they support

Remember Wren:

Amy Wren!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Wuthering wuthers to new Heights in NYC tomorrow, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Room 237
Overlook Overlooked
Official Website | New York Film Festival Page
NR | 102 min

Movies are the best.  If anyone says otherwise, they must not have eyes, or have way too much time to read things called ‘books’.  The best movies make us think, about things and stuff, and the even bester of the best movies make us think so so so dang much that they make us want to investigate each and every frame of the actual movie, to find not only surface meanings, but to find below the surface meanings too, and even below the below the surface meanings too too!

Stanley Kubrick’s entire catalog is worthy of this type of over-investigation, and in turn, his films attract all kinds of peoples searching for meaningless meaning, and in turn, them peoples offer up endless theories and hypotheses on things that are there and things that aren’t, and things that totally aren’t, and the ‘findings’ are always interesting, no matter how far fetched they are.  You could spend days on end on YouTube just looking and listening to these stuffs!!  You really should, cause it’s fun!  And things!

Rodney Ascher was intrigued enough by the endless blather surrounding The Shining, that he collected the crackpot ideas of 5 such theorists and gave them a voice in the form of a loosely formed documentary that will give you a splitting headache, but make you smile at the same time, juss like that dude in The Shining!  We never see these interviewee peoples’ faces, and this pseudo-anonymity makes it even better, more crackpotier!!  Like we said, any of these ideas, no matter how crackpot they is, are interesting.  Sure, The Shining could totally be a metaphor for American Indian genocide or the Holocaust, or even a big big wink wink at Kubrick’s involvement in the fake moon landing, but it could also juss be a Stephen King novel freely adapted by Stanley Kubrick as he saw fit

But The Shining really aint juss a straight forward movie.  You know this, but Room 237 points out this weird stuffs even more – a typewriter changes color, a chair that appears in one scene disappears in the next (same with a Dopey Disney dwarf sticker!!), that impossible window, the carpeting that changes pattern.  And what’s the story with that Bill Watson character?  Why?  WHY???  There are no answers, and that’s OK, but after watching & listening to 100+ minutes of whying why, you’ll fill like you’ve always been the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel too.  Crazy, but worth it.  Check in, and don’t check out

Hope there’s a doc like this made for each and every one of  Stanley’s dandies

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Room 237 has a vacancy at the NYFF October 4 & 8th, and opens in 2013

oh, yeah, was a taaaaaaaaaad disappointed that Room 237 failed to do one very important thing – try to find meaning behind THAT ONE SHINING MOMENT!!!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Looper
Top Self
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 118 min

What the frush is a Looper? Oh, you mean a guy from the 2040s who kills dudes sent from the even futurerer future for the sole purpose of getting killed in the past? Got that?  Well, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a looper, and he has big dreams, like retiring and going to France and eating franch fries and franch bread.  But the thing about being a looper is that you eventually have to kill yourself.  Not yourself self, but your future self, in the past.  Killing someone else is one thing, but killing an older future version of yerself in the present is another, especially when he’s so cool and so badass and so Bruce Willis (and NOT so Raven).  And the other thing is when Bruce Willis is future you, he obviously knows the score, and that himself gonna get killed by himself of the past, so he’s gotta be one up on himself, but himself himself of the past is pretty sharp, and NOW WE GOTS OURSELVES A CHESS MATCH BETWEEN THE SAME SELVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Got that?

What I just described is the RAWESOME time travelly thinkingerish first act of Rian Johnson‘s fun fun fun 3rd feature film, which follows his overly nutty, overly quirky Brothers Bloom, and his ultra hip ultra noiry ultra cool Brick.  Of course there’s a second act that follows the first one.  It involves a farm, Emily Blunt, and a kid (Pierce Gagnon) who be sorta kinda like the kid in The Tin Drum, without the drum, the child pornography or a mother who eats fish.  As you may or may not know, farms aren’t as cool or as exciting as Bruce Willis squaring off against Levitt Joseph-Gordon, but the farm bits kinda got its own thing going.  Then in act 3, act 2 and act 1 get their acts together [hahahahahahahaha] and it’s like action jackson meets a good M Night Shamalamadingdong movie meets Looper meets evil Mike Seaver meets Emily Blunt trying to sound like a hick, then giving up on sounding like one, then trying to recapture that hick sound, but not really, and it’s kinda mostly all very much so futurepresentsexy cool

what does any of that mean?  LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER! LOOPER!

Oh yeah, and Jeff Daniels is in it, and he didn’t have to be [please note – we love Jeff Daniels]

Thighed Piper: welcome back to the land of hotness Piper Perabo

dude, you get to see her boobs!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Looper goes loop de loop at a theater near jews today

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Master
No Brains, No Service
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 137 min

I don’t get it, but it sure looked nice!  Especially those sandcastle boobs!

It didn’t have a point, but Philip Seymour Hoffman did have a mustache that made him look like Mike Holmgren, and he did yell a lot, cause that’s telltale sign that he’s acting all hard and things!!

No really, I have zero minus one idea what the movie was about, but Joaquin Phoenix did tell like 2 fart jokes and kinda acted like he was in a post-WWII version of I’m Still Here (which is a betterer, more thoughtfullerrer movie than The Master is ever be or wants to be.  IS TRUE!)

No seriously, what’s the story with that story?  A helpless drunk gets help from a guy who’s full of himself and has a mustache and screams and his son is Jesse Plemons who sorta looks like him, without a mustache, and without the screaming, and in the end, no matter how much yelling goes-es on, it doesn’t help the helpless guy????  And no milkshakes are drankens??

But man, the movie LOOKED amazing!  Yeah, but ‘look’ and ‘being’ are two different stuffs.  Nice try PT Borenum!!  But you didn’t fool us with your foolish tim-foolery!

Yeah, but there were at least three AMAZINGS scenes.  One involved questions and not closing eyes and then closing eyes with more questions.  Another involved the awesomes Christopher Evan Welch questioning methods which is followed by yellings.  The other other was when all of the sudden there were lots of naked womens in a room, and we saw old droopy boobies that were hactually kinda sexy. IS TRUTHS!

Jessica Lange Gang: so we all know that Alison Lohman looks like a young Jessica Lange, but who knew that there was a gal who looks like Alison Lohman…

Brigitte Hagerman!!!!!!!!!!!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

The Master bates in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…